The Press. — London, England, 1855-02-03 00:00:00

122 occupy in the mail-bag the space of one number of the other. But this is not the whole case ; nor yet the worst part of it. The little local journal to which I have referred does not want the Post-office at ell. If, living in a town, I wish to send out 1,000 copies of a circular, I should certainly And it cheaper and more convenient to hire a messenger to distribute t4iem, than to pay 81. 3s. 4d. for their circulation by the local post-office. In this case Government allows no the option. But if I issue a weekly or fort nightly circular, in the shape of a newspaper, I have no similar freedom of choice. Whether 1 use the postal arrangements which Government has pro vided, or dispense with' them, is immaterial to the State ; but in either case I must pay equally. As a fact, I believe they are comparatively little used, copies of newspapers taken in in the town where they are published passing almost exclusively through private hands. But to sum up the state ment of fact; we have here two manifest breaches of of the rule laid down. In the first place, equal charges are imposed for unequal service; in the second, these charges are enforced even where no corresponding service is performed. Now, how are these provisions of the law defended? I have read with care your two pamphlets, and also, believe, most of the speeches and writings that have appeared on this subject. Apart from the question of political results, on which the greatest stress is laid, the main arguments relied on seem to bo the following First, that the power of repeated transmission, without extra charge, compensates for the overcharge in some instances ; and that, on the whole, Govern ment loses instead of gaining on the transaction. This plea seems easily to be disposed of. No doubt, if • every newspaper proprietor were in part nership with every other—if the whole fraternity of journalism had but one common purse—it might be fair enough for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say, " You publish collectively so many copies of " newspapers—of this total number a certain fixed " proportion may be assumed as likely to pass " through the post—l assess you, therefore, at such " and such a sum ; and you must settle it among " yourselves in what proportion you shall pay." But the injustice complained of is not between Govern ment and the newspaper press as a body ; it lies between various conflicting interests in that body, some of which are unduly fostered by the operation of the law, others as unduly depressed. Refer once more to the case of the small local journal I have mentioned. One-half of its impression, to take the most moderate estimate, never goes near the post office. On the other half, therefore, which does go by post, its proprietor may be saicrto pay twice over. Further, on that half, weight for weight, he pays eight or ten times as mob (I am again understating the possible case) as the proprietor of the Times. " Twentyfold my share of the postal charge !" he exclaims. " What then ?" answers the Government : "you have your compensation ; you may send every " copy of your journal, if you like, four, five, six " times through our post-office, up to the expiration " of the assigned seven days; it is true that you " don't want this privilege—that, so far as you are " concerned, it is a dead letter—that no one reads, " or is ever likely to read, your publication in any " place except the town whose local affairs it dis " cusses—but that is no business of ours. You " should deal less in local news; you should get the " earliest information, the ablest writers, the best " foreign correspondence; compete with the London " journals ; and then you would find the advantage "of our regulations. Why, we actually lose by " every copy of the large metropolitan journals which we transmit." "Thank you," replies the now enlightened complainant; " the comfort you " give me comes to this —that if I can succeed in " making my fortune, your system of charges will " help me to enlarge it; but while I remain poor, " you will impoverish me yet further." Secondly, yon rely on the parallel case of the. Letter-postage, where one uniform rate of charge is imposed or all distances. In this presumed analogy ;116_ ••••0/44.4.••••/".... T H E PRESS. as is natural, you triumph greatly. You say, " the " uniform penny postage on letters imposes the " same postage on a letter going across the street as " on one going across the kingdom, rendering all " Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland a greet " lohs to the Post-otfice, while the populous districts " of the country return a great profit ; yet nobody " thinks of denouncing this system as unequal er " oppressive." Perhaps not; for there is no class of persons whom these regulations absolutely cut off from a profitable and creditable employment as the writers and proprietors of low priced journals are cut off by the stamp duty. There may be inequality—there is not injustice—at least, in any practical and palpable form. I will grant you that the establishment of a post-office in some small and remote Highland village, where the service must be carried on at a loss, is an undue favour to the place thus alcommo dated—a sacrifice made partly to practical con venience, partly to unity of system. But the penny post system was established on a principle of which, while citing its practical application, you do not seem aware—one which may be shortly embodied in the folowing proposition : "That in countries where the average density of 0 population exceeds a certain limit the cost of trans " mitting letters is affected only in an infinitesinally " small degree by the distance to which they are " transmitted." Or, in more popular, though in less precise terms, the chief expense of the Post-office, when dealing with great masses of letters, consists in sorting and arranging them—not in the actual conveyance of them by railroad, coach, or mail-coach, insomuch that where the letter-writing population is very dense, and the amount of correspondence to be dealt with consequently very considerable, the latter item of expense (the cost of conveyance), when compared with the former (the cost of arranging and sorting), becomes indefinitely small, and, as being inappre ciable, may be struck out of the calculation. It is thus approximately, though not perfectly, true that the expense to Government of sending a letter across the street is the same as that of sending it across the country ; and the precedent, or parallel, which you attempt to find for the unequal incidence of the newspaper stamp charge disappears accordingly. But again : your analogy, even were it accepted as good up to this point, breaks down where you need it most. You justify the unjust stamp duty by what you (I think mistakenly) assume to be the not less unjust letter duty. But remember that the very point for which we are contending is, and always has been, conceded in the case of letters. No person, so far as I know, has ever proposed a uniform letter stamp for all weights as well as all distances. Yet this is the boasted uniformity of the newspaper stamp system. When a half-ounce letter and an eight-ounce parcel shall be charged alike, then, and not till then, may the one abuse be pleaded as excus ing the other. But is this likely to happen? Nay, even the absurdity which I have hero called into imaginary existence furnishes only half a parallel to that which is the cause of my writing. For even thus, a person who did not send any letter by post, but communicated with his friend solely through notes sent by private hand, might escape untaxed. But the stamp law, while charging one newspaper proprietor ten times as highly as another in proportion to the amount of postal service re quired by each, forbids any to escape from the bur den, however willing such person might be to forego the advantages of the post-office on condition of being released from its charges. Thirdly, you appeal to the precedent of the stamp on receipts imposed last year. A plea which, as addressed to Mr. Gladstone may be a powerful argumentum ad lwminem, has with me, on that score, little weight. If the law which you are calling on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to maintain be con trary to right, t. 9 between man and man, it is no vindication that the Minister to whom you appeal has perpetrated another wrong of the same kind. Where a demonstrable certainty exists, no authority, no precedent, no force of public opinion, avail to make it untrue. The united voice of the whole SATURDAY, newspaper press of England cannot make live and live anything else than ten, nor falsify a problem in Euclid. But it is not necessary, in order to reply to you, to censure Mr. Gladstone. A tax, as I before _ said, is one thing ; a postal charge another. A tax, taken by itself, *►ay be inequitable in the highest degree; yet, as founing part of a general system of taxation, it may be perfeetly fair. Its injurious inci dence on one class may be balanced by a correspond- ing exemption of that class in some other respect ; and thus the general account, as between tax-payer and tax-gatherer, be squared. But in the case of a postal charge, no suoh compensation exists ; and the case which you defend is that of an unequal postal charge. Can you show that the small journals, crushed under tenfold weight of taxation, receive any compensating advantage from other sources ? If not, what is your parallel worth ? I affirm, therefore, with a confidence unshaken, and unshakeable by any plea to the contrary which I have either heard or read, (1) that for equal ser vice rendered by the Post-office in different cases, unequal sums are charged, while the injured party, being restrained by the postal monopoly, is forbidden to make a better bargain elsewhere; (2) that in point of justice no defence of this enormous in equality can be set up ; (3) that this question, like every other in which financial interests are involved, is to be decided on equitable grounds alone, without reference to possible political results. " Truth has "nothing to do with consequences," was the noble reply of a philosopher when warned that an opinion which he had logically worked out might be held to endanger orthodox faith; "justice has nothing to do " with consequences," should be the rule of a financier, who, unless he acts on some such rule, becomes merely a licensed plunderer of the public. But, having first entered the above protest, I am willing to consider dispassionately the probable results of a modification of the law. And here, as is natural, I find the greatest amount of opposition on the part of those averse to a change—it being easier to speculate on prospective and uncertain effects than to vindicate a system such as that which we have been considering. The first objection raised is reasonable enough. It takes the form of a question. " You complain of the stamp law as " unjust—how do you propose to mend it? You have " exposed the unfairness of the existing postal " scheme—now substitute one of you own." This, no doubt, it is incumbent on a would-be reformer to attempt. He who pulls down, is pledged to build up again ; though, be it said in passing, that if the working of a law be manifestly and indisputably unjust, any citizen living under it has a right to expose that injustice, without being necessarily bound by such protest to suggest the fitting remedy. Otherwise would all men's tongues be tied on the subject of their grievances, save only those of professional statesmen. Yet, as mere com plaint is always easy, remedial legislation often difficult, I allow that the former without the latter becomes of little value ; and I readily accept the challenge thrown out by adopting in part the pro position of the Committee of 1851, in part that which you yourself suggest. The evils demonstrated to exist are mainly three :- 1. Undue favoritism towards the large or metro politan journals by the privilege of gratuitous retrans- mission. 2. Undue favoritism towards the large journals by the uniform charge for all weights. 3. Injury to the local journalist by compelling him to pay for the post-office which he does not use. Of these grievances you propose to remove, or at least greatly to alleviate, the second by the simple plan of increasing the charge for heavier and re ducing it for lighter weights. Here we entirely con cur. Some additional labour would no doubt be im posed on the Post-office, and possibly some opportu nities of fraud afforded. Bnt your proposal is merely a carrying out of the principle already adopted in the case of letters, and its obvious fairness entitles it to adoption. It involves no insuperable, nor, indeed, ' any considerable, mechanical difficulty. I cannot, however, acquiesce in the farther suggestion that papers like the Athenaum, concerning which it is