If the business of Coster was continued uninterruptedly, and after his death carried on by his grand-children, we might naturally expect that some of the works which they printed could be produced, and that some record of their having practised such an art at Harlem would be in existence. The records of Harlem are however silent on the subject; no mention is made by any contemporary author, nor in any contemporary document, of Coster or his descendants as printers in that city; and no book printed by them has been discovered except by persons who decide upon the subject as if they were endowed with the faculty of intuitive discrimination. If Coster’s business had been suspended in consequence of the robbery, his customers, from all parts, who eagerly purchased the “new commodity,” must have been aware of the circumstance; and to suppose that it should not have been mentioned by some old writer, and that the claims of Coster should have lain dormant for a century and a half, exceeds my powers of belief. Where pretended truth can only be perceived by closing the eyes of reason I am content to remain ignorant; nor do I wish to trust myself to the unsafe bridge of conjecture--a rotten plank without a hand-rail,-- “O’er which lame faith leads understanding blind.” If all Coster’s types had been stolen and he had not supplied himself with new ones, it would be difficult to account for the wine vessels which were cast from the old types; and if he or his heirs continued to print subsequent to the robbery, all that his advocates had to complain of was the theft. For since it must have been well known that he had discovered and practised the art, at least ten years previous to its known establishment at Mentz, and seventeen years before a book appeared with the name of the printers claiming the honour of the invention, the greatest injury which he received must have been from his fellow citizens; who perversely and wilfully would not recollect his previous discovery and do justice to his claims. Even supposing that a thief had stolen the whole of Coster’s printing-materials, types, chases, and presses, it by no means follows that he deprived of their memory not only all the citizens of Harlem, but all Coster’s customers who came from other places[III-68] to purchase the “new commodity” which his press supplied. Such however must have been the consequences of the robbery, if the narrative of Cornelius were true; for except himself no person seems to have remembered Coster’s invention, or that either he or his immediate descendants had ever printed a single book. [Footnote III-68: “. . . . . quum nova merx, nunquam antea visa, emptores undique exciret cum huberrimo questu.”--Junii Batavia.]