To exactness of method or System, their work can hardly pretend; and yet they _have_ a system,--which has only not been rounded into symmetry, by the singular circumstance that these seven writers "have written in entire independence of one another, and without concert or comparison." They _avow a common purpose_, however; for they "hope" that their joint labours "will be received as an attempt to illustrate," (whatever _that_ may mean,) "the advantage derivable to the cause of Religion and Moral Truth" from what they have here attempted; and which they justly characterize as "_free handling_." Putting oneself in their position, it is easy to imagine the sorrow and concern,--the _horror_ rather,--with which a good man, when the first edition of 'Essays and Reviews' made its appearance, would have discovered the kind of complicity into which he had been inadvertently betrayed; and how eagerly he would have withdrawn from a literary partnership which had resulted so disastrously. At the end of nine large editions, however, the corporate responsibility of each individual author has become fully established; and besides the many proofs of sympathy between the several authors which these pages contain[237], it is no longer doubtful that the sentiments of the work are to be quoted without reference to the individual writers. It would be unfair to assume that not one of these seven men has had the manliness to avow that his own individual convictions are opposed to those of his fellows. We are compelled to regard their joint labours as _one_ production. It is the _corporate efficacy_ of the several contributions which constitutes the chief criminality of the volume. It is to the respectability and weight of the _conjoined_ names of its authors, and to their _combined_ efforts, that 'Essays and Reviews' are indebted for all their power.