apers in the field are many, and the
harvest is not what it was.

Active and fiery in body and soul, Mr. John Childs, at a somewhat later
period, with the sympathy and advocacy of Mr. Joseph Hume and other
members of Parliament, and aided to a large extent by Lord Brougham,
succeeded in procuring the appointment of a Committee of the House of
Commons to inquire into the existing King's Printers' Patent for printing
Bibles and Acts of Parliament, the period for the renewal of which was
near at hand. The principle upon which the patent was originally granted
appeared to be _correctness secured only by protection_--a fallacy which
the voluminous evidence of the Committee most completely exposed. The
late Alderman Besley, a typefounder, and a great friend of John Childs,
as well as Robert Childs, practical printers, gave conclusive evidence on
this head, and the result was that, although the patent was renewed for
thirty years, instead of sixty as before, the Scriptures were sold to the
public at a greatly reduced price, and the trade in Bibles, though
nominally protected, has ever since been practically free.

Nor did Mr. Childs' labours end here. In Scotland the right of printing
Bibles had been granted exclusively to a company of private persons,
Blaire and Bruce, neither of whom had any practical knowledge of the art
of printing, or took any interest in the different editions of the Bible.
The same men also had the supplying all the public revenue offices of
Government with stationery, by which means they enjoyed an annual profit
of more than 6,000 pounds a year. When the Government, in an economical
mood, ordered them to relinquish the latter contract, not only were they
compensated for the loss, but were continued in their vested rights as
regards Bible-printing. In Scotland there was no one to interfere with
their rights. In England patents had been given not only to the firm of
Messrs. Strahan, Eyre and Spottiswoode, but to each of the two
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Up to 1821 the Bibles of the
English monopolists came freely into Scotland, but then a prohibition,
supported by decisions in the Court of Sessions and the House of Lords,
was obtained. In 1824 Dr. Adam Thompson, of Coldstream, and three
ministers were summoned to answer for the high crime and misdemeanour of
having, as directors of Bible societies, delivered copies of an edition
of Scriptures which had been printed in England, but whi