ion of knowledge should be obstructed
with unnecessary difficulties, and the valuable hours of thousands
thrown away.

21. Therefore, as he that buys the copy of a book, buys it under this
condition, that it is liable to be confuted, if it is false, however his
property may be affected by such a confutation; so he buys it, likewise,
liable to be abridged, if it be tedious, however his property may suffer
by the abridgment.

22. To abridge a book, therefore, is no violation of the right of the
proprietor, because to be subject to the hazard of an abridgment was an
original condition of the property.

23. Thus we see the right of abridging authors established both by
reason and the customs of trade. But, perhaps, the necessity of this
practice may appear more evident, from a consideration of the
consequences that must probably follow from the prohibition of it.

24. If abridgments be condemned, as injurious to the proprietor of the
copy, where will this argument end? Must not confutations be, likewise,
prohibited for the same reason? Or, in writings of entertainment, will
not criticisms, at least, be entirely suppressed, as equally hurtful to
the proprietor, and certainly not more necessary to the publick?

25. Will not authors, who write for pay, and who are rewarded, commonly,
according to the bulk of their work, be tempted to fill their works with
superfluities and digressions, when the dread of an abridgment is taken
away, as doubtless more negligences would be committed, and more
falsehoods published, if men were not restrained by the fear of censure
and confutation?

26. How many useful works will the busy, the indolent, and the less
wealthy part of mankind be deprived of! How few will read or purchase
forty-four large volumes of the transactions of the royal society,
which, in abridgment, are generally read, to the great improvement of
philosophy!

27. How must general systems of sciences be written, which are nothing
more than epitomes of those authors who have written on particular
branches, and those works are made less necessary by such collections!
Can he that destroys the profit of many copies be less criminal than he
that lessens the sale of one?

28. Even to confute an erroneous book will become more difficult, since
it has always been a custom to abridge the author whose assertions are
examined, and, sometimes, to transcribe all the essential parts of his
book. Must an inquirer after truth be deb