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
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Would any set of men in the use of their own means have disregarded considerations so obviously expedient! Nothing but charity, reckless and blind, could do it; yea, charity bent on some ambitious and useless display of itself. The men that have done this, are men that I highly respect, that I love and confide in as truly as I ever can in any, but I have set out to speak my mind on what I esteem to be as important a subject as any that can occupy the attention of the public. | Would any set of men in the use of their own means have disregarded considerations so obviously expedient! Nothing but charity, reckless and blind, could do it; yea, charity bent on some ambitious and useless display of itself. The men that have done this, are men that I highly respect, that I love and confide in as truly as I ever can in any, but I have set out to speak my mind on what I esteem to be as important a subject as any that can occupy the attention of the public. | ||
The following assertions, I consider, carry in themselves the proof of their truth | ==The following assertions, I consider, carry in themselves the proof of their truth== | ||
1st. I say these societies and all they do are a tax on the honest industry of men engaged in the book business. They are wrong in principle; and I say, as they are managed, they do not make books cheap, nor can they make them so. Somebody pays more for them than would be paid if they were produced in the regular way of the trade. I defy any one to show this is not the fact. | 1st. I say these societies and all they do are a tax on the honest industry of men engaged in the book business. They are wrong in principle; and I say, as they are managed, they do not make books cheap, nor can they make them so. Somebody pays more for them than would be paid if they were produced in the regular way of the trade. I defy any one to show this is not the fact. | ||