Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

84 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
been done Mr Murray and me by allowing the advertisement
to appear, or any copies of a fifth edition to be sold while we
have such a heavy stock on hand, even waiving any claim we
may have upon a fifth edition when it is wanted.
To this the printer, always so full of resource in the
way of excuses, answers with the following quite in-
consequent and unsatisfactory reply. After repeating
Mr Blackwood's argument that the fifth edition ought
not to have been put to press till the fourth was ex-
hausted, he exculpates himself in the following exas-
perating fashion :
—
J. Ballantyne to W. Blackwood.
To this I answer that I did not put this edition to press
that is, in the sense in which you use these words : as a printer
I obeyed the orders of the bookseller to whom the edition had
been sold, and was not called upon to consult anybody.
You next state that had another edition been required, Mr
Murray and you were, both by courtesy and right, entitled to
the first offer of it.
The answer to this is most easy on my part, and can hardly,
I should think, be regarded even by yourself as anything else
than entirely conclusive, I am not called upon to discuss how
far Mr Murray and you were entitled to have the first offer of
any new edition, because I had no power to make this offer
either to you or to anybody else. As agent for the author, I
transacted with you for the edition prior to that which is now
advertised ; but the author has long since changed his agent,
and I assert in the most unqualified terms that the bargain for
the present edition had been concluded for many weeks before
I had even heard that it was in contemplation. How, then, can
I be made responsible for a transaction over which I had not
only no manner of control, but of which I did not hear until it
was concluded ? I appeal to your candour.
This very irritating mode of begging the question
is, however, followed by an admission of the real prin-
—