CHAMBERS'S

INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE.

NEW AND IMPROVED EDITION.

EDITED BY

WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS,

EDITORS OF CHAMBERS'S EDINBURGH JOURNAL, EDUCATIONAL COURSE, &c.

VOLUME I.

EDINBURGH:

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.

1842.

PREFACE.

WHILE little doubt can be entertained as to the value of the greater part of the works published in this country as Encyclopædias or Dictionaries of General Knowledge, it must be equally clear that they are unfitted by their size and price for the libraries of a large portion of the middle and the whole of the working classes. The publication of the Library of Useful Knowledge was a laudable attempt, a few years ago, to supply such a book for those classes; yet even that excellent series proved too dear and too bulky, to reach so far down in society as was desired.

In the present publication, an effort has been made to place a work of the character of an encyclopædia really within the reach of the working-classes and those next above them.

The plan on which the work is formed is to select only the subjects on which it is important that the classes in question should be informed. The minutiae of biography and topography, scientific technicalities, and other matters to which there may be only need for occasional reference, are dismissed, and thus what usually fills up the greater part of an encyclopædia is at once got quit of. There only remains a series of articles on the most important branches of science, physical, mathematical, and moral, natural history, political history, geography, and literature, together with a few miscellaneous papers, which seem to be called for by peculiar circumstances affecting the British people. Thus all is given which, if studied and received into the mind, would make an individual of those classes a well-informed man; while, with few exceptions, only that is omitted which is not needed as part of the standing knowledge of any person whatever, besides those for whom it may have a professional or local interest. It will be understood, then, that the "INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE" is not meant as an encyclopædia unfailing in reference for all departments of human knowledge, but as an encyclopædia including such knowledge only as tends to improve every mind possessing it—such knowledge as expands, liberates, and fertilises-with the addition of only a very few articles of which the interest and value are of a more limited nature. The ruling object has been to give what may be expected to prove the means of self-education to all such of the humbler classes of society as are debarred from the receipt of knowledge in more favourable circumstances.

It would have been quite possible to produce such a work, unexceptionable as far as the selection and treatment of subjects were concerned, but which should nevertheless have reached few of those for whom it was designed. Such would have necessarily been the effect of an unsuitable form and price. Here, as in the case of their JOURNAL, the editors found it necessary to disregard all common ideas as to what constitutes dignity in the externals of books. In reality, these ideas are merely relative, and there is not perhaps one solid argument which could be used in support of them, however serviceable they may be in supplying puerile wits with matter of silly ridicule. But, whatever they were, it was necessary, if the INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE was ever to reach its destination, that it should be published in detached sheets, and these bearing a very small price. The plan accordingly followed has proved remarkably successful, the average sale of the various numbers of the work having been, throughout the first year, nearly seventy thousand! It is to be hoped that it may thus have proved the means of carrying a knowledge of many things into regions where such knowledge would have never, but for this or similar undertakings, found its way. The editors are at the same time deeply sensible that even this work, great as its success has been, must leave a vast substratum of society totally untouched. At the very best, it addresses itself only to those who can read. The public must be reminded that there are great multitudes who do not possess this accomplishment, and for whom, of course, popular encyclopædias exist as much in vain as light does for the blind. And not only is this great class forbidden all benefit from such works, but there are probably greater multitudes who, though able to read, are, from want of intellectual cultivation, so devoid of all aptitude for knowledge, as to be nearly as little likely to profit from the stores here placed within their reach as those who never yet learned the alphabet. All attempts of this kind to send down light into the lower regions of society, must more or less fail from these causes-causes which will, of course, continue to exist, till we shall see an end put to the great disgrace of our age, the want of a national system of education.

EDINBURGH, November 3, 1841.