be put into actuality. A second Select Committee was appointed early next year to report on the best means of extending the establishment of free public libraries, and Edwards was again in request as a witness. An article of his in the British Quarterly for Feb., 1850, had no doubt considerable influence on the passage of the Public Libraries Act on March 13th, in spite of damaging criticisms of his statistics. The Ewart Act, as it is often called, “for Enabling Town Councils to Establish Public Libraries and Museums,” was purely permissive. A poll of burgesses was required before the Act could be put in force, and a two-thirds majority was prescribed. The promoters believed that if buildings were put up, suitable contents would be forthcoming from local benefactors. Accordingly, no power was granted to buy books. The rate levied must not exceed a halfpenny, the same as had been allowed by the Museums Act, of which this was merely an extension. The debate on the second reading is remarkably interesting. The arguments of Ewart, Brotherton, the father of Labouchere, and even John Bright, were essentially utilitarian. “Nothing,” Bright was sure, “would tend more to the preservation of order than the diffusion of the greatest amount of intelligence, and the prevalence of the most complete and open discussion, amongst all classes.” Brotherton said, “Here were £2,000,000 a year paid for the punishment of crime, yet honourable gentlemen objected to tax themselves a halfpenny in the pound for the prevention of crime. In his opinion it was of little use to teach people to read unless you afterwards provided them with books to which they might apply the faculty they had so acquired.... He was satisfied that expenditure upon this object would be productive not only of immense moral good but of very material public economy in the long run.” The adverse arguments were likewise utilitarian and, as a rule, economic in the purely mercenary sense. Roundell Palmer, afterwards Earl of Selborne, “was most truly desirous to see learning extended,” but protested against compulsory rating, which he loftily said would put a positive check on the “voluntary self-supporting desire for knowledge which at present existed amongst the people.” One obstructor, who “did not like reading at all, and hated it when at Oxford,” said, “However excellent food for the mind might be, food for the body was what was now most wanted for the people;” and that he would have been “much more ready to support the honourable gentleman if he had tried to encourage national industry by keeping out the foreigner.” Summed up, the objections were four: that increased taxation was undesirable; that it was unjust if not unconstitutional to make non-users pay for the upkeep of the new institution; that too much knowledge was a dangerous thing; that there were ulterior objects in the project, and that libraries might become centres of political agitation, awake