Page:Address on the opening of the Free Public Library of Ballarat East, on Friday, 1st. January, 1869.djvu/17

 11 government munificence; but an institution upon which, for building and books, the amount of over half a million of dollars has been expended during a period of ten years, in addition to all that single generosity and effort have performed, might well make us jealous of the reputation of oar entire State for intelligent generosity."

Some abuses of the privilege of free admission may be easily corrected by a firm adherence to your regulations. If your visitors will not qualify by a decent attention to their persons, by respect for the fee] of others in abstaining from habits which offend against delicacy; if they will not conform to the rules of behaviour prescribed for their comfort and convenience as well as of those around them, they cannot complain if they are excluded from these walls. If they disregard your right of property and steal your books let them be punished as they deserve to be; and let those who have the management of these institutions consider well whether they cannot devise some means of holding up to public reprobation, and of meeting out exemplary and ignominous [sic] chastisement to those guilty of a more insidious injury than open theft of a volume—those who cut out paragraphs, or articles from scientific works—no common men these—that they may earn some imaginary triumph in a newspaper correspondence by the exclusive possession of what has been gained through the disgraceful act of felonious plagiarism of double dye,—of the author's ideas,—and of the vehicle through which they are promulgated—who with a selfish meanness more dastardly still excise prints and illustrations from rare books, which it is impossible to replace here. Against such men, who