"Your letter of 29th ult., addressed to our Mr. Hunt, was duly
received, and we now beg to reply on his behalf and that of the firm.
"In your letter you assume that we have but one set of terms with the
various authors whose works we publish. In this you are in error.
What we pay to any individual author is a matter quite between
him--or her--and ourselves, and it is not our custom to make one
author the criterion for another. Many elements enter into the case
that would make a uniform rate impracticable. Independently of other
considerations, the varying cost of manufacture caused by different
styles of publication, would alone preclude such an arrangement. We
must, therefore, decline to admit such an argument into the case.
"We have given our reasons in justification of our course towards you
in full, and we see no occasion for repeating them here. As they were
unsatisfactory to you, we offered, on May 29 last, in a letter to your
attorney, Mr. Nathan Dane, to relinquish, at a fair price, the plates
and stock to any publisher whom you might prefer. This offer we now
respectfully renew.
"Touching arbitration, we may say that at an earlier stage of the
proceedings we should have been willing to submit the matter to that
test. At present, however, we do not wish to do so."