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By Root 2016 0

against these pirates. He called a meeting with a number of prominent booksellers. They decided together to issue their own version of the Universal History, in octavo, not only to stop Leslie but also to fire a warning shot against such insidious plots in general. Dublin's newspapers were soon full of their advertisements. "The Parliament of England ... have made several Acts to prevent Books being Pyrated in any Shape," the alliance declared. `And, the Custom of Ireland is, That no Printer or Bookseller shall ever re-print or pyrate any Book or Pamphlet upon another, without his Consent, when the Impression is out." This convention, they continued, was "strictly adhered to," and they were determined to defend it against "a Sett of Gentry, who have no Right to their Business."47 This was why they had banded together to oppose the interlopers. "Being sensible how destructive such Attempts are to so useful a Branch of Business in this Kingdom," they explained, they had resolved "at any Expence, to put a Stop to such Practices for the future."

Thirty-nine booksellers and printers signed on to Faulkner's project. They included the biggest names of all: Risk, the Ewings, Exshaw, Hoey, Nelson, and Wilson. Faulkner also recruited booksellers from across Ireland, who agreed to sell the work in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Londonderry Belfast, Newry, and Armagh. They opened their subscription at slightly more than the Leslie version (£5 5s 5d as opposed to £5 os od), but declared that they would match Leslie's price as soon as the latter had actually produced half of his edition. This was an astute challenge: as they pointed out, their own project now had the backing of most of the major booksellers in the country, so its plausibility was far more secure. Subscribers venturing on speculations by "anonymous Undertakers," by contrast, would be risking their money on people of doubtful credit. To reinforce the point, they started calling themselves simply "the BOOKSELLERS," as though they represented the entire trade.48

Faulkner's counterattack generated a skirmish of rival advertisements in the press. He claimed that Leslie had marched into his printing house and threatened in a "menacing and rude" manner to seek massive legal damages. For his part, Leslie replied that he had offered to relinquish his edition if only Faulkner reimbursed his expenses. By now Faulkner was on much the stronger ground, however. He could claim to have "the Body of the Booksellers" on his side, while Leslie was cast as an outsider confronting the civility of an entire trade-again, almost as a pirate in the Ciceronian sense. Faulkner even reinforced the point by printing a letter from Charles Lucas, the patriot hero, repudiating Leslie as an interloper. It proved apowerful enough case to convince Leslie's ownprinter, Rhames, to abandon her involvement. By September, when Faulkner published averse satire about Leslie's edition entitled The Gold Finders, she was gone. Faulkner's squib ridiculed his antagonists as failed alchemists - the archetypal fraudulent projectors. `A Goldsmith, a Chymist, and Shewman," he called them, Leslie being the goldsmith, Dickson the chymist (he had been convicted of counterfeiting medicines, in a case that Faulkner gleefully recounted at length). The showman was Rhames's replacement, Edward Bate, who was a part-time actor.49

The furor over the Universal History was widely noticed. It was probably the spur that incited the young Edmund Burke to debate "the necessity of enacting a law against Piracy amongst Booksellers" at Trinity College. And it garnered notice in distant London too.50 There the booksellers now moved to create their own new octavo edition, which appeared in twenty volumes in 1747-48. Printed by Richardson, its preface spoke of confronting the "base interlopers in a neighbouring kingdom" responsible for "spurious editions." It claimed to have engaged the scholars of England to improve the text and "rescue the most valuable history that ever was penned from the mangling hands of Booksellers." And the Londoners