NOTES:

1. The whole of the subsequent details relate to the first edition of this work.

2. These details vary with different books and different publishers; those given in the text are believed to substantially correct, and are applicable to works like the present.

3. It is now understood that the use of spies has been given up; and it is also known that the system of underselling is again privately resorted to by many, so that the injury arising from this arbitrary system, pursued by the great booksellers, affects only, or most severely, those whose adherence to an extorted promise most deserves respect. Note to the second edition.

4 The monopoly cases. Nos. 1. 2. and 3. of those published by Mr Pickering, should be consulted upon this point; and, as the public will be better able to form a judgement by hearing the other side of the question, it is to be hoped the Chairman of the Committee (Mr Richardson) will publish those regulations respecting the trade, a copy of which. Mr Pickering states, is refused by the Committee even to those who sign them.

5. At the moment when this opinion as to the necessity for a new review was passing through the press. I was informed that the elements of such an undertaking were already organized.

6. I have been suggested to me, that the doctrines maintained in this chapter may subject the present volume to the opposition of that combination which it has opposed. I do not entertain that opinion; and for this reason, that the booksellers are too shrewd a class to supply such an admirable passport to publicity as their opposition would prove to be if generally suspected. But should my readers take a different view of the question, they can easily assist in remedying the evil, by each mentioning the existence of this little volume to two of his friends.

{I was wrong in this conjecture; all booksellers are not so shrewd as I had imagined, for some did refuse to sell this volume; consequently others sold a larger number of copies.

In the preface to the second edition, at the commencement of this volume, the reader will find some further observation on the effect of the booksellers' combination.}