The Sun.
London, England, 1851-01-31 00:00:00

THE TAX ON PAPER.

DEPUTATION TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE
EXCHEQUER.

Yesterday, the deputation-, appointed at the con •
ference of delegates from all parts of the country, had
their interview with the Right Hon. the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, at the office of the Treasury, in
Downing-streat, for the purpose of representing the
grounds of their demand for the repeal of the tax on
paper. The deputation comprised Mr. T. B. Cromp-
ton, Mr. Chambers (of Edinburgh). Mr. Charles
Knight, Mr. Charles Dickens, Mr. P. Borthwick, Mr.
John Cassell, Mr. Baldwin (of Birmingham), Mr.
Towle (of Oxford), &c.
The deputation was introduced by Mr. CROMPTON,
who opened the interview by stating that he came
there to give a plain and simple manufacturer's
statement as to the oppressive operation of the tax
on paper. The position in which the paper manu-
facturers of this country were placed had now become
so desperate that be thought even, politically speak-
ing, the Chancellor 'of the Exchequer must allow
that some alteration must be made. As a paper
manufacturer, he had no hesitation in saying that
it was impossible to check frauds upon the re-
venue ; and he did not think it creditable for a
country like this to exact a duty—he would not
say at the point of the bayonet—but the Govern-
ment was driven, and particularly in Ireland, to en-
force its payment by the aid of the police; and he
believed that by-and-by the same course would have
to be resorted to in England. The temptation to
fraud was almost irresistible, and the fraudulent trader
was fast driving every fair trader out of the field.
The gross revenue from the paper tax was represented
zo be 800,0001, but deducting the drawback on the
exports and consumption of the Government offices,
he estimated that the net revenue from this impost
could not 'exceed 700,0001. That sum was not much
to forego out of the three millions or three millions
and a half surplus which the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer was believed to have to spare. Ile had been
forty years in the paper trade, and for thirty-eight
years of that period he had been a large importer of
the raw material ; but now the American, whose ma-
nufacture paid no duty, came and took away the very
refuse from our mills in this country and manufac-
tured it into paper, -which competed with the paper of
this country, which was subjected to an Excise duty of
no less than 300 per cent. It was true the American
bad to pay the freight of his raw material ; but that cost
only one farthing per pound, whilst the Excise duty
paid by the British manufacturer amounted to seven
farthings per pound. From this simple cause the
paper mills of this country were becoming closed one
by one. He had applied to the chairman of the Board
of Excise, on behalf of the trade, for a return of the
number f mills at work, and the number closed; but
Mr. Wood declined to comply with that request.
Now he (Mr. Crompton) was satisfied that if the tax
was taken off, within ten years it would cause at least
double the present number of persons to be employed,
than were now dependent on the paper manufacture.
The injustice of the tax might also be seen from the
fact that it amounted to 50 per cent. on wrapping
paper; and he could say, that in certain cases he bad
had orders for such papers from foreigners, and in
those cases the foreigner had the drawback; so that
the English purchaser of wrapping paper had to pay
50 per cant. more than the foreign consumer for the
same article.—(Hear, hear.) The large consumers
in this country bad no idea of the amount they
paid to the Government. Some thought the duty
might be about 5 per cent. of the price ; but the fact
was, it was 50 per cent., or 5001. out of every 1,0001.
they spent upon the article, that was seized by the
Government. For his part, he believed that the re-
peal of the paper duty ought to take precedence of
the repeal of the window- tax—obnoxious as the latter
was—because, for every additional man the repeal of
the window-tax would provide employment for, the
repeal of the paper duty would employ fifty. He
(Mr. Crompton) had lost several of his best workmen,
who were going to America ; and if the tax wasccon-
tinued, he was sure the manufacturers' fast-wasting
capital would soon be all gone from so unequal a com-
petition with the American, and he would not be able
any longer to employ his men.
Mr. CHAMBERS next read to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer the series of resolutions agreed to at
the meeting held at the King's Arms, Palace-yard, on
the preceding day, and then proceeded to repeat the
same arguments which be had adduced when second-
ing one of the resolutions in question. He said that
he and his brother, having for the last twenty years
been engaged in the publication of cheap and improving
literature, accessible to the intelligent and aspiring me-
chanics of our large towns, had had ample proofs of the
injurious operation of the tax on paper in crippling all
important efforts in that field of enterprise. A pub-
lication of theirs, with a circulation of 80,000 a week,
was obliged to be abandoned because they found that
the Government had swallowed up all the profit.
They attempted another publication one halfpenny
dearer, and it circulated from 30,000 to 40,000
weekly. On the paper used for it they paid 8001. a
year duty, which was exactly the same they had paid
for authorship. This periodical also they had had
to give notice of their intention to stop, to the great
regret, he was warranted in saying, of an intelligent
and respectable circle of readers. The operation of
this duty was to leave the publisher no fund for re-
munerating suitably literary talent. Again, a rise in
the price of paper was taking place; and this was be-
cause the American importers were sweeping all rags
out of the markets of this country, and were
carrying them from the Clyde almost every
week in ship loads. The English papermakers, there-
fore, could not purchase the raw material, and
if this continued it would be impossible to go on with
cheap publications, that would perforate and reach
down into the recesses of poverty and ignorance. He
thought the Government should do everything in its
power to encourage that growing class of healthful
and useful popular literature that had sprung up
during the last 20 years, and that had done so much
good in elevating the people.
Mr. C. KNIGHT said, that to obtain an improving
and highly useful species of literature to be as cheap,
and therefore to go into the same quarters, as the
immoral and debasing literature issued from the press,
there was only one course to pursue, and that was to
obtain the assistance of the very best authors. He
had paid about 100,000/. for authorship in the course
of 20 years; and with the tax upon paper it was im-
possible for excellence in literature to compete with
low publications paying little or nothing for author-
ship, being made up very much of translations of vile
and demoralising French novels, and yet written with
great ability. He would give an illustration. Take
the case of a work like " Macaulay's History of Eng-
land." Supposing he paid 1,0001. to the author, and
calculated on a sale of only 1,000 copies, the author-
ship would cost him 11. per copy ; but if be sold
40,000 copies, the authorship would only cost him 6.1.
per copy. But then came the paper duty, which, on the
issue of 1,000 would indeed be only 6d. a copy, or 28/.
in all ; but on the 40,000 it would still be 6d. per
copy, and would thus absorb 1,0001, which was ex-
actly the amount that was paid for the authorship.
Then the duty paid on the paper used curtailed the
fund which ought to go to pay authors of first-rate
excellence for works which ought to be accessible
to all.

Mr. TOWLE, paper-maker, of Oxford, then detailed
various cases of ruin to the tenantry of paper-mills in
that county, where, he said, he was the only paper-
manufacturer left. All this calamity he ascribed to
the operation of the paper-duty, and he said he would
also have been engulphed in the same ruin, but that
he possessed some property independent of his busi-
ness. He rejoiced at the glorious privilege he en-
joyed of whispering these facts into the Chancellor of
the Exchequer's ear. In fact he (Mr. Towle) was,
as far as Oxfordshire was concerned, "the last rose of
summer left blooming alone."—(Laughter.) All the
rags having been bought up in his county, he had
introduced straw for the manufacture of paper boxes,
such as those imported from France. This straw he
could buy from the farmer for 30s. per ton, and thus
benefit agriculture at the same time that he benefited
himself, but then the Government stepped in and ex-
sated fourteen guineas from a ton of worked up raw
material, which was almost worthless originally, and
fur which he paid the farmer only 30s. Consequently
he was obliged to abandon the manufacture of these
boxes, because the enormous duty made it unprofit •
able, and yet they could be made at Boulogne free of
duty, and imported into England at a duty of only 10

per cent.
Mr. BALDWIN, paper-maker, of Birmingham, then
explained that the duty on paper used as button
boards and for wrapping heavy articles of Birming•
ham manufacture was very oppressive, and subjected
the British manufacture to an unequal competition in
the markets of Europe and America. Buttons, made
at Birmingham, were sold at skd. the gross, and no
less than a halfpenny each gross was charged for duty
on the button boards. This amounted to 10 per
cent., and when it was considered that the Govern-
ment of the United States placed 20 per cent. duty
on our manufactures, it was clear that Birmingham
would not be able long to compete under such ad-
vantages.

Mr. CHARLES DICKENS said, in the exercise of
"the glorious privilege" to which a previous speaker
had alluded, he also wished to make an observation
or two to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 11"
only expressed the conviction he gathered from
what he saw and heard every day, when he said
that by reducing the amount which it was possible for
publisheri to pay to authors, the paper duty conferred
a positive boon on the worst species of literature.
The publisher of pernicious works being, morally
speaking, the most abject and degraded, did not want
to pay for authorship a single farthing more than they
could help ; whereas the respectable publisher of
wholesome and useful literature who wished to pay
the author adequate remuneration, could make no
profit for himself in consequence of this duty. The
deputation had come before the Chancellor of the
Exchequer on a question of finance. Well, he (Mr,

JAN UARY 31,

tB5l

Dickens) wished to remark that we knew on the one
hand what this tax yielded, but we did not know what
it cost in the way of immorality or degradation,
Whether they used their own eyes and went into the
worst parts of tat town, or of the other large towns
of England, and there saw the thousands of demorali -
sing publications circulated, or whether they read the
reports of gaol inspectors and chaplains, they would
find that the dissemination of low publications was at
the root of much of the pauperism, crime, and many
of the other social evils of the country. He would
respectfully suggest, therefore, that the Government
got little by this tax but odium, and although he
could not agree with Mr. Crompton, that he would
prefer its repeal to the repeal of the window-tax, be-,
cause he believed the latter ,was chargeable with
mense social and sanitary evils, still he would submit
that they might repeal both.
Mr. SMITH, of Bingley, wished just to observe,
that the Americans not only took the raw material of
paper out of this country, but sent the manufactured
article into our own North American territory. Re-
move this duty, however, and the English manu-
facturer could advantageously compete with all the
world.

Mr. CROMPTON then banded in ninety-five memo-
rials, signed by upwards of 11,000 names, from vari-
ous parts of the country, praying for the repeal of the
tax on paper ; and expressed a hope that the Govern-
ment, by removing the duty, would supersede the
necessity for any further agitation or petitions on the,
subject.
Jhe CHANCELLOR Of the EXCHEQUER. then ad-
dressed the deputation. He said he had listened at-
tentively to the statements of the different gentlemen
who had spoken ; but, of course, they were aware
that he could not then give them any information as
to what his intention was. That privilege of whis-
pering into his ear which had been referred to, was
not, they were aware, confined to the manufac-
turers of paper alone; and next week, he believed,l
he was to see bodies of gentlemen who complained'
of having to pay taxes of almost every possible de-
scription. Before he made up his mind as to what
course to pursue be must, therefore, hear their
" whisperings," as well as those of the gentlemen
present.
The deputation then withdrew,

THE FOURTH ESTATE.—PAPER DUTY.
(From the Times.),
The press, we are told, by our flatterers, is the Fourth
Estate of the realm. If that be true of its power, it is
still more true of its insulation. Even in its moat com-
prehensive sense it is an estate, and therefore a clas►.
The result is, that while it can do everything for others,
and is the medium of all changes, good or bad, in the
community at large, it is almost utterly helpless for its
own good. That will partly account for the fact, that
though it provokes and collects all the complaints of
other tax-payers, and transmits them to the Government
and the Legislature, it is at this moment the most tax-
laden interest in the kingdom. The sheet before you,
good reader, is taxed up to the throat. The material is
taxed nearly 2d. per pound; the advertisements are
taxed is. 6d. a piece; and though the sheet before us is still
under the same roof as the printing machine, its publication,
to the distance of about a dozen yards, entails the stamp
duty of a penny. It pays all this assignable aed appre-
ciable taxation besides the nunieroua rates and taxes,
direct and indirect—customs, excise, assessed taxes, and
income•tax—incident upon our building, our servants,
and the many dutiable commodities they consume. How
is it that the universal friend of the distressed, the patron
saint of afflicted tax- Flyers, and the agitator-general
against all manner of grievances, cannot take better care
of itself than to groan under this heap of taxation? The
press must be a very wooden idol if, while thousands
exp.ct deliverance at his hands, it cannot help itself in a
strait. One reason, we suppose, is, that as the press has
always been the ♦oice that called the nation to war and
every other expense, so, like the trumpeter in the fable,
it must pay the penalty of its too successful exhortations.
But the chief cause of its burdened condition is its insu-
lation as a class. It can plead for others, but not for
itself.

This Fourth Estate, represented by a body of paper-
makers, publishers, writers, and editors, met on Wed-
nesday at an extempore hall of assembly in Palace-yard
to discuss their grievances, which they yesterday laid
before the Chancellor of the Exchequer. By some
hippy instinct they bad picked up a few score me-
morials which gave a sort of public cha-
racter to the movement, otherwise never did
anything look more like a class meeting.
In fact it was the fourth estate in all its majesty
—multifarious, jealous, divided, and presenting infinite
varieties from the trade," with its orthodox octavos, to
the amateur printer of the Working Man's Friend—
from the writer of our popular novels to the publishers
of our cheap miscellanies—from the man who makes
paper of his own cotton waste to the man who, like the
children of Israel, goes about looking for straw. Though
heterogeneous, it was still one; and when it marched
yesterday in solemn procession to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, he could hardly fail to think of it as of a
party of gentlemen come to ask for 800,0001. a year.
Indeed, some of them pay such large quotas of that sum
as to help, in spite of themselves, the inevitable illusion
that it is a class question. Messrs. Chambers, Charles
Knight, Hall, and the other proprietors of serials or pe-
riodicals, pay every year as much as would make pretty
fortunes divided between them and their writers. We
pay the moderate sum of 16,000/. a year, exactly a
fiftieth part of the gross sum raised by the duty. Now,
here is the difficulty and hardship of our case. We
can hardly ask for a remission of duty with a
decent face. The Times was not represented
in the deputation yesterday. Had it been, Sir
Charles Weod, who was evidently half worried, half
amused with the conference, might have said to our re-
presentative, "I can understand your objection to the
tax very well, for it amounts to a penchant for 16,0001.
a year over and above your present receipts." As far
as we can see—though the result might undeceive us—
this would be a true account of the matter. The paper
duty only amounting to a small fraction of a penny on
each paper, we should still be obliged to charge the
present fivepence to the public; while competition
would keep paper down at the present price, minus the
duty. How could we go to ask the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer fur the salary of a Lord Chancellor or an Arch-
bishop? Of course we shall be most happy to accept it,
and if it is possible to spend more money on the paper to
any purpose w e are ready to do so; but in the first in-
stance, at all events, it is asking for 16,0001. a year
Others are in the same case. Hence the unavoidable.
class character of the movement; hence the difficulty
there is in getting up a good popular movement against
the paper duty. Such a difficulty we presume there
must be, else more than a few thousand names would
have been collected to the memorials presented yesterday
to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In honest truth, and putting our own interests out of
the question—thinking, also, with Mr. C. Dickens that
the window tax is a degree worse than the paper tax—
we still believe the latter to be a very great evil. The
hardships stated yesterday by the manufacturers and
publishers almost surpass belief, were it not notorious
that some hundreds of paper mills have been totally
ruined by the duty and no longer exist, while cheap
periodicals of immense circulation and the best and
soundest matter have been stopped by this single item of
their cost. The public ought to know that in
cheap publications, dependent for success upon very
large issues, there is a direct antagonism between
the cost of authorship and the paper duty. With a
sale of 50,000 copies a publisher can afford to pay
his authors very handsomely and to employ great variety
of talent; but that circulation is not attainable unless
the raw material—the paper—be cheap. They who have
no commisseration for publishers will perhaps have some
for authors. Poor authors! Without caste, without
profession, without promotion—incapable of office, un-
known to the Treasury, unemployed, unennobled, unre-
warded, and, except in some rare instances, unpensioned
—there exists not a more pitiable class, though the
spread of education is continually adding to their num-
bers. As a general rule, their only hope lies in the re-
sources at the command of the publisher; but when the
Chancellor of the Exchequer steps in and levies 5,0001.
or 6,0001. from, say. the Art Journal, before it has
yielded one penny of profit to its enterprising proprietor,
what chance is there of artists and authors being paid
as they deserve? The poor fellow w hose profession is
his pen is not only excluded froth every department of
the public service, but actually robbed of that which is
his ,own—that capital which his pen bas created—
for he that taxes paper taxes the pen that gives it cur-
rency and value.

(From the Post.)
It will hardly, we presume, be disputed that the pri-
mary object of the financial statesman, whenever he
happens to be placed in a position to inaugurate any
modifications of taxation, which however cunningly de-
vised, cannot but be in some degree disagreeable and re
strictive, is to select for preferential abolition or reduc-
tion those taxes which are levied on manufactures, in
respect of which we have, both in domestic and external
markets, to struggle with foreign rivals, and which
operate restrictively on our ability successfully to
ncom-
pete with those rivals in quality and in coat of proq.negti., _
The Times, in urging the advisability of repetrvie
window duty rather than that which
deavoured, and we believe successfully endweesiv:
show, presses upon the manufacture of to
stand upon so
manufacturer—for we have not taken net so injurious, not merely to the intte,ru-eralr of the mere
of the community,
usrewd,anto.
narrow a ground—hut to the interes
or ignored this es-
appears entirely to have overlooked
sential and guiding principle.
Possibly it may
ped the observation of the
was involved in the weigh-
ing of the respi-etkve Times that this consideration
of windows and paper, for a
remission of excise possibly our contemporary
,
iurstog surpicion that the adoption of
may have had 11
this principle might ultimately lead to an unavoidable
e of
d competition.
!'barn once described
ar es
the
principle
0 ays
of
0
n of the
psoruotnelcnt.ee"
sheltering your domestic ma-
riuftietur, rs, whether in home or in external markets,
from being overwhelmed by the advancing tide of foreign
production. One ine de is to impose upon the importer
of the results of foreign industry and 'capital duties for
the enjoyment of the privilege of access to your own
markets, of such an amount as shall prevent his unfairly
underselling the domestic producer; and the other is to
enable the domestic producer, by the remission of any
duties which are peculiar to his branch of industry, and
which enhance to him the cost of manufacture, to bring
his produce into market at the lowes price of the world.
It is to the application of the principle of protection,
in its last-mentioned shape, that our cotton manufacture
owes, in a great measure, its present unexampled deve-
lopment and greatness. I: was not possible to protect
the British cotton-spinner by the imposition of Customs
duties on the import cf foreign commodities, nor was