The Sun.
London, England, 1855-02-22 00:00:00

Imeat, hosvevor, could not but excite one's wonder and
surprise. We, were, it was true, engaged in a war, but
really war app eared to be nowhere carried on with such
vigour as in our own Cabinet ; and if our statesmen were
to go on slaying themselves and destroying each other in
that way, we nem t soon resort to a Foreign Enlistment
Act to secure a Ministry. (Laughter.) The chair-
man had told Ole 1m that there were certain clauses
bearing a character of compromise. But he had always
said, "Let us do away with the compulsory stamp
—let us abolish the security system—the system as-
sumed that when a man began the business which admi-
nistered most to moral and social progress, and to the
advancement of civilisation—which assumed that such a
man was going to be a scoundrel—that he was going to
libel somebody, and that, therefore, he must give secu-
rity that he must not carry on the trade of a literary
assassin. (Cheers.) Let us see an end to that legisla-
tion which sprung from that dark political age of our
country when Castlereagh ruled the land, and when the
gagging acts and the Six Acts were passed. Let them
sweep away the laws that for a century and a half had
accumulated to stifle the press. Let them do this, and,
he would not quarrel with the measure, though it might
contain a few clauses bearing the character of a com-
promise and adapted to conciliate existing interests.
He believed, however, that the existing newspaper press
set a higher value upon the privilege of repeated
transmission by post than it was justly entitled to.
He cared not whether the carriage of half an ounce more
or less for a period of ten years was allowed to an exist-
ing newspaper so long as the main object.of that asso-
ciation was gained ; and, indeed, he would be glad to
buy off the opposition of a powerful journal upon these
terms'. It was a delusion to suppose that the bill
would seriously diminish the privilege of repeated free
transmission of newspapers througliqhii-poat now-one
joyed, became the man who paid sd. for a paper bought
it not for himself only, but for the use of several other
Persons, residii,g at a distance from him, and who had at
Present to wait three or four days for the news ; whereas
the cheaper newspopere that would be started under the
and every man could atFord to have his penny newspaper
regime Would he imeeediately accessible to everybody,
for himself. Noleady iv America, where the press was
thoroughly popularise:4y p'ould buy a newspaper a day
old at any price, and with .a free press in this country
no intelligent American wocld be startled by seeing any
such notices in the shop window,.; as "yesterday's Times
at half price." In New York the carpenter, the brick-
layer,
and the shipbuilder had hie daily newspaper
brought as regularly to his door as had our great
merchants and bankers in Lombard-strea ; and after
the penny stamp was remitted he believed the Times
would enjoy as great a circulation as it did now, because
there would always be a demand among the wealthier
and more limited classes for the high-priced papers ;
and it would be no injury to those papers if a
cheaper article was provided for a larger class
Of readeis who were not ire the habit of reading a
daily paper at all, but who, if their taste were first culti-
vated might by and.by aspire to peruse the dearer and
better journals. The hon. gentleman went on to observe
that since he had entered the arena of that movement
they had been assailed by individual organs of the press
in a manner for which he was totally unprepared.
Newspaper conductors who had co-operated with him in
the agitation against the corn laws, the moment that
free trade in newspapers was proposed, instantly forgot
their principles and turned Protectionists—(laughter)—
but he believed that in a few years' time these persons
would feel precisely as the landowners and farmers had
done, that they had taken a very shortsighted view of
their own interests in this matter. (Hear, hear.) The
press, which was incessantly criticising the conduct of
public men, was itself remarkably sensitive when any
one touched upon the fallibility of its writers and con-
ductors. He himself once ventured, at a mechanics' in-
stitute in Yorkshire, in attempting to persuade some
high Conservatives to allow newspapers to be admitted
to the reading-room, to remark that the leading
edibles were not the whole or the most important
part of a paper, but that it was the facts they nar-
rated that he highly valued; when he was instantly
pounced upon as having attacked leading articles
generally, and told by his critics that it was all very
well for him to want to gag the press—that no doubt he
would like to put an end to the leader', because it was
by them that he was trimmed up from, time to time
when he needed it. (A laugh.) Now, he was not par-
ticularly this-skinned, and, next to the late Mr. O'Con-
nell, he was, perhaps, the best abused man in the coun-
try ; and yet, he could say that in proportion to the
efforts he had made to liberate the press from the fiscal
burdens which weighed it do-vn was his desire to see that
free and fearless criticism of the conduct of public men
and of public measures to which be was absurdly charged
with being inimical. (Rear.) If the law now in ope-
ration in France, by which newspaper writers were re-
quired to append their names to their articles, were
attempted to be introduced into England he should
stoutly oppose it ; but he was not quite sure that politi-
cal writing would not be as salutary in its influence
when it was known who it was that conducted the
journal in which it appeared as it could be when anony-
mous. In conclusion, he had sufficient confidence in
the intelligence and morality of his countrymen to be-
lieve that in the long Tun the best conducted and most
useful newspapers would be those which would thrive
best under that system of free trade which in less than
a month hence he hoped to see established among us.
(Cheers.) The hon. gentleman sat down by moving the
second resolution, viz. : .
" That this meeting has heard with satisfaction that a
bill was introduced last night by the Government to abo-
lish the compulsory newspaper stamp and the security
By;tem, and to admit all printed matter to a cheap rate of
postagd."

Mr. J. BRfSHT, M.P., in seconding the resolution,
said that he had asking himself why they had met
that night, because t:_ley had heard that
coattnger
the battle
h
tle
ad
bad
bt-en won, and that the ei'lemY, if not
been converted, and had e over to their side. Still.
there were tine persons (thoug::, hanepaislyu,thete yhcould
not do much fides who thought the 2'ra of
Go-
vernment would not aclrance the public ,a"-,Pal, but he be-
lieved they entertained this opinion because the did not
properly consider the subject. The hon. gentleman il'en
proceeded to treat the question of taxation upon news-
papers in a commercial point of view. He reminded the
meeting that, on the newspaper sheet, which cost three
farthing; there was imposed a tax of one farthing, which
was equal to 3,3 per cent. Then there was another stamp
of one penny', or 133 per cent., so that by the time the
paper was damped for the machine the sheet of paper
ben a tax upon the original cost of the manufacture of
:11-) less than 166 per cent. This was a pressure of taxa:
ation upon an article of commerce, which was lisrdly
paralleled by the imposts levied on other manufactures.
And until the measure of last session, if a respectable
Iteonin offered herself to be engagel as a cook, or if a
poor w,i.doW*o boy wished to obtain an engagement to run
errands fur his daily bread, and published an advertise-
ment to that effect in a newspaper, he was laid hold of
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and charged 18d.
for the paragraph. (Hear, hear.) Running down
column after column of a newspaper. they could not
calculate the actual percentage imposed by the Govern-
ment upon the original cost of the paper, regarding
the matter entirely as a branch of industry. (Hear,
hear.) Articles bad appeared against the proposed
measure in the Dispatch and Examiner, and papers
;11,it bad got a little shame with them, and that did
not tike to write anything against them, transferred
those absurd articles into their columns, as if they
could do any datrriaae to the great cause in which they
were engaged, They did not pretend to benefit the
existing newspapers, though if they got a benefit
they would be g-2 o,d of it ; but there were many
suppressed newspaper ec;tors ; there were many in that
meeting—there was no trade 9n which so many disasters
had fallen as on the newspaper tri;:le—
and they would
call those men from their obscurity, ru,d, may be, from
their ruin. (Cheers.) Their were many no studying
in college who had got minds and hearts to instru:t their
fellowmen, and they would call them from some task Cf
badly-paid labour, and place them on a high and broad
platform, where men could see and follow them, and no
Chancellor of the Exchequer, no Board of Inland Re-
venue, should repress their efforts to serve their country-
men. (Cheers.) They had an increasing population, won-
derful industry, vast wealth, churches and chapels on
every hand, and books, too, the finest and the best in the
world ; they had parliamentary discussions for six months
of the year on every kind of subjects, and yet it must be
admitted that a very large portion of their population
were in a condition of gross and pitiable ignorance.
(Hear.) They had schools, too, and the children even of
the humblest classes found their way at some perioJ or
other to some kind of schools. It had always occurred
to him as a curious thing, that the number of men and
women who could read did not bear a fair proportion to
the nureherof boysand girls that were at school; but when
they considered that those children on leaving school re-
turned to a home where books were scarcely to be seen,
they could not wonder that a great proportion of them,
by the time they had grown up, had entirely forgotten
what they had learned with so much difficulty at school.
He wanted, therefore, this great and universal instru-
ment of education to be turned on for every house, like
water and gas, conveying light for the mind and
`he soul. He desired that something should
theipopulationr
rt different
e t.ri:is gloryilgl,saprodrnefo . from
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