Invention of printing—Effects of that art—A daily newspaper—Provincial newspapers—News-writing of former periods—Changes in the character of newspapers—Steam conveyance—Electric telegraph—Organization of a London newspaper-office—The printing-machine—The paper-machine—Bookbinding—Paper-duty.

The art of printing offers one of the readiest and most forcible illustrations of the advantages that have been bestowed upon the world by scientific discovery and by mechanical power. Although there is, happily, little occasion now to combat any wide-spread hostility to machinery, the argument for its use derived from printing may be very briefly stated.

It is nearly four hundred years since the art of printing books was invented. Before that time all books were written by the hand. There were many persons employed to copy out books, but they were very dear, although the copiers had small wages. A Bible was sold for thirty pounds in the money of that day, which was equal to a great deal more of our money. Of course, very few people had Bibles or any other books. A mode was invented of imitating the written books by cutting the letters on wood, and taking off copies from the wooden blocks by rubbing the sheet on the back. Soon after, the idea was carried farther by casting metal types or letters, which could be arranged in words, and sentences, and pages, and volumes; and then a machine, called a printing-press, upon the principle of a screw, was made to stamp impressions of these types so arranged. There was an end, then, at once to the trade of the pen-and-ink copiers; because the copiers in types, who could press off several hundred books while the writers were producing one, drove them out of the market. A single printer could do the work of at least two hundred writers. At first sight this seems a hardship, for a hundred and ninety-nine people might have been, and probably were, thrown out of their accustomed employment. But what was the consequence in a year or two? Where one written book was sold, a thousand printed books were required. The old books were multiplied in all countries, and new books were composed by men of talent and learning, because they could then find numerous readers. The printing press did the work more neatly and more correctly than the writer, and it did it infinitely cheaper. What then? The writers of books had to turn their hands to some other trade, it is true; but type-founders, paper-makers, printers, and bookbinders, were set to work, by the new art or machine, to at least a hundred times greater number of persons than the old way of making books employed.

But there is a far more important mode of viewing this matter than any consideration resulting out of the increased employment that the art of printing unquestionably has created. If printing, which is a cheap and a rapid process, could by possibility be superseded by writing, which is an expensive and a slow operation, no book, no newspaper, could be produced for the use of the people. Knowledge, upon which every hope of bettering their condition must ultimately rest, would again become the property of a very few; and mankind would lose the greater part of that power which constitutes the essential difference between civilization and barbarism. The art of printing has gone on more and more adapting itself to the increase of our population, during the three centuries and a half in which it has been exercised in this country. Herein consists, perhaps, one of the mightiest differences between our condition and that of every generation which has preceded us. Through that art, no idea can now perish. Through that art, knowledge is fast becoming the common possession of all. Through that art, what the people have gained in the past is secured for the future. It has established the empire of public opinion.

There is possibly no more striking example of the manifold combinations of mental labour, of scientific power, of mechanical invention, and of the use of rapid means of communication, than the forces now called into action for the issue of a London daily newspaper. Nor is there any production of literary industry which more pointedly illustrates the distinctive qualities of printing as compared with writing—the rapidity, the cheapness, and the general diffusion. Let us endeavour to supply a rapid sketch of the wonderful organization that is required to produce this great necessary of modern society.

The essential characteristic of a newspaper is news. It may be philosophical, or critical, or imaginative—it may pour forth treasures of learning or eloquence, to live but a few hours and then be too readily forgotten—but no amount of ability will give it currency if it be deficient in news. It is the imperative demand for news, embracing every movement of human life in every class and every country, that sets in action the wondrous organization that produces a daily newspaper. Its ministers of communication are almost ubiquitous. They are in the Bow-street police-office, watching the effrontery of the detected felon;—they are on the heights of Inkermann, to stir our hearts "as with a trumpet," and fill our eyes with tears as they tell us

They are at the city feast, where all is blandishment and turtle;—they are at the coroner's inquest upon a street-starved pauper. They furnish news to all the world; and they receive news from all the world.

But there are similar organizations going forward through the country. The increase in number of the provincial papers, and their efforts to procure intelligence, are equally remarkable.

The London editors have the not very easy task of glancing over the five hundred local papers of the United Kingdom. These are, in ordinary cases, the vehicles from which they obtain their home intelligence. If any local matter of general interest is to be specially attended to, their own correspondent, or their own reporter, furnishes the details. Some unexpected event puts, occasionally, the electric telegraph in motion, to tell the world of London, on Saturday morning, what occurred at Liverpool on Friday night; and the Liverpool merchant reads on the Exchange at noon of that Saturday, in the newspaper printed at a distance of two hundred miles, some notice of an arrival in his own port during the hours when he was sleeping. Even the state of the weather at different parts of the kingdom is thus daily transmitted. But the London editors, and some of the provincial, have to look out for news at a greater distance than is comprised in our "nook-shotten isle of Albion." They have to search the papers of every land and every people—whether written in English, French, German, Italian, Greek, or Turkish. Of course translators are always at hand. For the London daily papers the electric telegraph is "throwing its shadows" before the authentic heralds of "coming events." For them is the steamer bringing the special correspondence from the gold-diggings in Australia, and from the camp in the Crimea. For them do the people's representatives make long speeches to empty benches, secure that there is a medium of communication for unnumbered eyes, although the ears be shut of those who listen not to the voice of the charmers. For them do great ministers go into obscure places, and, addressing an enthusiastic dinner-table, or a solemn corporation, speak to the world. For them does every discoverer of a private grievance claim public redress. For them is produced, in letters "to the editor," that great chaotic accumulation of fact and theory, of wisdom and folly, of calculation and impulse, whose atoms finally resolve themselves into a solid mass called public opinion.

The mental labours attendant upon the provincial newspapers are more narrowed. But they are nevertheless very important; and the extension of their functions by the enormous extension of the facilities for obtaining intelligence is equally striking. The old county papers, circulating steadily through the rural districts, and duly chronicling session and assize, markets and misdemeanours, have been stirred into activity by newspapers issuing from great commercial and manufacturing centres, which have arisen with the immense development of our industry. Liverpool had two papers in 1803,—it has now ten; Manchester, Birmingham, Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, which had each one at that period, have now each four. Many towns that had one paper at the beginning of the century have now two. There are about eighty provincial English papers now published in towns which had no journal at that period. Some belong to manufacturing districts which then contained a small population; such as Bolton, Bradford, Hanley, Kidderminster, Macclesfield, Stockport, Sunderland, Wakefield, Wolverhampton. Others, to places of fashion and luxury which have grown up out of changes of society, such as Brighton and Cheltenham. Others, to new local centres, which, through the great modern facilities of communication, can circulate their weekly sheets at little expense, instead of sending their own messengers throughout the small towns and villages. The local changes in these vehicles of intelligence are strikingly connected with the other great social changes which have been noticed in this volume. It is satisfactory to know that the provincial press is no imperfect representative of an age of progress.

The history of news-writing and news-publishing is a mirror of many of the changes in social necessities and conveniences. In 1625, Ben Jonson's play of 'The Staple of News' exhibited a countrywoman going to an office of news, and saying to the manager, who sits in state with his registers and examiners,—

This was written news. In London, before a newspaper existed, there were private gazetteers, who made a living by picking up scraps of intelligence in taverns and barbers' shops. This class of persons continued even when there were newspapers; for the news-letter, as it was called, is thus described in the first number of the 'Evening Post,' issued in 1709:—"There must be 3l. or 4l. per ann. paid by those gentlemen that are out of town for written news, which is so far generally from having any probability or matter of fact in it, that it is frequently stuffed up with a 'We hear,' or 'An eminent Jew merchant has received a letter.'" The same 'Evening Post' adds,—"We read more of our own affairs in the Dutch papers than in any of our own." Sir Roger L'Estrange, who published 'The Intelligencer,' with privilege, in 1663, says that he shall publish once a week, "to be published every Thursday, and finished upon the Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday entire for the printing it off." The first advertisement in an English paper appeared in 1649.

At the beginning of the present century the public used to look with wonder upon their "folio of four pages," and contrast it with the scanty chronicles of the days of Charles II. and Anne. We of the present time, in the same way, contrast our newspapers with the meagre records of the beginning of the century. The essential difference has been produced by steam navigation, by railways, by the extension of the post, dependent upon both applications of steam, and by the electric telegraph. The same scientific forces and administrative organization that bring the written news from every region of the earth, re-convey the printed news to every region. It is sufficient to glance at the lists of foreign mails, and the low rates of postage from the United Kingdom, to see the enormous extent of that intercourse which enables our government, by the packet service, to transmit a letter for sixpence to the British West Indies, to Hong-kong to our North American colonies, to Belgium; to nearly all the German States, by an uniform British and foreign rate, for eightpence; to France, Algeria, Spain, and Portugal, for ten pence; to the Italian States for a trifle more; to Turkey in Europe for one shilling and five pence; and to India for one shilling and ten pence. With this certain and rapid intercourse, it is not likely that the least enterprising newspaper editor would have to repeat the doubt of L'Estrange, who says, "Once a week may do the business; yet if I shall find, when my hand is in, and after the planting and securing my correspondents, that the matter will fairly furnish more, I shall keep myself free to double at pleasure."

It is the external communication so wonderful in our own times, we repeat, which has chiefly changed the character of our newspapers. When we read in a London daily paper the one line,—"The Overland Mail—by electric telegraph,"—we have two facts of the highest significance. "The Overland Mail" would appear, of itself, a marvel great enough for one age. The Overland Mail has brought London within a month of Bombay. It has joined India most effectually to England for all commercial and state purposes. It gives us the news of India, by the aid of the electric telegraph, in as little time as we ordinarily received news from Vienna at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The steamer and the electric telegraph made the blood of England beat quicker in every heart, when our newspapers recorded, on the 13th of November, the most sanguinary and heroic battle of modern times, fought in the Crimea only a week previous. When Marlborough was setting out for his campaign of 1709, and so many political, if not patriotic, hopes, were fixed upon the probable issue, 'The Tatler,' then a newspaper, had the following paragraph:—"We learn from Brussels, by letters dated the 20th, that on the 14th, in the evening, the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene arrived at Courtray, with a design to proceed the day following to Lisle, in the neighbourhood of which city the confederate army was to arrive the same day." The account of the movement of the great allied generals was transmitted from Brussels six days after the movement had taken place, Courtray being only distant forty-six miles; and the important news from Brussels, of the 20th May, was published in London on the 28th, London being distant some two hundred and fifty miles. The distance from Balaclava to London is about three thousand miles.

The function of a great newspaper, in connexion with the positions of armies and the events of siege and battle, is as different from the function of the journalist of fifty years ago, as the rapid firing of the soldier of the Alma with his MiniÉ rifle contrasts with the slow evolutions of the old hand-gunner. In the war with Russia the presence of the newspaper reporter gives a new feature, strikingly characteristic of our times and our country. It is necessary to have the earliest and the most detailed accounts of this eventful contest; for the people, one and all, understand that they are deeply interested in its issue, and that, if their country fails to assert the superiority of freedom and intelligence over slavery and barbarism, the material prosperity of that country can be of no long duration. Wisely, therefore, did the London daily papers each send their active, fearless, and eloquent correspondents, to endure some of the hardships of the march and the bivouac—to observe the battle-field, not secure from its dangers—to write of victories, surrounded by the dead and dying—to be the historians of a day, and thus to furnish the best materials for all future historians. The life of a London reporter, although a life of constant labour, is generally accompanied by much ease and comfort. The senate does not acknowledge his presence; but it provides the "stranger" with the best seat. He takes his place at the public dinner as an honoured guest—one whose absence would be more regretted than that of the city's mayor or the borough's patron. But in a campaign, where his duties are new, he must fight his way through every difficulty. His function is recognised in an age when it would be useless to suppress intelligence, even if it were possible. He finds a ready mess in every tent where a scanty meal is set out; he stands by the side of the commander, and gazes with him upon "the currents of the heady fight." How he wears after two months of unusual service we have some slight notion, when we read, in a letter to 'The Times' of November 30, that the writer had seen an officer who had lately parted from the special correspondent. "The chances of war had deprived him of nearly all his garments; and when last seen he was walking about in a rifleman's jacket, much too small for his portly person; and his nether garments had been converted into breeches by a constant scrambling amongst rocks and briers." Let us not forget our obligations to the men who, in peril and suffering, have made heroic action more familiar to us; and have contributed no mean part in giving a moral impulse to our country, as essential to future safety and honour as the material wealth which has made us a people amongst the foremost of the earth.

What the carrier-pigeon was in the conveyance of intelligence in the middle ages, and even within a few years, the electric telegraph is in the present day. The carrier-pigeon went out from a besieged castle, to ask for succour, in eastern countries, five centuries ago. The electric telegraph, land and submarine, brings the tidings of slaughter and sickness from Sebastopol, and England and France send instant reinforcements. The carrier-pigeon, in the last century, was despatched by the merchants of the English factory, from Scanderoon to Aleppo, to announce the arrival of the company's ships. The electric telegraph communicates to London the arrival of an Australian packet at Southampton. Within the last ten years one of the annual expenses of a London newspaper was 1800l. for pigeon expresses. The pigeons have lost their employment. The price of stocks and shares in 'Change-alley is known every quarter of an hour upon the exchanges of our great commercial marts; and the closing price of the French funds is in type before midnight at our daily newspaper-offices. The carrier-pigeon travelled sixty miles an hour. The time which it takes to transmit a message by the electric telegraph is inappreciable. The newspapers of the United States employ the electric telegraph far more extensively than our English papers; for the distances between one State and one city and another State and another city are so great, that steam travelling would not accomplish the object of communication with sufficient rapidity. The density of our population renders the employment of the telegraph less necessary for the ordinary transmission of intelligence. But private curiosity, in a time of great public interest, steps in; and one of the most remarkable exhibitions of our provincial towns at the time at which we are writing—when an agonizing anxiety for the fortunes of our heroic defenders in the Black Sea is the chief thought of millions—is the crowd about the telegraph-office to know something more than the morning paper, brought by railway speed, can furnish to this universal excitement. In America the distance between Quebec and New Orleans, a distance of three thousand miles, is overleaped by the electric telegraph. Two lines, each two thousand miles long, connect New York with New Orleans; and over this space messages are transmitted, and answers received, in three hours. When we read long paragraphs in the London morning papers, received by electric telegraph after midnight from Paris, we wonder how this is accomplished. Eighteen words, which are equal to about two newspaper lines, are transmitted every minute; and the full message from Dover, carefully transcribed, is in the hands of the newspaper editor in half an hour.

To carry out all this scientific conquest of time and space, by the most perfect mental and mechanical arrangements in the newspaper-office itself, appears, at first sight, almost as great a wonder as the rapid communication. Nothing but the most perfect organization of the division of labour could accomplish the feat.

There is, after midnight, in the office of a morning paper, a constant necessity for adapting the labour of every quarter of an hour to the requirements of the instant time. Much of the newspaper matter may have been in type in the evening; some portion may be quite ready for printing off. But new necessities may derange much of this preparation. Say that the Parliament is sitting. The reporters are in the gallery at the meeting of the House, and each arrives at the office with his assigned portion of the debate. A heavy night is not expected, and the early reporters write with comparative fulness. Suddenly an unexpected turn is given to the proceedings. A great debate springs up, out of a ministerial statement or an opposition objection. Then come reply and rejoinder. Column after column is poured in. Smaller matters must give way to greater. The intelligence that will keep is put aside for the information that is pressing. The debate is prolonged till one or two o'clock, and the paper is approaching its completion. But an electric telegraph communication has arrived—perhaps an important express. Away goes more news. Advertisements, law reports, police reports, correspondence—all retire into obscurity for one day. There is plenty of manipulating power in the great body of compositors to effect these changes. But not in any department is there any apparent bustle. Nor is there any neglect in the labours that wait upon the work of the compositors. One word is not put for another. The readers are as vigilant to correct every error—to have no false spelling and no inaccurate punctuation—as if they were bestowing their vigilance upon a book to be published next season. The reporters are as careful to make no slips which would indicate a want of knowledge, as if they were calmly writing in their libraries after breakfast. The one-presiding mind of the editor is watchful over all. At four or five o'clock the morning paper goes to press.

But there are many hundred copies to be despatched by the morning mails. Manchester and Glasgow would be frightened from their propriety, if the daily London papers did not arrive at the accustomed hour. The London merchant, banker, lawyer, would go unwillingly to his morning labour, if he had not had one passing glance at the division in the House, the state of the money-market, the last foreign intelligence. Late as the paper may have been in its mental completion, Manchester, Glasgow, and London will not be kept without that illumination which has become almost as necessary as sunlight. Machinery has been created by the demand, to carry the demand farther than the warmest imagination could have anticipated. In 1814, Koenig, a German, erected the first printing-machine at the "Times Office," and produced eighteen hundred impressions an hour on one side. The machine superseded the duplicates of the type which were once necessary, painfully and laboriously to keep up a small supply, worked by men, with relays, at the rate of five hundred an hour. In 1818 Edward Cowper produced his cylinder-machine, which effected a revolution in the commerce of books; and, in connexion with the paper-machine, enabled the principle of cheapness to contend against an impolitic and oppressive tax. This is still the machine in general use for many newspapers and much book-printing. We will briefly describe the operation of printing a sheet of paper on both sides by this instrument.

Upon the solid steel table at each end of the machine lie the pages which print one side of the sheet. At the top of the machine, where the laying-on boy stands, is a heap of wet paper. The signal being given by the director of the work, the laying-on boy turns a small handle, and the moving-power of the strap connected with a steam-engine is immediately communicated. Some ten or twenty spoiled sheets are first passed over the types to remove any dirt or moisture. If the director is satisfied, the boy begins to lay on the white paper. He places the sheet upon a flat table before him, with its edge ready to be seized by the apparatus for conveying it upon the drum. At the first movement of the great wheel, the inking-apparatus at each end has been set in motion. The steel cylinder attached to the reservoir of ink has begun slowly to move,—the "doctor," or more properly "ductor," has risen to touch that cylinder for an instant, and thus receive a supply of ink,—the inking-table has passed under the "doctor" and carried off that supply,—and the distributing-rollers have spread it equally over the surface of the table. This surface, having passed under the inking-rollers, communicates the supply to them; and they in turn impart it to the form which is to be printed. All these beautiful operations are accomplished in the sixteenth part of a minute, by the travelling backward and forward of the carriage or table upon which the form rests. Each roller revolves upon an axis which is fixed. At the moment when the form at the back of the machine is passing under the inking-roller, the sheet, which the boy has carefully laid upon the table before him, is caught in the web-roller and conveyed to the endless bands or tapes which pass it over the first impressing cylinder. It is here seized tightly by the bands, which fall between the pages and on the outer margin. The moment after the sheet is seized upon the first cylinder, the form passes under that cylinder, and the paper being brought in contact with it receives an impression on one side. To give the impression on the other side the sheet is to be turned over, and this is effected by the two drums in the centre of the machine. The endless tapes never lose their grasp of the sheet, although they allow it to be reversed. While the impression has been given by the first cylinder, the second form of types at the other end of the table has been inked. The drums have conveyed the sheet during this inking upon the second cylinder; it is brought in contact with the types, and the operation is complete.

Koenig's machine, which was a very complicated instrument, was supplanted at the 'Times' office by a modification of Applegath's and Cowper's machine, which printed four thousand sheets an hour on one side. But that has been superseded by a vertical machine, which prints ten thousand copies an hour, on one side. The separate columns of type are fixed on a large type-drum, two hundred inches in circumference. The drum is surrounded by eight impressing cylinders; the ink is applied to the surface of the type by rollers which work between these cylinders; and the sheets are laid on upon eight tables, (h, h, h,) which, by a most ingenious mechanism, carry each sheet to a point where its position is suddenly changed, and it is impressed between the type and the cylinder; the paper being then suspended by tapes, from which it is released as it passes forward, to be laid upon the heap which will be scattered, in a few hours, to every corner of the kingdom.

The printing machines, which have been in full operation for little more than twenty years, have called into action an amount of employment which was almost wholly unknown when knowledge was for the few. Paper-makers, type-founders, wood-engravers, bookbinders, booksellers, have been raised up by this extension of the art of printing, in numbers which far exceed those of any former period.

But the printing machine would have worked feebly and imperfectly without the paper machine. That most complete invention has not only cheapened paper itself, but it has cheapened the subsequent operations of printing, in a remarkable degree. It has enabled one revolution of the cylinder of the printing machine to produce four sheets instead of one, or a surface of print equal to four sheets. When paper was altogether made by hand, the usual paper for books was called demy; and a sheet of demy produced sixteen octavo pages of a book. The paper could not have been economically made larger by hand. A sheet of paper equal to four sheets of demy is now worked at the newspaper machine; and sixty-four pages of an octavo book might be so worked, if it were needful for cheapening production. Double demy is constantly worked for books. Thus, one economical arrangement of science produces another contrivance; and machines in one direction combine with machines having a different object, to produce legitimate cheapness, injurious to no one, but beneficial to all.

Let us attempt to convey a notion of the beautiful operations of the paper-machine.

In the whole range of machinery, there is, perhaps, no series of contrivances which so forcibly address themselves to the senses. There is nothing mysterious in the operation; we at once see the beginning and the end of it. At one extremity of the long range of wheels and cylinders we are shown a stream of pulp, not thicker than milk and water, flowing over a moving plane; at the other extremity the same stream has not only become perfectly solid, but is wound upon a reel in the form of hard and smooth paper. This is, at first sight, as miraculous as any of the fancies of an Arabian tale. Aladdin's wonderful lamp, by which a palace was built in a night, did not in truth produce more extraordinary effects than science has done with the paper-machine.

At one extremity of the machine is a chest, full of stuff or pulp. We mount the steps by its side, and see a long beam rolling incessantly round this capacious vessel, and thus keeping the fibres of linen, which look like snow flakes, perpetually moving, and consequently equally suspended, in the water. At the bottom of the chest, and above the vat, there is a cock through which we observe a continuous stream of pulp flowing into the vat; which is, always, therefore, filled to a certain height. From the upper to the lower part of this vat a portion of the pulp flows upon a narrow wire frame, which constantly jumps up and down with a noise resembling a cherry-clack. Having passed through the sifter, the pulp flows still onward to a ledge, over which it falls in a regular stream, like a sheet of water over a smooth dam. Here we see it caught upon a plane, which presents an uninterrupted surface of five or six feet, upon which the pulp seems evenly spread, as a napkin upon a table. A more accurate inspection shows us that this plane is constantly moving onwards with a gradual pace; that it has also a shaking motion from side to side; and that it is perforated all over with little holes—in fact, that it is an endless web of the finest wire. If we touch the pulp at the end of the plane, upon which it first descends, we find it fluid; if we draw the finger over its edge at the other end, we perceive that it is still soft—not so hard, perhaps, as wet blotting-paper,—but so completely formed, that the touch will leave a hole, which we may trace forward till the paper is perfectly made. The pulp does not flow over the sides of the plane, we observe, because a strap, on each side, constantly moving and passing upon its edges, regulates the width. After we pass the wheels upon which these straps terminate, we perceive that the paper is sufficiently formed not to require any further boundary to define its size;—the pulp has ceased to be fluid. But it is yet tender and wet. The paper is not yet completely off the plane of wire; before it quits it, another roller, which is clothed with felt, and upon which a stream of cold water is constantly flowing subjects it to pressure. The paper has at length left what may be called the region of wire, and has entered that of cloth. A tight surface of flannel, or felt, is moving onwards with the same regular march as the web of wire. Like the wire, the felt is what is called endless,—that is, united at the extremities, as a jack-towel is. We see the sheet travelling up an inclined plane of this stretched flannel, which gradually absorbs its moisture. It is now seized between two rollers, which powerfully squeeze it. It goes travelling up another inclined plane of flannel, and then passes through a second pair of pressing-rollers. It has now left the region of cloth, and has entered that of heat. The paper, up to this point, is quite formed; but it is fragile and damp. It is in the state in which, if the machinery were to stop here, as it did upon its first invention, it would require (having been wound upon a reel) to be parted and dried as hand-made paper is. But in a few seconds more it is subjected to a process by which all this labour and time is saved. From the last pair of cloth-pressing rollers, the paper is received upon a small roller which is guided over the polished surface of a large heated cylinder. The soft pulp tissue now begins to smoke; but the heat is proportioned to its increasing power of resistance. From the first cylinder, or drum, it is received upon a second, considerably larger, and much hotter. As it rolls over this polished surface, we see all the roughness of its appearance, when in the cloth region, gradually vanishing. At length, having passed over a third cylinder, still hotter than the second, and having been subjected to the pressure of a blanket, which confines it on one side, while the cylinder smooths it on the other, it is caught upon the last roller, which hands it over to the reel. The last process of the machine is to cut the roll of paper into sheets.

In consequence of the cheaper production of the press, and the consequent extension of the demand for books, bookbinding has become a large manufacture, carried on with many scientific applications. We have rolling-machines, to make the book solid; cutting-machines, to supersede the hand-labour of the little instrument called a plough; embossing machines, to produce elaborate raised patterns on leather or cloth; embossing presses, to give the gilt ornament and lettering. These contrivances, and other similar inventions, have not only cheapened books, but have enabled the publisher to give them a permanent instead of a temporary cover, ornamental as well as useful. There are eleven thousand bookbinders now employed, of which one-third are females. The number employed has been quadrupled by these inventions. In 1830, the journeymen bookbinders of London opposed the introduction of the rolling-machine. Books were formerly beat with large hammers upon a stone, to give them solidity. The workmen were relieved from the drudgery of the beating-hammer by the easy operation of the rolling-machine. They soon discovered the weak foundation of their objection to an instrument which, in truth, had a tendency, above all other things, to elevate their trade, and to make that an art which in one division of it was a mere labour. If the painter were compelled to grind his own colours and make his own frames, he would no longer follow an art, but a trade; and he would receive the wages of a labourer instead of the wages of an artist, not only so far as related to the grinding and frame-making, but as affecting all his occupations, by the drudgery attending a portion of them.

The commerce of literature has been doubled in twenty years. But it would be scarcely too much to assert that the influence of the press, in forming public opinion, and causing it to operate upon legislation, has doubled almost every other employment. To that public opinion, chiefly so formed, we owe the successive removals of restrictions upon trade, which have carried forward our exports from thirty-six millions sterling in 1831 to ninety millions in 1853. To that public opinion we owe the abolition of prohibitive duties upon foreign produce, which has given us a far wider range of beneficial consumption. To that public opinion we owe the repeal of the oppressive excise duties upon salt, leather, candles, glass, bricks—which duties impeded production even more effectually than the extortions and tyrannies of the middle ages. Strange it is, that the power of the press, which has done so much for the removal of other fiscal impediments to industry, should have been able to effect so little for itself;—that the tax upon paper should still interfere with the commerce of literature, when general education has no longer to encounter any misgivings in the minds of those who govern an earnest and patriotic people. The difficulty of procuring the material of paper has become a serious impediment to the cheap diffusion of knowledge; and the paper-tax works in the same evil direction. There have been innumerable obstacles to the extension of knowledge since the days when books were written on the papyrus—obstacles equally raised up by despotic blindness and popular ignorance. But it is not fitting that either of such causes should still be in action in the days of the printing-machine.

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