human family to the loss of
five or ten thousand pounds in hard cash. Then, as touching the
purchasers,--no doubt the throwing of a "remnant" on the market may
sometimes bring the book into the possession of one who can put it to
good use, and would have been unable to purchase it at the original
price. But the rich deserve some consideration as well as the poor. It
will be hard to find the man so liberal and benevolent that he will
joyfully see his neighbour obtain for thirty shillings the precise
article for which he has himself paid thirty pounds; nor does there
exist the descendant of Adam who, whatever he may say or pretend, will
take such an antithesis with perfect equanimity. Even the fortunate
purchasers of portions of "the remnant," or "the broken book," as
another pleasant technicality of the trade has it, are not always
absolutely happy in their lot. They have been tempted by sheer cheapness
to admit some bulky and unwieldy articles into their abodes, and they
look askance at the commodity as being rather a sacrifice to mammon than
a monument of good taste.

It has been the object of the machinery here referred to, to limit the
impressions of such works to those who want and can pay for them--an
extremely simple object, as all great ones are. There is, however, a
minute nicety in the adjustment of the machinery, which was not obvious
until it came forth in practice--a nicety without which the whole system
falls to pieces. It was to accomplish this nicety that the principle of
the club was found to be so well adapted. A club is essentially a body
to which more people want admission than can gain it; if it do not
manage to preserve this characteristic, it falls to pieces for want of
pressure from without, like a cask divested of its hoops. To make the
books retain their value, and be an object of desire, it was necessary
that the impressions should be slightly within the natural
circulation--that there should be rather a larger number desirous of
obtaining each volume than the number that could be supplied with it.
The club effected this by its own natural action. So long as there were
candidates for vacancies and the ballot-box went round, so long were the
books printed in demand and valuable to their possessors. If there were
110 or 120 people willing to possess and pay for a certain class of
books, the secret of keeping up the pressure from without and the value
of the books, was to limit the number of memb