The Sun.
London, England, 1854-05-17 00:00:00

with it when only 'first published. The music ksing than „
for which the money is paid in all instances, you will po• r_
16 or more pages of advertit
COIVe that, supposing emente to
be given with the music, the Musical Times would still con-
sist principally' of the music, which is what peoph I pay for.
am obliged by your offer to submit my represent atio as to
the board, and. I feel all the inconvenience of their , Dos' tion,
in having to ailminister a law which the judges are u nab le to
define, and which no Government has yet had either tl yep race
to repeal or the; courage equally to enforce. lam not s rith-
out hope that the present Government will adopt the gra( .eful
course and repeal these bad laws ; but if in the -meant ;ime
they are determined to make the existing laws respected,l they
would be more likely to succeed by prosecuting any of the
other 50 or 64 papers placed in precisely the same positic nas
the Musical Times, because ill-natured people will be a 3 to
think the selection more due to its being the property o f the
treasurer of the Active Association for the Repeal of al 1 the
Taxes on Knowledge, rather than to any pecgliarity I a-the
contents of the Musical Times requiring the enforcer nimt of
the law to begin with that paper.
" I am, Sir, your obedient servant, -
" ALFRED Nov 'UM.
" To J. Timm, Esq., Solicitor of Inland Revenue."
(Hear.) He (Mr. Gibson) believed, however, tl .at the
Aftisica/ Mikes was no newspaper at all, and, judging by
the past practice and written opinions of the B k)ard of
Inland Rev,anue, it certainly could not come wilt Lin that
category. In answer to a letter which had been ad idressed
to the board by Messrs. Robinson and rofton,ci of
tr
-
Wake-
field, dated the 2 Che
sth of February, 1851, t solit(
to this' effect :

" Inland Revenue, March 1., 1851. .
" Gentlemen,—lii answer to year letter
of the 25th ii It.,
I beg to say that any account of the markets_lionomtiace,Visbeti!
irven-
fully published in an unstamped paper
of accounts of dramatic performancesand such like, but any
other matter published in unstampeil papers will not be o ver-
looked. " I am, &c., " J. Ti: Lee
" Messrs. Robinson and Crofton, Silver-street, Waken eld."
He (31reGibson) held that the words "dramatic per form-
ate:see • and such like" included balls and concerts and
things of that description, and, if Mr. Timm said th at no
notice would be taken of balls and concerts in Wake field,
on what. principle w
uld he say that the Musical Tim( e a
to be affected :1;y• theoStamp Act ? (Hear, hear.) If p ec:vreO3
could iaot obtain accurate information upon such a
point
's this from tlae.office-s hof the Crown, where were th ey to
-
go for it es; This difficulty and uncertainty arose, net,. from
any fault on the part of the Board of Inland Reverares, but
-from the maintaining of a bad and ineffective system ,
which .was incapable of being administered with justice,
and which must bring the executive officers into bad re-
pute and cast undeserved odium upon them, (Hear, I 'tsar.)
He believed that Mr. Wood, the chairman of the Board
-of Excise, was prepared on ail occasions to administer the
laws ititrusted to his care with justice and impel eiaiity,
'and, in matters of penalties, with leniency to the F ;object, ;
-bat no man could administer sneh an unintellighhle sys-
tem of law as that connected with newspapers, surd, it was
not only to relieve the public, therefore, but tr, , relieve
theiroffic
ers from the odium which must ieecessarily
attach to them that he asked the Government •• to legislate
nponthie subject. He thbught that the ireetinces which
he had 'adduced fully made out a case for h' eslation, ar.d
that a bill without loss of time ought to be brought in for
the purpose of defining the law. He tress came to the
other head of his resolution—that the la'- was unequally
enforced---and he could bring abundant evidence to prove
that position. Theprectice had been, 'ne was sorry to say,
• not to enforce it against the strong, against the powerful
Londetispablishers—but to press 'it with undue severity
against the humble proprietor of a small newspaper in some
• provincial town. They had. hail in this matter one law for
Lenclon, and another for the country. Illustratioes of this
might at once ho given, On the 13th of Septemher, 1851,
the Boardof Inland I:...evernue sent a coininnuicitt ion to the
Racing Times, :taking for an explanation of its being pub-
lished without 3. stain P, and concluding with, " as the case
admiteof no delay whatever, your inimediele attention
must be giv en to this communication." To that letter Mr.
Thompson, the publisher, replied, that the Hewing Times
was essentially a class paper, such as their own officers hid
declared_ -to be exempt from duty. Mr. Timm rejoined,
that no person could entertain a doubt that, the paper was
a newspaper, and threatened prosecutions against the pub-
lishe r and all persons selling the same without a stamp.
Mr. Thompson then wrote the following letter :
" Racing Times-office, 291, ;,fraud, Sept. 20.
Sir,—l have not acted without high '.egal advice in the
matter of the publication of the Racinr, Times, and therefore
I have only to iuf Tni you that I am perfectly prepared to
support my right in a court of •aw ; I.nd when you require it,
I will furnish you with the name of my solicitor, who on my
behalf will accept notice of any proceedings you may think
proper to institute, and take the necessary steps in defence
thereof. I am, dic.,
J. Timm, Esq. `` JOHN TIIO3IPSON."
Here the correspontlenet teased. The moment that Mr.
Thompson spoke of h'is solicitor, Mr. Timm disappeared
from the field, and ao more was heard of the matter; but
31r. Thompson wee a powerful London publisher, living in
the Strand. Eh; case was that of the A thencruni, the Lite-
• Tare Gazette,, the Law Times, the Medical Gazette, and
others, all of. which would have joined with him in resist-
ing Mr. Them. When he had to deal, however, with a
penny paper like the Potteries free Press, published at
Stoke-upon-Trent, Mr. Tirnrn proceeded to the police-
office, took up the delinquent proprietor, and tined him
201. It was only just to add that the Government being
uneasy in their conseience, he supposed, had remitted that
:fine. If such were the inequality in the mode of insti-
tuting prosecutions, what should be said of the way in
which the security system was administered in this coun-
try? The 60th George 111., chip. 9, the act which related
to seceidties, was aimed against the small po iticel publica-
tions which, in those days were supposed to be dangerous
to the constitution and religion of the country. It bore
no restore nee whatever to periodical papers. Let the law
be car- ied out, and no one could publish a paper
under 6d. in price, and less than 714 square inches in size,
without entering into securities that he would not be
!guilty of publishing blasphemy and sedition. That law was
not carried out against the pea sons for whom it was in-
. tended—the writers of small political pamphlets—while it
was put in fcsree against people who published newspapers.
He held in his hand the Political Examiner, price ld.' a
weekly democratic journal, having a motto from the
writings of Mr. Macaulay, "If men are to wait for liberty
till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed
wait for ever. This was exactly one of the publications
which the law intended should give security, but nothing
of the kind was ever asked for it. The English Republic
. was another periodical cf a similar description which found
no securities. Here, however, was a publication which
sectually did find securities for 4001. that it would publish
nothing seditious or blasphemous, and what did the house
suppose was its heading? Outline of a Lesson for Girls on
the Ingredients of a Plumpudding. (Great Laughter.) He
should scarcely have thought that there was anything
very seditious in the ingredients of a plumpudding. But
he asked, were they prepared to allow all the publications
Whiele were contemplated by the law toescape the law, and
to heclude all those which never had been intended ? He
renaembered an admirable speech of his right hon. friend
th a Chief Commissioner of Woods upon the colonies,
ushich had been published as a pamphlet, and which he had
-read and gained much instruction from. If that speech
sold for less than 6d., and were less than 714 square in.:hes
in size, his right hon. friend might have been prosecuted
by the Attorney-General for having issued such a speech
'without having given his securities against blasphemy and
sedition. (A laugh.) If owing to its price, that case were
not quite in point, there was another which certainly was.
The noble lord the member for the city of London had
written a celebrated letter to the Bishop of Durham. That
letter had been published by Mr. Westerton, and sold at
Knightsbridge for sc. a thousand, so that the price was un-
doubtedly less than 6d., and its size was undoubtedly less
than 714 square inches. There could be no doubt then that
Mr. Westerton was liable at this time, if the Attorney-Ge-
neral did his duty, for having published a paper comment-
ing on Church and State without having given securities.
(Hear.) These cases showed the absurd position in which
the law stood ; and he respectfully appealed to the Attor-
ney-General to signalise his administration of the affairs of
his office by advising the Government not to allow a day to
pass without taking into consideration this foolish state of
things. The war in which we were engaged vas not a rea-
son for neglecting everything. We could not live upon war
alone. It was becoming somewhat tedious already, and he
?.toned that the Government did not mean them to under-
stand that they were to subsist entirely upon it, for they
must gain laurels in the fielilsof peace as well as in the field
of war if they intended to retain the confidence of the con-
stituencies of the c iuntry. (Hear ) He trusted that the
Government would enable their supporters before a general
election to have something to say in their behalf, that they
had endeavoured to repair the evils an.l anomalies which
he had mentioned, that they had had some regard for the
repeated appeals which had been made to them iu the cause
of education, and that they had aided in the production of
a cheap and unrestricted and a good press by freeing it from
all fiscal regulations and from all control except that of a
court of law for libel. (Hear, hear.) These were the
grounds on which he had taken the liberty of asking the
house to agree with his proposition that the law was ill-
defined and unequally enforced. He would tell hon. gen-
tleman opposite, whatever might be their opinions on these
matters, that Lord Derby. when they were pressed upon
him, had no doubt on them, and did not seem iu the
slightest degree to question the possibility of making the
law actual, and was also strongly impressed with the injus-
tice of allowing it to remain in its present state. (Hear.)
the correspondence which had only been laid on the
Labile yesterday, it appeared that petty persecution was
iseueedg cbartedheto a great extent' letter after letter was being
Board of Inland Revenue to publishers of
pa:ninneylapweri. (Altaic-telling them that they had infringed
them that tillheeY (M. not- state what law, but cautioned
What a cruel •Y irere on the point of incurring penalties.
°Mem this was,
salting from it, chea and, as a consequence !a-
men without capitalP publications fell into the hands of
care for violating theelra resPectability, men who did not
cution had a greater tendency Such a system of petty parse-
deter men of capital and r "ell than prosecutions to
and supporting the cheap Peetability from undertaking
a Zeal),literature of the country. He
wanted to see not only
good press. He did
not wish to give the monopoly to tloa
violate the laws and who held in no respect who were willing to
of the country. He sought to inducelieenthfe institutions
good morals
and character to undertake thesepublicatio:sw; tierh
iwould
not then be without their effect upon society
his sincere and conscientious belief that such publications
were were calculated to promote the best interests of .the
country, and would have more effect in educating thee
great masses of the people than would any education bill
which could pass through the house. (Hear.) There
'was another strange point which had been started by the
Board of Inland Revenue as to monthly publications,
which were not allowed to be published
excepting
at the
beginning of the month. The clause respecting this was
contained in subsequent acts had re-
the 60th of George 111., chap. 9. High legal
authority, however, believed that
eal
e d, had,he
the Attorney-General pealed this clause. The Boardof.t
re n
however, started it afresh, and if l
(Mr. Gibson) thoughta i notß revenueep
ought to take
into his consideration the repeal of absurd a law. He
so
begged hon. members not
to direct their attention to
embers
theories which he (Mr. Gibson) or other hon. m
might have started with regard to this subject, but to
look at the resolution which they were about to vote for,
which was merely to have the law clearly defined and
en-
forced with justice. He did not ask hon. members t 0
agree with his theories or the theories of others about
cheap newspapers, but he asked them to give him their
support on a proposition which he conscientiously believed
was divested of all party bias, and to which every sensible
man, having the interests of his country at heart, might,
without reference to party, give in his adhesion.
Mr. KINNAIRD, in supporting the resolution, said,
that after the able and lucid statement just made, it was
unnesessary for him to detain the house by entering into
the leg-+! view of the question. He merely wished to hear
leis testimony to the facts that hal been brought forward,
N0.),1 iiete from his own knowledge, that the large menu-
. -...frietairing town. were inundated with a claret' of low im-
- - iihrerspublications, which the people woub I rend. By the
lir.esigib state of the law th y were precluded frolu reading
theitwhich was interesting and useful, and were compelled
• tersiaddhs deal of trash and unwholesome matter, which
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