cial, and charitable-is conducted with the utmost frugality and wisdom; and that the publications of the Society are, of all the tracts and books that are or might be, the best suited to the great end of diffusing the knowledge of Christ and promoting the interests of vital godliness and sound morality; our present inquiry is only, How much does it cost to circulate religious tracts calculated to receive the approbation of all evangelical Christians?

The report for 1857 gives us, (pp. 232, 233), among other results of an investigation by a special committee appointed at the preceding anniversary, a "Summary view of the Society's receipts and expenditures for thirty-two years," that is, from its beginning. At that time, the sum total of receipts from donations and legacies (aside from the building fund) was $2,160,715.87; while the sum total of publications granted as gratuities by the Society was estimated by the Executive Committee as equivalent to $459,278.37,-less by one quarter than the retail prices. Add to these grants of publications the sum total of "foreign grants in cash," $475,294, and the difference between all that had been given to the Society in thirty-two years, and all that had been given away by the Society in the same period, is $1,226,143.20. "More than $50,000" of this had been given expressly as capital to be employed in the manufacturing and commercial business of the institution, and therefore could not be employed in purchasing tracts or books to give away. The remainder (if not the whole) may afford to those who read, mark, and inwardly digest the figures, some notion of how much it has cost to give away tracts valued by the manufacturers and donors themselves at less than a million of dollars. The benevolent public has given to the American Tract Society of New York more than two dollars ($2.31) for every dollar's worth of printed matter calculated to receive the approbation of all evangelical Christians, which the Society, with its great building free of rent, at the very centre of business in New York, has been able to give away. Concede that $364,890 of the donations may be shown at the Tract House in the form of capital, and assume that the tracts and books sold have merely paid for themselves; and $861,253 (an

average of $26,918 annually for thirty-two years) is what was expended in working the machinery of a Society which, however desirous its officers may be to employ all means and all methods in diffiusing the knowledge of Christ and promoting the interests of vital godliness and sound morality, is strictly confined by its constitution to the one work of circulating religious tracts. The working expenses of the institution for those thirty-two years (if we assume that it exists only to circulate tracts, and that the tracts which it circulates by sale are sold at reproductive prices) were almost forty per cent. of all its receipts from donations and legacies. The ratio for more recent years is still greater.

Such of our readers as are familiar with the operations of this Tract Society, have already perceived the bearing of these facts. The leading minds in the administration of the Society discovered, long ago, that the mere publication and voluntary circulation of tracts, and even of volumes, (for, to this day, their annual Reports, with something like an unconscious confession that the practice of the Society is at variance with its name and constitution, make a distinction between "tracts" and "volumes "), was not work enough for the capabilities of their institution. A system of auxiliary societies, with local depositories for the sale of publications, and with arrangements for the distribution of tracts from house to house by volunteer distributers, was not enough. The institution, with its accumulated capital, and with its growing income from donations and legacies as well as from sale, could manufacture more books than it could sell, and more than it could reasonably give away. Hence the necessity of some enlargement; and so there came into being a scheme and method of home missions for the whole country, to be sustained by contributions to the Tract Society, and to be managed by the central power in Nassau street. The English language was not sufficiently copious for the uses of such a scheme; and it seemed expedient to enrich the vocabulary of all evangelical Christians with two French words, quite difficult of pronunciation to untrained organs, yet not less impressive on that account, and somewhat imposing by their outlandishness,-" colporteur," to dencte the

missionaries of this new model of missions,-and "colportage," to denote the method and system of operations.

It is upon this system of home missions that the administration of the Society has been expending, for these twenty years past, a large portion of its resources. This whole system of operations, as it seems to us, has been undertaken and pursued in violation of that fundamental article in the constitution of the Society, by which its labors to diffuse the knowledge of Christ and to promote the interests of religion and morality are confined to the circulation of religious tracts calculated to receive the approbation of all evangelical Christians. We regard it as an attempt to organize and conduct a system of home missions under the pretense of doing something else. What is called colportage is a system of viva voce evangelism and itinerant preaching, sustained and conducted by an institution which gave in the beginning of its existence an irrevocable pledge to do no such thing.

If any of our readers are startled at the suggestion that the Society has thus trifled with the fundamental principle of its constitution, we beg such readers to remember that either the so much lauded colportage is simply a method of getting the tracts and volumes into circulation, or it is something else; and that whatever else it may be, is a departure from the legitimate province of the institution, and a violation of the pledge on which it was founded.

Assuming, then, for the present, that the colportage is what it ought to be, simply a method of circulating religious tracts— assuming that the good which is expected to result, and for the sake of which the agents are employed, is to be done simply by the books and tracts, and not by the viva voce teaching and exhortation of the agents, we encounter the question, How much does it cost to circulate religious tracts by such an agency? Let us look a little more carefully at this particular question touching the expensiveness of tract distribution. We begin with the latest Annual Report. The Treasurer's account for the year ending April 1, 1862, acknowledges the receipt of $48,242.57 from colporteurs and colporteur agencies, for publications sold. Under the head of "Colportage," the in

formation is given that the number of "volumes sold" by colporteurs was 140,578; and from these elements we learn by calculation that the average price of the volumes sold was 34-3 cents. Assuming that the average price of the "volumes granted" was the same, we find that the 34,445 volumes given away by colporteurs were equivalent to the additional sum of $11,814.63. If, then, we regard the publications gratuitously distributed, as paid for by the yearly contributions to the Society's treasury for that purpose, (which is the fact), the entire amount of the business transacted by those agents during the year, whether in the form of sales to individual purchasers, or in the form of sales to that great purchaser, the contributing public, for which the Society is almoner in every grant it makes is $60,057.20. This is just what the colportage, considered simply as an agency for the circulation of religious tracts calculated to receive the approbation of all evangelical Christians, has accomplished within the year. And what has been the cost of this particular agency? The Treasurer tells the story. He has paid out, during the year, for the colportage department of the Society's operations, (including $14,829.11 for expenses of colporteur agencies and depositories, and $900.05 paid to the New England Branch for colportage), $42,761.07. In other words, the expense of circulating religious tracts by this agency, is 71 per cent. on the amount of the business transacted. To every ten dollars' worth of tracts and volumes which the colporteurs were able to sell or give away, there was paid by the contributing public seven dollars in addition to the value of the publications gratuitously distributed.

If we go back to the Report for 1861, we have to deal with numbers somewhat larger. The receipts from colportage were $117,100.94. The number of "volumes sold" was 412,408, giving 28-4 cents as the average price. The number of "volumes granted" was 100,035, equivalent (at the average price of the volumes sold) to $28,409.94. For that year, then, the sum total of the business done by the colportage department was $145,510.88. On the other hand, the Treasurer's account shows that the expenses of colportage, aside from the value of the publications given away, were $100,823.71, or 69.2 per

cent. The result of that year was that for every ten dollars worth of publications sold or given away by the machinery of colportage, the contributing public, besides paying for the "volumes granted" paid six dollars and ninety-two cents to sustain the machinery.

If we go back another year, the results are not materially different. The receipts by the Treasurer from colportage, between April 1, 1859, and April 1, 1860, were $130,520.21. "Volumes sold" were in number 442,785-at an average price, therefore, of 293 cents. "Volumes granted" were in number 120,232-equivalent, at the same average price, to $35,468.44. The total of the business done by colportage, both in selling and in giving, was therefore $165,988.65. For the same year the expenses of the colportage were $106,114.19, or 63.9 per cent. The cost of working the machine was six dollars and thirty-nine cents for every ten dollars' worth of publications sold or given away.

In the year 1858-9, the entire business, calculated by the same process, was $174,837.94; while the entire cost of sustaining the machinery, was $113,092.82, or 643 per cent. on the amount of sales and gifts. For every ten dollars' worth of volumes sold or granted, in the course of that year, by the colportage arrangements, the contributing public generously paid six dollars and forty-six cents, beside paying for the volumes gratuitously distributed.

per cent. on

Taking the average of these four years, we find that the cost of this colportage, considered as an arrangement for the sale and gratuitous distribution of the books, is 67 the entire amount of the business thus transacted. We submit that this is a costly way of getting books into circulation. These many years it has been a marvel, and to some extent a lamentation, that the Society's are so rarely sold by booksellers, and can hardly be found save in a local depository or in a colporteur's wagon. In answer to inquiries on this point, it has been said that the discount which the Society makes, from its retail prices, to the trade, is not a sufficient inducement. Booksellers have a much stronger motive to push the sale of books which they purchase from the publishers at