The Express.
London, England, 1848-07-04 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, JULY 4, 1848.

and all the eloquent fury vanished into smoke. Ever
since the forsworn confederates prudently postponed
any active display of sympathy for Mr. MITCIIEL
" until after harvest," they have talked in general
I terms more belligerently then ever.
The example of Paris has ever been on their lips;
let it be so still, and we are satisfied. Let them in
time be warned by the scenes of horror that have
been enacted there within the last few days what is
the condition annexed to political changes, however
laudable they may intrinsically appear, when those
changes are accorniilished by a multitude in arms.

IN a few days the CHANCELLOR OF THE Eit-
CIILQUEIt in to favour parliament t nd the public with
a second and improved edit•on of his budget. Will
he avail himself of the opportuni•y to reduce the daty
on advertisements—a matter in which the whole in-

dustriai public, and Parties engaged on the political
periodi, al pt ess in particular, have a deep interest ?
There is no duty of which ho could reduce the
rate with more certainty that an increased use of the
article, sufficient to prevent a permanent reduction of
revenue, would be the consequence. A return of the
gross and net receipts from stamps and taxes in every
year from 1832 to 1847-8, recently presented to par-
liament, ilrovra ti.-,-ond a doubt.
The receipt 'rem duties on advertisements in Eng-
land during the year ended January 5, 1833, was
137,122/. ; in the year 1847-8 it was 133,567/. The
difference is so trifling that it may be left out of ac-
count and the receipts for the two years stated as

equal.
But in 1832 the sum representing one advertise-
ment duty was 3s. 13d., or seven sixpences ; in 1817-8 it
was Is. 61, or three sixpences. The receipt in 1832
therefore represents a total of 783,534 advertisements ;
in 1847.8 it represents a total of 1,780,893. In con-
sequence of the reduction of duty the public were able
in 1847-8 t I pay the price of more than double the
accommodation in the way of advertisements that
they could in 1832. The public enjoyed twice as
great facilities in the intercommunication of want,
and,forming of business arrangements; and the taxed
advertising media had twice as much business af.er
the reduction as before. And the national revenue
from this source was not sensibly diminished.
In Scotland the result of the diminished rate of
duty has been the same. The receipt from advertise-
ment duties iu Scotland was 18,2781. in 1832, repre-
senting a total of 104,445 advertisements; in 1847-8
it was 18,105/., representing 241,400.
And yet, as we have more than once had occasion
to show, the reduction of the rate of advertisement
duty in 1833-4 was one of those timid half-measures'
which do not afford free play to the economical prin-
ciple, in virtue of which reduced rates of duty yield
equal and sometimes larger retures of revenue. The
duty of Is. 6d. is charged indiscriminately upon the
advertisement of the wealthy railway company to
whom such a sum is nothing, and that of the poor ser-
vant out of place, upon whom it is a heavy tax. It is
charged equally upon the column advertisement in
which the great publisher announces his publications
for the season, and the three lines of the poor author
who is venturing his first experimental volume on the
town. It is not to the disproportion of the tax tc the
means of the tax-payer we are now seeking to direct
attention, but the tendency of the duty to prevent
that tepetition of the poor advertiser's advertisement
which is necessary to command attention. The large
advertisement of the pub'isher catches the eye at
once; the wealthy company can afford to advertise
day after day ; but the increase in the expense of
advertising occasioned by the duty causes the'
poor cookmaid out of place, and the almost
poorer literary adventurer, to rest contented with
one or at the mos. two insertions, whereas half-
a-dozen or a dozen repetitions would be required
to ensure their modest announcement notice among
the wilderness of advertisements by which it is sur-
rounded. The increased expense of advertising dimi-
nishes the usefulness of the practice and the frequency
with which it is had recourse to; and the check upon
the frequency with which this means of ensuring
necessary publicity is had recourse to, materially
diminishes the business and profits of those whose
publications are the usual and recognised advertising
channels.
Were the duty on advertisements reduced to 6d.
each it would scarcely be felt by many merito- '
noes classes upon whom it at present bears most
oppressively. The best class of servants are those
who advertise when in want of a place ; and
their ability to seek employment by this means is
grievously curtailed by the existin; rate of duty.
Es-en with the wealthier classes, any person who takes
the trouble to examine the advertising columns of
American, or even of our own colonial journals,
must be convinced that much business is advantage-
ously transacted by their means in the United States
i and n the British colonies, which owing to the high
rate of duty cannot be so transacted id this country. i
If the reduction from 3s. 61 to ls. 6d., which still
excludes the great body of the industrious operative
classes from the advantages of advertising, and mate-1
rially narrows its sphere of accommodation even to
the wealthy, has occasioned the immense increase is
the practice of advertising which we have noted above,
who can set limits to the increase of which a further
reduction to cad. might be productive?
The reduction would have the advantage of break-
ing up the monopoly of advei tieing at present enjoyed
by a comparatively few old advertising journals. The
consequent Increase in the business of advertising
would call into existence new advertising media,
and competition stimulating invention would devise
new modes of charging, resulting in still greater ad-
vantages to the public ; and flee discussion, the disse-
mination of honest, independent opinion on pablie
affairs, would gain infinitely by the measure. It is
generally known that advertisements are a main sup-
port of political periodicals, and the immensely greater
number of newspapers supported by the American than
by the British public, taken in connexion with
the obviously greater extent of the advertising
business in America than in England, shows that the
former phenomenon is in a great measure the canoe-
qumee of the latter. For many years the number of
influential daily newspapers in London has been
limited to five or six by the monopoly-creating in-
fluence of fiscal legislation. And the consequence of
this monopoly in newspaper enterprise has been, to
centralise the power of disseminating political opinion
in such a limited number of individuals, as at once
to facilitate the corruption of the newspaper press by
men in power, and in return to place men in power
frequently at the mercy of these their corrupt tools.
The reduction of the advertisement duty we have
recommended would go far to break up the news-
paper monopoly, and thereby at once to elevate the I
character of English journalism, by diminishing the
effect of corrupt practices on the part of men in
power and the temptation to have recourse to then:—
to emancipate statesmen from the venal dictatorship'
of a few monopolist newspapers—and to substitute
in the newspaper press a healthy and fair conflict of
public opinion for the crotchets or hypocrisy of a few
exclusive journalists.
All the advantages we have enumerated—both to
incluetrial enterprise and sound honest political
opinion—any CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, de-
serving the name of statesman has it in his power
to confer, to a considerable extent, on the country, by I
the simple process of reducing the duty on advertise-
ments—a step which experience has shown may be
taken without any risk of a permanent diminution of
revenue.

ME circumstances attending the erection, the
endowment, and the object of the new College of St.
Augustine at Canterbury, render its consecration,
which we duly chronicled yesterday, an event of
considerable importance.
Here, in an age to which the characteristic of
selfishness is generally ascribed, we have a private
gentleman, out of his own resources, pumhastng the
site of an old conventual establishment, erecting
thereon a fabric, in style similar to the former build-
ing, furnishing large funds for its endowment, as a
college to educate and send forth missionaries of the
church of England, procuring to the collegiate body
for which he has thus provided, a corporate character,
and then assigning the whole over to the administra-
tion of the church, of which he is a pions mem-
ber: all at a cost, it is said, of nearly 40,0001.
to himself. In this act of private munificence
Mr. ALEXANDER HOPE rivals the examples of past,
benevolence which adorn those medieval times he
delights to recur to. Whether Mr. HOPE might not
have expended this large sum in a manner more ad-
vantageous to the object he had in view, had he been
less enamoured of that age, would in all probability
be a fruitless, as it might be deemed a hypercritical,
inquiry, inasmuch as, had it not been for his admira-
tion of its spirit, the college of St. Augustine

would not, we suppose, have been erected and
founded by him. But it is not supererogatory to sug-
gest that, designed as it is to propagate by missionary
efforts the creed of that church whose establishment
is founded on the ruins of the faith and the practices
of the middle ages in this country, it will be a serious
obstacle to the success Mr. HOPE aims at if the prin-
ciples of those times gain too great a sway in
the government of the new institution, or even,
let us add. over its discipline. This is the error that
will chiefly have to be guarded against by Bishop
COLERIDGE and his coadjutors—for the college has
from the moment its foundation-stone was laid been
an object of suspicion to a large, perhaps the largest,
party in the church.
Their fears must, indeed, have been somewhat
calmed by the course Mr. HOPE has (as reported)
pursued, and by the sanction their own cherished
patron, the new Archbishop of CANTERBURY, has
given to the college. Mr. Holes connexion with
the Puseyite section of the church is notorious;
and by that body its erection and foundation
have been regarded as one of the bright, st mani-
festations of the spirit they cherish, and the practices
they hold forth for example. As, however, its com-
pletion approached, Mr. HOPE appears to have be-
come more and more penetrated with the great-
ness of his own object, and to him been more
and more anxious to remove any objection that could
militate against its complete success. He accordingly,
it is stated, left the principles on which it should be
governed to the judgment of the Archbishop of CAN-
TERBURY, by whom its statutes have been approved,
and to whom full power as visitor is given. And, by
the part Ifs grace took in the consecration on Thurs-
day, he is understood to testify that the institution is,
in hie opinion, worthy of the church irrespective of
parties.
It remains, therefore, for the warden and officers
to justify the confidence which has thus been reposed
in the college. That they are competent by piety,
learning, and skill in ecclesiastical training, no one
who knows them doubts. But the part some of
them have taken in the discussions and practices
which have disturbed the church, their connexion
with those who were the principal disturbers,
their selection from the high—perhaps the highest
—panty, will all cause their proceedings, their
mode of tuition, and their recommendation of
persons for the missionary office to be very closely
watched and very jealously scrutinised. In truth, it
wiil require the very greatest discretion, the very great-
est prudence, and much forbearance to establish the Col-
lege of SL Augustine in the confidence of the church-
There is something in its very name that will dispose'
many to regard it with positive dislike ; there is
something in its associations that will rouse the jea-
lousy of more; there is an amount of hostility to
Puneyism that will create feelings of suspicion on the
part of a larger number than its founder may appre-
hend. But there is also a fund of common sense and
of justice in this country that will enable the College
of St. Augustine to disregard all unreasonable appre-
hensions, all mere sectarian dislikes, all Exeter-hall
oratory, if its results are at all commensurate with
its design. And on these it must chiefly rely.
When we look at the munificence of such persons
as Mr. Hore, Miss Buittierr COUTTS, and the QUEEN
DOWAGER, in the cauir of church extension; when
we see in every district into which we may roam new
and handsome churches and schools springing up;
when we look over the subscription lists of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Church
Missionary Society, the National School Society, and
the other societies connected with the church; when
we reflect that a new ecclesiastical establishment has
for all practical purposes been founded in Scotland;
and when we know that the various voluntary denomi-
nations of the three kingdoms, including the Roman
catholic church of Ireland, are supported by, if not
spontaneous contributions, by contributions over
which the law has no control, we may
well doubt whether the present age does
not render, according to its means, quite
as much for the propagation of religion as
any past century—perhaps more. The spirit of
our contributions is more utilitarian, and for that
reason their fruits are less glaring to the eye; but
they are more substantial, we will add, far, fur more
beneficial. Let no one, then, fear to contrast the
liberality of the present ago in the promotion of reli-
gion with any past age. It may be inadequate to the
necessities of the case, but it is unrivalled by past
example. These necessities create a perennial de-
mand, and that demand, joined to the form in which
the contributions are given, forbid those accumulations
and that increase of revenue which are to be seen in
religious and educational charities of older foundation.
liut we may search in vain, we apprehend, for larger
donations to the church of which they are members
than those of Mr. ALEXANDER HOPE and Miss
COUTTS.