'Wealth of Nations' (2 vols.) had fourteen issues; Collins' novels,
1368.

'No worse than in other libraries,' it may be said; 'knowledge is at a
discount: sensation at a premium everywhere!' Perfectly true; but are
people to be taxed to give facilities for this? Novel reading in
moderation is good: the endowment of novel reading by the rates is
bad--that is our contention. And when it is remembered that any book
requiring serious study cannot be galloped through, like a novel, in the
week or fourteen days allowed for use, it becomes at once evident that
this gratuitous lending system is only adapted for the circulation of
sensation, and not for the acquirement of real knowledge. And this is
the sort of thing people allow themselves to be rated and taxed for!
This is progressive legislation, and its opponents are backward and
illiberal!

Free Libraries are typical examples of the compulsory cooperation
everywhere gaining ground in this country. Like all State socialism they
are the negation of that liberty which is the goal of human progress.
Every successful opposition to them is therefore a stroke for human
advancement. This mendacious appeal to the numerical majority to force a
demoralising and pauperising institution upon the minority, is an
attempt to revive, in municipal legislation, a form of coercion we have
outgrown in religious matters. At the present time there is a majority
of Protestants in this country who, if they wished, could use their
numerical strength to compel forced subscription from a minority of
Catholics, for the support of those religious institutions which are
regarded by their advocates as of quite equal importance to a Free
Library. Yet this is not done; and why? Because in matters of religion
we have learnt that liberty is better than force. In political and
social questions this terrible lesson has yet to be learned. We deceive
ourselves when we imagine that the struggle for personal liberty is
over--probably the fiercest part has yet to arise. The tyranny of the
few over the many is past, that of the many over the few is to come. The
temptation for power--whether of one man or a million men--to take the
short cut, and attempt by recourse to a forcing process to produce that
which can only come as the result of the slow and steady growth of ages
of free action, is so great that probably centuries will elapse before
experience will have made men proof against it. But, however long the
con