The Sun.
London, England, 1853-07-04 00:00:00

THE ADVERTISEMENT DUTY.

( From the Timet.)
After a week of long speeches and late nights on
the Government of India, the House of Commons
on Friday descended to the more domestic question
of the advertisement duty. In matter of fact,
though it seems almost an offence to state it, the
broad sheet that lies fresh on the table of every
educated Englishman every day of his life occupies
a much larger share of his interest and attention
than the whole Indian Peninsula. India, however,
is a subject for declamation, and conies to a divi-
sion once a-week or so, with abundant notice, and
with very little probability of any member voting
or not voting by mere mishap. While it is -under
discussion members become deliberate, ponderoAis,
and grave, acquire the pace of elephants and the
air of nabobs—postpone a visit to the country, for
the duty of voting, and believe the vote, when they
give it, as solemn an affair as passing the Sutlej or
deposing a Mogul. After a week of this heroic
rythm, a " Committee on Customs, &c., Acts," as
it is expressed in the orders of the day, is a very
pedestrian affair, and members who have been on
stilts a whole week do not easily adjust themselves
to it, but trip a little, and make a few false steps.
So, at least, it happened on Friday evening. In
the proceedings of the above-mentioned committee
the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved :—" That
from and after the sth day of July, 1853, in lieu
of the duty now payable on advertisements, shall
be paid :—For in respect of any advertisement
contained in, or published with any gazette or
other newspaper, or any other periodical paper,
or in or with any pamphlet or literary work, 6d."
In place, of this , paragraph Mr Mibieribaori
had given long notice of a motion to substi-
tute the words—" And that all duties charge-
able on advertisements be repealed in ac-
cordance with a resolution of this house of the
14th day of April last." This explicit and long-
prepared amendment was accordingly moved
in due form, and there ensued a debate, the result
of which was, that the amendment was negatived'
by a majority of 109 against 99—a very good num-
ber considering that the house had divided on the
India Bill at 3 a.m. that morning, and a ball at
the Palace was impending. But now ensued one
of those absurdities which we can never understand,
and which contrast very strangely with the thirty-
two folio pages of orders, notices of motions, &c.,
relating exclusively to Teneris, 10 die Julii, 1853,
printed by order of the house for its own guidance,
and now lying before us. After the above vote, in
a house of 208 members, come to about 7 o'clock,
nearly half the members present ran off to their
dinners and the other festivities of the evening.
No sooner was the house sufficiently thinned than
Mr. Craufurd moved an amendment, whereof no
notice whatever is to be found in the above men-
tioned 32 folio pages of notices, &c., " to substitute
for the word ' sixpence' the cipher 0." The mo-
tion required two divisions—on the first of which
Government was beaten by 68 against 63 ; and on
the second by 70 against 61. Thus the 77 mem-
bers who a few minutes before had left the house,
after doing their duty as they thought, and assist-
ing at a final settlement of the question, might hear
within an hour that their vote had been reversed, i
and the advertisement duty had been wholly re-
pealed.
For our own part, we have only to say that the
second thoughts of the house were better than
the first, and that the wisdom of Parliament, in
this instance, did not lose by the subtraction of
that moiety which went off to dinner. But we
cannot, for the life of us, see why Mr. Gladstone
ever departed from his original proposition to re-
peal the duty altogether ; why, having departed
from it, he did not take the usual precautions to
carry his altered resolution ; and why, with all
this parade of notices printed in barrowloads by
the house every evening, an amendment, moved
with notice, was rejected, and, immediately after-
wards, an amendment to precisely the same effect,
moved without notice, was carried. All this sounds
mighty ridiculous, as if chance or jockeyship had
much more to do with the decisions of Parliament
than is generally imagined. In this case the
chance is a happy one. There is no denying the
truth of Mr. Milner Gibson's oft-repeated argu-
ments on the subject. Indeed, we will venture to
say, that but for the dire necessity which drove
Pitt to get money where and how he could, and but
for the desperate ingenuity inspired by that occ-
sion, we should never have heard of a duty on
advertisements, and the idea would not even
have occurred to the most speculative financier.
Unquestionably, the tax is a great restraint on
trade • unquestionably, it is very unequal, pressing
equally on the sale of an estate worth half-a-million
and on the announcement that a girl of all-work
wants aplace ' • and pressing equally also on an adver-
tisement of which 40,000 copies are distributed all
over the world, and on one which scarcely attains
a metropolitan circulation of 1,000. It never was
our place to ask to be taxed, any more than it is
the place of fishes to ask to be fried ; but, on com-
paring the amount of financial depredation inflicted
on us and on our neighbours, we certainly did feel
that they were ill-used in having to pay the same
duty as ourselves on advertisements, which were
not of the same value because not so extensively
read, in their papers as in ours.
From what Lord John Russell says, it appears
that this immediate reversal of a vote, besides its
intrinsic absurdity, stands no small danger of
defeating itself, and acting quite contrary to the
wishes of the contrivers. As the Chancellor of
the -Exchequer's resolutions are for the reduc-
tion, not the abolition of taxes, the abolition
of the advertisement duty can only be effected
by a bill brought in for that particular purpose ;
and, should that bill be thrown out, which is by
no means improbable, especially at this late period
of the session, the only result will be that the
advertisement duty will remain at the present
rate of Is. 6d. This view of the entanglement
only increases our surprise that Mr. Craufurd's
motion was in order. The Speaker settles that
it was in order, and his authority is indisput-
able ; but it would tax the highest Parliamentary
intelligence to say precisely in what state the
question now stands. We only trust the reduction
of the duty is not perilled by attempting too
much. We have a right also to express our hope
that Mr. Gladstone's often declared intentions
with regard to the other burdens on the press may
not be imperilled by this vote. The gentlemen of
the Manchester school hold that newspapers ought
to have the utmost legislative encouragement up to
a certain size, beyond which they are to be freely
consigned to the tender mercies of the Exchequer.
They have always avowed with the most natural
feeling and the most praiseworthy candour, that
they elo not like a newspaper bigger than them-
selves. We believe that the ideal of a " good and
safe" paper, in the mind of Messrs. Cobden and
Bright, is one with a circulation of about 10,000—
never more than that—with a good many small
shilling advertisements, a financial dissertation, se-
veral reports of meetings at which these two gentle-
men had spoken, no leading articles, and nothing
to show any political bias, except a general ten-
dency to cheeseparing. Such is the third rate
journal to which these gentlemen look with hope as
the middle class of literature, and the future
saviour of the country. On this point they and
the public are not yet agreed ; and we really hope
the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not be misled
into any measures calculated to give these third-
rate journals the monopoly desired for them by
their great free trade patrons.

(From the Morning Chronicle.)
The question of the advertisement duty is not of
vital importance, and the Exchequer will not be-
come bankrupt if, in deference to even an irregular
expression of the opinions which seem to prevail in
the House of Commons, the impost be altogether
abandoned. The complaint of the inequality of the
tax, although undeniably just, might be extended
to many other portions of our financial system. The
assertion that it is a tax on knowledge, even if it
were true, only amounts to a statement that duties
on consumption interfere with the enjoyments of
the taxpayer. No Chancellor of the Exchequer
can arbitrate among the different tastes which lead
men to require taxable commodities. The demand
for tea or beer may be as innocent and as reason-
able as the wish to read a newspaper, or to an-
nounce the publication of a new book. The most
distinctive grievance connected with the adver-
tisement duty consists in the exemption of pla-
cards and 'announcements of every kind, except
those which are circulated by journals. Lord
Palmerston is, it seems, about to make a descent
on the advertising vans, and to sweep the living
sandwiches, as Mr. Gladstone calls them, from
the streets ; but still the hoardings, the cabs, and
the railway stations will compete with newspapers
on the privileged terms once attributed to that
creature of fiction—the untaxed foreigner.
All indirect taxes affect the dealer in the articles
on which they are levied, even more immediately
than the consumer ; and in the case of the adver-
tisement duty, the proprietors of newspaper are
injured in their trade to a larger extent than
any individual advertiser. Yet the Chancellor