after that fashion) till I found he was speaking of Calcutta. Secondly, the system adopted by our American friends is neither adequate nor correct as an exponent of the sounds which it professes to discriminate. I will not trouble your readers with a dry philological exposition; but if any of them will consider the various powers of the English vowels, and compare them with Mr. Kennedy's characters, they will allow that my statement is correct. Thirdly, if a new nomenclature is requisite, it should be introduced upon better authority than that of American missionaries, who are not the arbiters of the English language; and who ought meekly to submit to spell words as Englishmen for ages have spelt them, till a conference of orthoepists has determined otherwise. So at least it strikes a plain old-fashioned person, who does not pretend to be a

SULEIMAUN.

DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES OF THROWING OPEN THE PRINTING OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

For the Christian Observer.

In our Number for December, 1840, and the Appendix, we considered, at considerable length, the proposition-we ought, from the bad spirit displayed by some of its promoters, to say the agitation— then in progress for throwing open the printing of the authorised English version of the Scriptures. We argued that our vernacular Bibles and Testaments were very cheap,-indeed, for the most part, below the estimate which Mr. Childs himself set forth; and that they were printed with unprecedented accuracy; but that if they could be afforded on still lower terms, with due regard to paper, printing, and correctness, they ought to be so; and that, in point of fact, the Universities and Queen's printer, from the magnitude of their orders, could issue them more cheaply than printers or booksellers competing with each other upon the free trade system; so that nothing would be gained, and much might be lost, even in the article of cheapness, by abolishing all restriction. We added, however, that it was chiefly from the duty of securing accuracy, that we objected to allowing any individual who pleased to print the authorised Bible; for even in the best regulated private printing-house a tradesman could not afford to expend the same time, capital, and care, which are employed by the Universities and the Queen's patentee in revising the printing and in cancels and rejected sheets. But if this would apply to respectable tradesmen, it may easily be conceived what paper, print, and blunders we might expect when any jobber, any needy, careless, or unprincipled typographer, might speculate upon an edition of the Bible or Testament; to say nothing of the danger of wilful corruptions by fanciful, fanatical, or heterodox editors. As for the lawfulness of the nation's restricting the right for the common good, we had no difficulty; for the English authorised Bible and Common Prayer-book are public property, national copyright; they were set forth at the expence of the State, and no man has any claim to print them, unless licensed so to do. He may make his Own version if he pleases, and print that. The perpetual copyright of Lord Clarendon's History is secured to the University of Oxford; we enter not into the reasonableness or pro

propriety of such a limitation; but if a work not issued at the national expense could be thus tied up for the benefit of a particular body, assuredly the nation had a right to confine the printing of its own authorised version of the Scriptures in such a manner as it judged necessary to secure accuracy, good workmanship, and an adequate supply.

We did not resume the consideration of the subject; chiefly because the privileged presses diminished their prices to such an extent that the "agitation" for the most part ceased. The cheap Bibles are not quite equal in paper and workmanship to the higher-priced; but they are excellent and most serviceable copies; and our statement is abundantly confirmed that the "monopolists," as they are called, could issue the Scriptures at lower charges than would be practicable in the ordinary competition of business; and our expectation is gratified, that in consequence of the increasing extent of orders, more especially as stimulated by the Bible Society's noble effort to supply very cheap copies, there would be, as there ought to be, a deduction in the prices. That this point at least has been satisfactorily settled, is proved by the mitigation of the agitation, and also by the confession of some of the anti-monopolists themselves. The following is the language even of "The author of Jethro," the name under which Mr. Campbell issued his letters. Speaking of the prices in the Queen's printer's catalogue, he says:

"Look, Sir, at his prices: take, for example, the 12mo Nonpareil Bible, containing upwards of thirty-two sheets; that book is sold, in long numbers, at twenty-six half-pence-considerably less than a halfpenny a sheet! Take the Ruby Bible, containing twenty-two sheets; that book is sold, in long numbers, at twenty-four halfpence, little more than a halfpenny a sheet! The Pearl Bible, of twenty sheets, is sold at the same price. Now, Sir, the mere paper of the Pearl Bible, common edition, costs 84d.; and, if the printed sheets be sold for a shilling, only 34d. is the allowance for press work-which is just 5s. 10d. per ream! How insignificant must be the profit of such a transaction! What but the prodigious amount of business can render it worth while to carry it on? Who but a madman, unless he had the business of half an empire to himself, would embark great capital on such terms."

"In my deliberate judgment, all things considered, free trade could not do more for us than is now being done by the Queen's Printer. In point of price I think it would do somewhat less. Although monopoly, from the avarice of man, has always contributed to raise price, yet it has always supplied the means of greatly lowering it. The view of Mr. Spottiswoode's facilities for unrivalled cheapness, accuracy, and beauty, which I now take, I have always held."

"It really seems as if, for the first time in our world, Monopoly were, instead of a curse, to become a blessing !"

The question then of cheapness is satisfactorily adjusted; but the particular upon which we mainly expressed apprehension, in case of the right of printing bibles being thrown open, was that of accuracy. We were told indeed that the well-known anti-church-rate agitator, Mr. Childs of Bungay, who led the way in the movement, could, and would, furnish stereotype plates which should be the wonder of the world for correctness; and to induce the public to demand the establishment of the proposed new mart, exaggerated and mendacious charges were put into circulation relative to the alleged inaccuracy of the current copies. To all this we demurred; nor were we even convinced by the popular argument that Mr. Childs' bibles would be stereotyped, and therefore must be correct; for stereotyping does not ensure correctness; and unhappily when mistakes are discovered in stereotype, the expence of altering the plates, or sup CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 47.

4 R

plying new ones, is so great, that there is a strong temptation to continue the faulty reading; nor do we believe, if the trade were thrown open, that individuals, looking merely to commercial advantage, would be very forward to undergo the trouble and cost of repairing the mischief.

But as facts speak more forcibly than words, we will present to our readers a specimen of the safety of stereotype, and the guarantee of Mr. Childs' press. We some time since ordered of a bookseller a copy of Rollin's Ancient History, (the English translation), and the copy supplied to us was one of the eighteenth edition, in six volumes octavo, published in 1839, by Tegg in London, and Griffin in Glasgow. We gave no direction as to the edition; but this was sent us in the ordinary way of business, as the best edition of the day. We did not examine the book to discover blunders, of which there may be many and of great magnitude, but we casually alighted upon the following. In Volume I., the first side of the leaf which contains pages 209 and 210, is headed Carthaginians," and ends, in the middle of a sentence, with the words "having lasted seventeen years;" whereas the second side begins, "for the exercise of their muse;" which has nothing to do with the subject of the first side, and upon examination the whole page turns out to be equally irrelevant. The first side of the next leaf is headed "Greece;" whereas its second side is from the story of Hannibal, belonging to another volume. Again, in the succeeding leaf, p. 213 is about the Carthaginians, ending with a full stop; whereas p. 214 begins in the middle of a word, and has reference to Sappho and Anacreon. Page 215 of the next leaf ends with a full stop, and page 216 begins in the middle of a sentence, and relates to another subject. Page 217 of the next leaf ends in the middle of a sentence, and page 218 of the same leaf begins a new sentence, and on quite another subject. Page 219 of the next leaf ends with making Anacharsis say to Æsop "You are," and the next page 220, proceeds "avengers of the sacred rights of hospitality;" whereas Anacharsis never said any such thing, and the words belong to quite another matter and another volume, as does the whole page. Page 221 of the next leaf ends with "Who with Philenus," whereas the succeeding page begins, "that plain and negligent disguise," and goes on with matter taken from another volume. Page 223 of the next leaf ends a book, and page 224 begins a new one, so that all appears right; but page 223 concludes Book V. and 224 commences Book II.

In the second volume there are sixteen successive pages of a similar character; the two sides of each leaf being on different subjects.

It will be readily seen that these are not mistakes in the stitching up; they do not arise from casually transposing the sheets of the same volume, or of several volumes; for the discrepancies are upon the back and front of the self-same leaves, so that the stitcher could neither detect them, nor remedy them; nor could the respectable publishers be aware of them, even if they took the trouble to examine the paging of the whole work, for the paging and the" signatures" of the sheets are correct; so that no person is to blame but the printer. How many copies this faulty edition consisted of, we know not; but the work has arrived at a subsequent edition, so that we may reasonably presume that a very large number, it may be many thousand copies, have gone out in this blundering fashion;

and have been scattered throughout the world, from Mr. Tegg's warehouse in London to his thriving establishments in Sydney and Hobart's Town. Our's was but a casual copy from the heap, and purchased in the ordinary way, and possibly some of our readers may have been equally unfortunate.

We had not the slightest knowledge who was the printer of these volumes when we detected the mistakes, much less were we aware that the work is stereotyped; but on turning to the back of the title page we read, "BUNGAY: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN CHILDS AND SON." It thus appears that if every private printer were allowed to print the Holy Scriptures, even supposing them stereotyped, and the stereotype plates correct, (which is more than could be expected) there would still be no certainty that one side of a sheet would not be printed from the plates of the Old Testament, and the other side from those of the New; so as to cause such a jumble as we have described; nor would there be any security that tens, or hundreds, of thousands of copies of such "higgledy-piggledy" books would not go forth irrevocably into circulation before the mistake was discovered; nor is it always certain that if the parties themselves knew of the error, they would be at the expense of cancelling a large edition; for it is well known that faulty editions of books are every day knowingly vended in a variety of ways, particularly by itinerant auctioneers, who buy them up cheaply as damaged goods, and that the respectable book-trade has in vain endeavoured to check such practices. Nay even where respectable names occur upon a title-page, faulty editions do sometimes get abroad. We have in our hands at this moment a copy of Doddridge's Family Expositor in five octavo volumes, the price of which was three guineas in boards, and the highly respectable names of Baynes, Robinson, Wilson, Constable, &c., we considered a guarantee for the correctness of the book; but though there are but five volumes, each so numbered on the titlepage and at the last page of each volume, yet the Index, which extends to nearly fifty closely printed columns, is one belonging to an edition of Doddridge's works in ten volumes, so that not one single reference is correct;-in fact, all the references are to Vols. VI. to X. to which numbers none of these volumes correspond. If the mistake was not discovered by the printer, or any of the publishers, what shall we say of the probability of obtaining immaculate Bibles by freetrade? If it was, what reason have we to expect that when inaccuracies, even of a serious kind, are discovered, they will be remedied? Large numbers of this worthless edition were sold throughout the country by a travelling book auctioneer, who of course did not tell his dupes that he was selling damaged goods. How came he by them? Why was not the faulty index cancelled, (as it might have been at no great expence) instead of copies being "got off," through an itinerant auctioneer, or through petty vendors, which respectable booksellers would not sell in their own shops, or supply in the regular way to "the trade?"

We could mention scores of similar cases; and therefore, knowing full well the impossibility, if the printing of Bibles were thrown open, of securing the public from inaccurate copies, we should upon principle oppose the measure proposed by Mr. Childs, Dr. A. Thomson, "the Author of Jethro," and the Patriot Newspaper, even if Bibles could be printed more cheaply under such a system than by the privi

leged presses; but as this, we are convinced, would not be practicable, there is not a shadow of a shade of reason for interfering with the existing arrangements. We have the comfort of knowing that the cheap copies now issued are as correct as the most costly church Bible; but we should never purchase or give away a Bible without misgivings, if we had no better guarantee than private enterprise and commercial competition. Tradesmen, however respectable, selling only a comparatively small number of copies, could not afford the immense cost necessary to secure such a high degree of accuracy and uniformity as we now enjoy: while others, who were not conscientious, would consider only how they might sell their wares with as little outlay upon them as possible, and would not withhold damaged goods if they could find a market for them.

IRISH ROMANIST EMIGRANTS IN AMERICA.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

MR. O'Connell frequently, at Repeal meetings, boasts of addresses and contributions from Irish Romanist emigrants in the United States, who seem to be a very good loss for Ireland, but a very bad gain for America; for though they are a lively, warm-hearted, and hard-working race of men, yet they are constantly getting into broils, and where collected in considerable numbers are a terror to their peaceable neighbours.

But are we not guilty concerning them? What man cares for their souls? When they expatriate themselves, they usually fall under the dominion of some bigoted Romanist priest, and are, for the most part, inaccessible to Protestant influence. But should not some effort be made in America, in those places where many Irish Romanists are collected, to address them in the native Irish tongue, the accents of which are dear to them, and which they doubtless continue, to a great extent, to use in their intercourse with each other. Could not some of our Societies for promoting the Scriptural education and religious instruction of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, turn their attention to those of them who have quitted their own shores, and settled in foreign lands, and by means of the language of their childhood, seek religious access to their hearts? Upon the rail-roads, and other public works in the United States, and in some of the chief towns, there are many Irishmen thus situated, and I doubt not that pious and zealous Protestants in those places include them in their benevolent intentions and projects, though with little opportunity of making much impression upon them: but if there were sent out to them the word of God in their aboriginal tongue and character, and pious, affectionate teachers who could read and explain it to them, might we not hope for an especial blessing upon such a labour of Christian love?

PHIL-HIBERNICUS.

*** We fear that the Societies for promoting religious instruction in Ireland could not take up this matter, were it only that their resources will not allow of it; but in order to make so interesting an experiment, we could almost promise that if any friend will make us acquainted with a teacher,