Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/377

337 BUTTERWORTH AND CHURCHILL, 337 Henry Butterworth, supported by his father's capital, took a lease of No. 7, Fleet Street, a house which had been, as we have seen previously, occupied by Tothill and other ancient law publishers. And from this shop were issued the vellum-bound volumes whose contents are sacred to all but those assiduously apprenticed to the law. Butterworth's position was still further improved by his appointment to the profitable post of Queen's law publisher. To the general student the law-books of the period are as little known as they were to that worthy country justice who, wishing to learn something definite about the law he so zealously administered, told his book- seller to send him forthwith the "Mirror for Magistrates ;" and the vastly popular law-books did not, of course, come within the province of the technical publisher. Butterworth, however, saw the decline of two works which had been regarded as time-honoured text-books on the subject Burn's "Justice " and Blackstone's " Commentaries." Many booksellers had made large fortunes out of Burn since the time when the author, wearied out with carrying his manuscript from shop to shop, had accepted a nominal fee to get it off his hands ; and now Butter- worth, by publishing Serjeant Stephen's celebrated " Commentaries on the Laws of England " the most successful law- work of modern times erased Black- stone from the category of legal text-books. Butterworth, however, though energetic as a pub- lisher, found time to take part in the government of the city. In 1823 he was elected as representative of the ward of Farringdon Street Without, but he after- wards declined to be nominated to the office of sheriff. However, his connection with the city was still further