An unprofitable enterprise not being attractive to the trade, ten months elapsed before another arrangement could be carried into effect, and therefore No. 1 of Vol. ii was not published until April, 1820. The new arrangement was one of mutual responsibility for the expenses, but the Editor was constrained nevertheless to pledge his own personal credit to obtain from a bank the funds necessary to begin again, and from this responsibility he was, for a series of years, seldom released. The single volume per annum being found insufficient for the communications, two volumes a year were afterwards published, commencing with the second volume.
At the conclusion of Vol. x, in February, 1826, the work was again left upon the hands of its Editor; all its receipts had been absorbed by the expenses, and it became necessary now to pay a heavy sum to the retiring publisher, as an equivalent for his copies of previous volumes, as it was deemed necessary either to control the work entirely or to abandon it. The Editor was not willing to think of the latter, especially as he was encouraged by public approbation, and was cheered onward in his labors by eminent men both at home and abroad, and he saw distinctly that the Journal was rendering service not only to science and the arts, but to the reputation of his country. He reflected moreover that in almost every valuable enterprise perseverance in effort is necessary to success. He being now sole proprietor, a new arrangement was made for a single year, the publishers being at liberty, at the end of that time, to retire, and the Editor to resume the Journal should he prefer that course.
The latter alternative he adopted, taking upon himself the entire concern, including both the business and the editorial duties, and of course, all the correspondence and accounts. From that time the work has proceeded without interruption, two volumes per annum having been published for the last twenty years; and its pecuniary claims ceased to be onerous, although its means have never been large.
Forty-nine volumes having been published, ending with Number 100, October, 1845, it was deemed expedient to close the series with a fiftieth volume, which should contain an ample and well digested INDEX of the whole. This great labor, vastly more arduous and protracted than had been anticipated, is at last accomplished. The strict verification of every reference in this Index, by actual comparison of the proof with the volume and page, has been a labor surpassed only by the toil of constructing the Index itself. The printing was commenced in October, 1846, and so toilsome and time-consuming has been the correction of the proofs, that although the work has gone steadily forward, without interruption, it is only at this late day completed. We may confidently believe that the volume will prove useful, not only to those who may possess the whole series, but to all who are connected in any way with the arts or sciences; for, whatever the department, the reader is directed by it to the various memoirs that have been published in the Journal on the subject that interests him, whether relating to the progress of science, to details of facts in the different departments of knowledge, or to the various resources of this and other countries: with such a guide, the entire copies of the work in public libraries or in those of individuals, become available.