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 PUBLIC HOUSE, in its general English acceptation, a house in respect of which a licence has been obtained for the consumption of intoxicating liquors. Public houses are frequently distinguished as "tied" and "free." A tied house is one rented from a person or firm from whom the tenant is compelled to purchase liquors or other commodities to be consumed therein. A free house has no such covenant. The keepers of public houses ("publicans" or "licensed victuallers") are subject, in the conduct of their business, to a number of restrictions laid down by various acts of parliament; while, in order to ply their trade, they require a justices' licence and an excise licence. (See ; .)

By the Parliamentary Elections Act (1853) a public house must not be used for elections, meetings or committee rooms. By the Payment of Wages in Public Houses Prohibition Act (1883) it is illegal to pay Wages to any Workman in a public house, except such wages as are paid by the resident owner or occupier. By the Sheriffs Act (1887) when a debtor is arrested he must not be taken to a public house without his free consent, nor must he be charged with any sum for liquor or food, except what he freely asks for.

 PUBLILIUS (less correctly ) SYRUS, a Latin writer of mimes, flourished in the 1st century He was a native of Syria and was brought as a slave to Italy, but by his wit and talent he won the favour of his master, who freed and educated him. His mimes, in which he acted himself, had a great success in the provincial towns of Italy and at the games given by Caesar in 46 Publilius was perhaps even more famous as an improvisatory, and received from Caesar himself the prize in a contest in which he vanquished all his competitors, including the celebrated Decimus Laberius. All that remains of his works is a collection of Sentences (Sententiae), a series of moral maxims in iambic and trochaic verse. This collection must have been made at a very early date, since it was known to Aulus Gellius in the 2nd century Each maxim is comprised in a single verse, and the verses are arranged in alphabetical order according to their initial letters. In course of time the collection was interpolated with sentences drawn from other writers, especially from apocryphal writings of Seneca; the number of genuine verses is about 700. They include many pithy sayings, such as the famous "judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur" (adopted as its motto by the Edinburgh Review).

 PUBLISHING. In the technical sense, publishing is the business of producing and placing upon the market printed copies of the work of an author (see ). Before the invention of printing the actual maker of a manuscript was to a great extent his own publisher and his own bookseller. Increase of facilities for the production of copies led to a steady though slow differentiation of functions. The author was the first factor to be isolated and confined to a well-marked province, yet we may find upon the title-page of some old books an intimation that they might be purchased either at the shop of the bookseller who published them or at the lodgings of the author.

The separation of publishing from book selling came later (see ). Booksellers were the first publishers of printed books, as they had previously been the agents for the production and exchange of authentic manuscript copies; and as they are quite competent to make contracts with paper-makers, printers and bookbinders, there is no particular reason why they should not be publishers still, except the tendency of every composite business to break up, as it expands, into specialized departments. That tendency may be seen at work in the publishing business itself. When publishers had conquered their own province, and had confined booksellers to book selling, they held in their own hands the entire business of distribution to the trade. But a class of wholesale booksellers has grown up, and although important retail booksellers in London continue to deal directly with the publishers, the retail booksellers throughout the country draw their supplies quite largely from the wholesale agents.

The intellectual movement which was largely responsible for the French Revolution, and the general stir and upheaval which followed that portentous cataclysm, precipitated the separation of production from distribution in the book trade, by the mere expansion of the demand for books. That separation was practically complete at the beginning of the 19th century, although it would not be difficult to find survivals of the old order of things at a much later date. The old bookseller-publishers were very useful men in their time. They met pretty fairly the actual needs of the public; and as regards the author, they took the place of the private patron upon whom he was previously dependent. No doubt the author had much to endure at their hands, still, they did undoubtedly improve his status by introducing him to public patronage and placing him upon a sounder economic basis. If in the earlier days they were less than liberal in their terms, it may be remembered that their own business was not very extensive or very remunerative. They were not equipped either with brains or with capital to extend that business in answer to the growing demand for books. By the daily routine of their shops they