THE BOOKSELLING FUTURE.
IF Lord Campbell had not violated the precept, to give his judg- ment but not his reasons, there would not have been a word to say against the decision of himself and his fellow referees on the Bookselling question. The decision is, that the regulations of the Booksellers Association are "unreasonable and inexpedient." Goodbye, therefore, to that respectable body and its Johnsonian traditions! There is a broad line placed between the future and. the past. Henceforth the publishers are driven on the wide wa- ters of free trade ; and we can understand the trepidation of some of the older folk, who have never been to sea before, as they pass that dreadful North Foreland of Stratheden House. But the ship will not put back for them ; nor are the waves to be so instanta- neously fatal as they seem to the time-honoured but inexperienced eyes. :Unlike some mariners in unknown seas, publishers have a fixed tint to steer by—the publishing price. As yet there is no united
clarataon on any future plan for the trade ; each for himself is the absolute law of this interregnum; but that point is fixed, an.di by that they can hold fast. It is, as an Irish orator might say, thhe, pole-star, sheet-anchor, and watertight-bulkhead of their salvation.
Far tougher it is by way of security than Lord Campbell's advice, notable chiefly for its bonhomie. Let there be no "special regulations," says the learned and literary as well as noble Baron. publishers "asking prices and making or refusing allowances as they please." Let them "deal with every one who brings money in his purse, or whose responsibility is undoubted?" But where is he, the Undoubted ? We all know that the very object of every- body is to "keep up appearances "; and it would be the wildest of delusions to suppose that any publisher can have leisure or means to penetrate through appearances to facts. From White. chapelGate to Belgrave Square, it is one field of opulence and insolvency, mingled in equal proportions, and covered with the golden veil of "appearances." The publishers, quoth Campbell, are "not to encourage those long and renewed credits which," &c.: but how can they help it ? Credit is the rule all round. County gentleman pays his bootmaker at the end of three years ; bootmaker, if fashionable, has the money for his own tailor in a year or two ; and tailor, wanting a book, can pay book- seller's bill at Christmas twelvemonth, or on the morrow of that day, that is a year later still. To abolish credits, bookseller must make everybody fetch up all round; and then everybody, with a run on his bank, although able to pay twenty shillings in the pound some day, would have to invoke the protection of the In- solvent Court. Publishers also, says Campbell, are not to trust any one "carrying on his business without a profit for maintain- ing solvency": so that they will need a grand inquisition into tradesmen's books and circumstances! Nor are they to trust any one "sacrificing his wares by reckless underselling " : so that they are remanded precisely to the plice whence they came ! "Thus;" says Campbell, C. J., with exquisite naiveté, "Thus freedom of action, we hope, may lead to harmony and prosperity.' A. hopeful prospect !
The fact is, that the poor publishers are sent forth, suddenly, into the open waters of free trade, which are still full of the wrecks and snags of the old system. The system of "cash payments," with which free trade, on "the Devil take the hindmost" prin- ciple, could be rendered thoroughly safe, cannot be established on the instant; and the publishers are sent forth, amid those wrecks and snags of long credit to find a profit out of low prices. Free trade has not yet done half its duty : few Free-traders yet think of abolishing those laws for the protection of credit which breed so much false credit, and therefore so much. false trading. And then there are the taxes—the advertisement-tax, and the paper-tax! —However, sufficient unto the day is the snag thereof:
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