whether cheap literature has destroyed | if they were sold at their publication the publication of new books, without in- price, would be 708,4981. 8s. 9d., and cluding reprints and pamphlets. We that of the new editions and reprints, take the four years from 1829 to 1832, as 231,218l. 15s. We believe, however, that computed by ourselves, from the London if we estimate the price at which the Catalogues; and the four years from 1839 entire impressions of both descriptions of to 1842, as computed by Mr. M'Culloch works actually sells at 4s. a volume, we in the last edition of his Commercial shall not be far from the mark; and if Dictionary:'so, the real value of the books annually produced will be 435,600l. a year."

NEW WORKS, 1829 to 1832.

But the most remarkable characteristic of the press of this country is its periodical literature. It might be asserted, without exaggeration, that the periodical works issued in Great Britain during one year comprise more sheets than all the books printed in Europe from the period of Gutenberg to the year 1500.

The number of weekly periodical works (not newspapers) issued in London on Saturday, May 4, 1844, was about sixty. Of these the weekly sale of the more important amounts to little less than annually. The greater number of these 300,000 copies, or about fifteen millions are devoted to the supply of persons who weekly upon their home reading. have only a very small sum to expend

ent of the sale of many of them in Of the weekly publications, independmonthly parts, we may fairly estimate

that the annual returns are little short of 100,000l.

The monthly issue of periodical literature from London is unequalled by any similar commercial operation in Europe. 227 monthly periodical works were sent out on the last day of May, 1844, to every corner of the United Kingdom, from Paternoster Row. There are also 38 periodical works published quarterly: making a total of 265.

lowing computations, which we have every reason to believe perfectly accu

Mr. M'Culloch adds: "From inquiries we have made with much care and labour, we find that, at an average of the four A bookseller, who has been many years ending with 1842, 2149 volumes of years conversant with the industry of the new works, and 755 volumes of new great literary hive of London on Magaeditions and reprints (exclusive of pam-zine-day, has favoured us with the folphlets and periodical publications), were annually published in Great Britain; and we have further ascertained that the publication price of the former was 8s. 9 d., and of the latter 8s. 2d. a volume. Hence, if we suppose the average impression of each work to have been 750 copies, it will be seen that the total value of the new works annually produced,

rate :

The periodical works sold on the last day of the month amount to 500,000 copies.

The amount of cash expended in the purchase of these 500,000 copies is 25,000%.

are 2000.

The annual returns of periodical works, according to our estimate, amount to 300,000l. Mr. McCulloch estimates them at 264,000l.

The parcels dispatched into the country, | What has multiplied them twenty-fold? of which very few remain over the day, Is it the contraction or the widening of the market-the exclusion or the diffusion of knowledge? The whole course of our literature has been that of a gradual and certain spread from the few to the many-from a luxury to a necessary-as much so as the spread of the cotton or the silk trade. Henry VIII. paid 124. 2 yard for a silk gown for Anne Boleyn-a sum equal to five guineas a yard of our day. Upon whom do the silk-mercers now rely upon the few Anne Boleyns or the thousands who can buy a s The gown at half-a-crown a yard? printing-machine has done for the enmerce of literature what the mule and the Jacquard-loom have done for the commerce of silk. It has made literature accessible to all.

The number of newspapers published in the United Kingdom, in the year 1843, the returns of which can be obtained with the greatest accuracy through the Stamp Office, was 447. The stamps consumed by them in that year were 60,592,001. Their proportions are as follows:

1843.

-:

79 London newspapers. 31,692,092 212 English provincial

8 Welsh

69 Scotch 79 Irish

447

17,058,056

339,500

5,027,589

6,474,764

60,592,001

The average price of these papers is, as near as may be, fivepence; so that the sum annually expended in newspapers is about 1,250,000l. The quantity of paper required for the annual supply of these newspapers is 121,184 reams, some of which paper is of an enormous size. In a petition to the pope in 1471, from Sweynheim and Pannartz, printers at Rome, they bitterly complain of the want of demand for their books, their stock amounting to 12,000 volumes; and they say, "You will admire how and where we could procure a sufficient quantity of paper, or even rags, for such a number of volumes." About 1200 reams of paper would have produced all the poor printers' stock. Such are the changes of four centuries.

BOOTY. [ADMIRALTY COURTS, p. 29.” BORDA'RII, one of the classes of agricultural occupiers of land mentioned in the Domesday Survey, and, with the exception of the villani, the largest. The origin of their name, and the exact na ture of their tenure, are doubtful. Coke (Inst. lib. i. § i. fol. 5 b, edit. 1628, calis them "boors holding a little house with some land of husbandry, bigger than a cottage." Nichols, in his 'Introduction to the History of Leicestershire,' p. xiv., considers them as cottagers, and that they took their name from living on the borders of a village or mater; but this is sufficiently refuted by Do day itself, where we find them not only mentioned generally among the agricul tural occupiers of land, but in one instance as "circa aulam manentes," dwelling near the manor-house; and even residing in some of the larger towns. In two quarters of the town of Huntingdon, at the time of forming the Survey, as well as in King Edward the Confessor's time. there were 116 burgesses, and subordnate to them 100 bordarii, who aided them in the payment of the geld or tax. (Domesd. Book. tom. i. fol. 203.) In Nor wich there were 420 bordarii: and 20 are mentioned as living in Thetford (Ibid. tom. ii. fol. 116 b, 173.)

Bishop Kennett states that, "The bor darii often mentioned in the Domesday Inquisition were distinct from the servi

and villani, and seem to be those of a less | case of children; in others the custom servile condition, who had a board or extends to brothers and other male colcottage with a small parcel of land lateral relations. The same custom also allowed to them, on condition they should governs the descent of copyhold land in supply the lord with poultry and eggs various manors. and other small provisions for his board and entertainment." (Gloss. Paroch. Antiq.) Such also is the interpretation given by Bloomfield in his History of Norfolk.' Brady affirms "they were drudges, and performed vile services, which were reserved by the lord upon a poor little house and a small parcel of land, and might perhaps be domestic works, such as grinding, threshing, drawing water, cutting wood, &c." (Pref. p. 56.)

66

Littleton. It has been said that by the custom of certain manors the lord had a right to lie with the bride of his teart holding in villenage, on the first night of her marriage; and that, for this reason, the youngest son was preferred to the eldest, as being more certainly the true son of the tenant. But this supposition is, on many grounds, less satisfactory than the other. Admitting the alled

reason, perhaps, for passing over the idest son, but why should the second and other sons have been also superseded in favour of their youngest brother? The legitimacy of the eldest son alone could have been doubted, and upon this hypothesis, either the second son would have been his father's heir, or all the sons except the eldest would have shared the inhersance. But the existence of this bartareas usage in England is altogether denied by many (1 Stephen, Comm. 199; 3 Kep. Real Prop. Commrs. p. 8); and even if the customary fine payable to the lord in certain manors (especially in the north of England) on the marriage of the son or daughter of his villein, be admitted to have been a composition of the lord's right of concubinage (see Du Carge. tit. "Marcheta ;" Co. Lit. 117 b, 140 a: Bract. lib. 2, § 26), it does not appear that such fines are more prevalent in those places where the custom of horough-English obtains, than in other parts of the country where there are different rules of descent. (Robins On Gavelkind, p. 387.)

cause of his younger age, may least of all his brethren helpe himself" (§ 211). When the state of society in the ancient English boroughs is considered, the reason assigned by Littleton will appear sufficient. The inhabitants supported themselves by trade; their property consisted chiefly of moveables; and their real estate was ordinarily confined to the houses in which they carried on their business, with, perhaps, a little land at-right of the lord, it would have been a tached. Such persons were rarely able to offer an independence to their children, but were satisfied to leave each son, as he grew up, to provide for himself by his own industry. To endow a son with a portion of his goods, and send him forth to seek his own fortunes, was all that a burgess thought necessary; and so constant was this practice, that the law considered the son of a burgess to be of age 'so soon as he knew how to count money truly, to measure cloths, and to carry on other business of his father's of the like nature" (Glanv. lib. 7, s. 9; Bracton, lib. 2, s. 37). In this condition of life, the youngest son would have the least chance of being provided for at his father's death, and it was, therefore, a rational custom to make provision for him out of the real estate. But as it might happen that the youngest son had been provided for, like his brothers, before the father's death, by the custom of most boroughs the father had a power of de vising his tenements by will. Such a power was unknown to the common law; for without the consent of his heir no man could leave any portion of his inheritance to a younger son, "because," says Glanville, "if this were permitted, it would frequently happen that the elder son would be disinherited, owing to the greater affection which parents often feel towards their younger children." And the freedom of testamentary devise, enjoyed under the custom of boroughEnglish, to the prejudice of heirs, was not fully conceded by the laws of England until the latter part of the seventeenth century. (12 Car. II. c. 24.)

The origin of the custom of boroughEnglish has, in later times (3 Modern Reports, Preface) been referred to another cause, instead of that assigned by

But whatever may have been the orga of the custom, it is no longer to be sup ported by any arguments in its favor. If land is to be inherited by one s alone, the eldest is undoubtedly the fittest heir: he grows up the first, and in case of his father's death succeeds at ore 13 his estate, fulfils the duties of a landown, and stands in loco parentis to his fathers younger children, while the successi a f the youngest son would always be lia to a long minority, during which the rest of the family would derive the benefit from the estate. It is also m unquestionable objection to the enstam that each son in succession may coreuve himself to be the heir, until he is deprived