The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-18 00:00:00

kind of tax which we ought not to encourage in a comfier •
cial country; for is it possible to conceive anything more
unwise than to stand in the way of communications be-
tween men that cause commercial transactions, and that
operate favourably upon the Customs and Excise revenue.
Talk of the inequality of the tax,—l know that it has been
frequently mentioned that a poor servant maid has to pay
as heavy a toll to the State for making known that she
wants a place as a peer of Parliament has to pay to the
State for making it known that he has an estate to dispose
of. (Hear, hear.) Everybody is aware of this gross
inequality ; but the strength of the argument, I contend,
lies against the tax altogether. I say it is tax only worthy
of a barbarous nation. (Cheers.) It is a sort of short.
sighted attempt to get a little revenue at the expense of
the most valuable interests of the country, and probably
destroying, in other ways, a great deal more revenue than
it creates. I call upon the house to record their vote that
the advertisement duty is an unjust tax—is an unequal
tax—and strikes at the root of those communications of
mutual want which are necessary for the progress and the
welfare of the country. I call upon them to vote that it is
a tax upon calamity ; that it is a tax which is not capable
of being enforced even as it now stands upon the statute-
book ; and that it ought to be repealed. (Hear, hear.)
No reduction do I ask for. (Cheers.) If you merely re-
duce this tax, you leave these inequalities and this unfair
competition completely unredressed. (Hear, hear.) You
will find it impossible to impose your reduced advertise.
ment duty upon the man who paints the pavement of the
streets with his advertisement, or the man who goes about
with his advertisement van, or the man who advertises in
these catalogues. You cannot enforce your tax, however
small, against these classes ; therefore I call upon you, in
justice to the newspaper press of this country, which
ought not to be exposed to this unequal struggle, to repeal
this tax. The advertisement fund is the fund which forms

the legitimate support of the newspaper press. The news-
paper supplies publicity ; the advertiser buys publicity,
and has the article which ho requires. Therefore, I say,
do not take him away from the newspaper press. On the
contrary, for the sake, I should say, of the independence
of the newspaper, for the sake of those men who are strug-
gling against great difficulties to give valuable organs of
intelligence to the country, relieve them from this unequal
contest. Long as this tax has lasted, it is not too late to
do them an act of justice ; though many of them, I believe,
are so far injured by the unjust system to which they have
been exposed, that probably it would be beyond thewer
of this house to recover them from their position. (Hear,
hear.)

It is a matter of real congratulation to all the friends
of true progress, that the house was not to be diverted
by the plausibilties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
who did his utmost more suo to mystify his hearers—from
doing, as far as in them lay, an act of substantial justice
to the great bulk of the tax-payers of this country. We
trust that may be a lesson for the Coalition Government ;
it surely must strike the most obtuse of their supporters,
that for a paltry amount of 178,000 per annum, it in
bad policy to have lost the opportunity of conferring on
the country a great and beneficial change, and to hay
incurred, what they are not so strong as to be well abl
to bear, a mortifying and ominous defeat.