An appeal to the Christian public, on the evil and impolicy of the Church engaging in merchandise and setting forth the wrong done to booksellers, and the extravagance, inutility, and evil-working of charity publication societies: Difference between revisions

==The following propositions and statements are considered incontrovertible==

1st. That it is wrong in any case for charity to undertake a work which there is a sufficient motive for labour to perform. That its only legitimate sphere is in doing what would not be done if she let it alone. That all charity publication societies, tried by this rule, must fall to the ground. That, however useful they might have been at first, they are no longer so; but are wronging men in the same line of business, and doing a work with more expense to the public, than it would cost to do it in any other way. It does not help the case at all, that reasonable prices are charged for the products of these societies. When this is the case, the buyer and charity both give certain prices for a book, which put together, make it cost more than it would if produced by private labour and capital, and that by all charity has paid in the case. This single illustration shows that it can never be consistent with public economy to employ charity in this way. I admit, indeed, that charity may properly be employed in circulating religious books; and even if the Tract Society had confined itself to publishing tracts, as these are matters to be given away, and require much particularity of attention in producing them, there would have been no ground of complaint; but this and other societies have departed from their design and attempted to do everything. They have so trumpeted their usefulness, that good people, not considering or understanding what they were doing and its effects, have given them money freely to work with. Thus they have advanced, till they have become a monstrous expense to the public, and are working the ruin of thousands, connected with the trade, who would do all this work cheaper, provided charity would do what it now does to circulate the books. Take the interest of the money that the Tract Society has invested in real estate and otherwise, and that alone would meet the expense of circulating more books than the society now does, and the church be saved all expense for agents and colporteurs. Can sensible men look at facts like these, and feel that there is any propriety in continuing such an institution?

2nd. This and similar institutions are doing more harm in their tendency to discourage the higher grades of authorship, insacral literature, than any good they can accomplish. If an author will write a light work, fiction, a saleable book, a bitter sectarian book, he may find some charity that will publish it and pay him something for it: but no great or catholic work will they touch; and they create and feed distaste for reading such works; they impoverish regular publisher, and dishearten them about undertaking such works. If a clergyman would publish a volume of discourses, or any work of great learning, he would not think of going to these societies to publish it, and they would not take it if he gave it to them. And yet no mind can estimate the influence for good of such productions as are worthy to live. They are the only living links that connect the spirits of one age with another, and keep men in the style of men. What should we have been, if the last age had left us nothing but such issues as come from these societies? The dilutions would have sickened us, and kept us children to the last. We should have had but dribbles of knowledge, and we might as well have had a library of chips, and studied how they were struck out, whether with one or two blows. I consider the religious authorship of this time killed by clarity, I mean such authorship as will do any good in coming time. The only bait held out is to write to please children or sects, and there are so many hirelings that have capacity for these things,that they swarm upon us in leaves; and a pity it is that they could not be turned to enriching the earth as other leaves are. We could then see some use in this creation of charity. I do not mean to say that respectable books are not written for them; but that they publish a great deal of trash, and that they melt up almost as many sets of stereotype plates in a year, as they make new ones, and thus they go on, wasting the charity of the Church in time, paper, printing, and stereotyping freshworks to share the same fate. Is there any farce like this farce? Would any of these societies have published the works of Presidents Edwards and Dwight? No. And yet their works have done more for mind and religion than all the books they ever have or will publish; and so of many other works that might be named; yet these societies are called about the only agents of good we have in these times; they do anything to raise funds, on the plea of utility; send their traveling agents over the land for this purpose, who get plenty of money, because it is imagined they are doing a good work, when it is only a work of superfluity they do, and this at the expense of men who would do it quite as cheaply, yea, more cheaply, without one cent’s charge to the public. When will men see things as they are? Shame on the inconsideration of those who, if they be honest, must be deluded in preying thus on the pious charity of the public! I have no doubt of the well-meaning of the persons concerned in these efforts, but I have as little doubt of their utter inutility.