hem at all, but only read them; and as those who read,
unless they steal or borrow, must purchase, I accordingly class them as
booksellers indirectly, inasmuch as if they don't sell books themselves,
they cause others to do so. For this reason it is evident that every man
living, and woman too, capable of reading a book, is a bookseller; so
that society at large is nothing but one great bookselling firm.

"Having thus established the immense extent and importance of the
business, I now proceed to the consideration of the case before us. To
steal a book is not in every case an offence against the law of libel,
nor against the law of arson, nor against the law of insurrection, nor
against the law of primogeniture; in fact, it is only against the law of
theft--it offends only one law--and is innocent with respect to all the
others. A person stealing a book could not be indicted under the statute
of limitations, for instance; except, indeed, in so far as he may be
supposed to limit the property of the person from whom he stole it. But
on this point the opinion of the learned Folderol would go pretty
far, were it not for the opinion of another great man, which I shall
presently quote. Folderol lays it down as a fixed principle in an able
treatise upon the law of weathercocks, that if property be stolen
from an individual, without the aggregate of that property suffering
reduction or diminution, he is not robbed, and the crime of theft has
not been committed. The other authority that I alluded to, is that of
his great and equally celebrated opponent, Tolderol, who lays it down on
the other hand, that when a thief, in the act of stealing, leaves more
behind him than he found there at first, so that the man stolen from
becomes richer by the act of theft than he had been before it, the crime
then becomes _dupleis delicti_, or one of harum-scarum, according to
Doodle, and the thief deserves transportation or the gallows. And the
reason is obvious: if the property of the person stolen from, under the
latter category, were to be examined, and that a larger portion of it
was found there than properly had belonged to him before the theft,
he might be suspected of theft himself, and in this case a double
conviction of the parties would ensue; that is, of him who did not take
what he ought, and of him who had more than he was entitled to. This
opinion, which is remarkable for its perspicuity and soundness, is to
be found in the one hund