The Express.
London, England, 1848-01-21 00:00:00

machinery by which journals are distributed in this
country. This machinery consists of agents, who I
receive a profit on the sale and supply et newspapers.
With these sgeots the dear newspapers are favourites,
very y, foe the venders make larger profits
on the ale of a single copy of a dear paper,
although the per oentsge allowed to the trade on the
cheap paper was great with reference to print.
We could point out numberless instances where
eountry gentlemen and others have „been unable to
obtain the Daily News, and who were forced to take
dear papers or take none at all, from being at the
mercy of newspaper agents. Ot course there are
many highly-respectable news agents who supply the
Daily News as regularly as any other newspaper.
We are speaking merely of the obstruction, in the
way of progress and enemas spinet which a cheap
paper has to contend.
In addition to these obstacles, raised by the machi-
nation of rivals, and by the apathy and indifference of
the public, are those which proceed from govern-
ment and its fiscal system. Government shares
with the public the tendency to worship fore@
—to fling its favour to the strong and the already
successful, with the same disregard for principle or
political bearingi which, for the present, is the charac-
teristio of all.

But what weighs heaviest upon young newspaper
enterprise is the taxation, which meets and drags. it
down at every step. It first doubles the price
of paper, and then trebles that again with a stamp
duty, to return once more with inexorable rapacity
to tax the chief use which the public make of a paper,
and that peculiar portion of a newspaper value by which
the cheap enterprise must live. We have dwelt, how-
ever, in former numbers on the hardship of the paper
duty, the stamp duty, and the advertisement duty, the
latter the most severe upon us, since it deprives us of
a class of advertisers that would naturally flack to
publicity in our columne, if the inexorable taxman did
not menace and mulct their wants and means by the
same ruse as the wealthiest.

The journal itself, in the stamp duty, iatreated with
equal unfairness, being made to pay a penny for its
condensed universality of news, whilst the Times'
I pays bir; a penny for its immense double-
'sheet, and its thousands of pounds worth of
advertisements, and but one halfpenny on a supple-
ment. This is simply the old system of helping
monopoly to " thrive," putting the heaviest burden on 1
the new competitor, and deterring capitalists from in-'
vesting money in an enterprise, of which the aim is
to spread knowledge, excite discussion, cultivate and
enlighten the public mind.
All these drawbacks and difficulties we fully state
and frankly admit, not as a proclaiming of weakness
or an excuse for abandoning the struggle, but as an
incitement to the public to use their best efforts in
favour of a cheap press, of which, whatever our lack
of talent or our other defects, we have at least the
merit of being the champion and the standard. We
are still full of confidence and hope. The circulation
of the /May News is double the circulation of any
paper, with the exception of the universal Times—
on this point we may speak more plainly hereafter.
We here merely express the resolve to bide our time,
and redouble our energies to preserve public support,
I by meriting public approbation and respect.