The Sun.
London, England, 1835-04-23 00:00:00

NEWSPAPER STAMPS.

PETITION from the INHABITANTS of the CITY of
LONDON AGAINST the NEWSPAPER STAMPS.

(From the Edinburgh Review of April.)

It is not easy to over-rate the importance of the question
which this petition brings before the public. Much discus-
sion has, indeed, at different times, taken place upon it ;
and the motions of Mr. Bulwer in the House of Commons
have had an excellent effect in calling the attention of the
country to the subject. But, after all, little interest has
yet been excited, and none in proportion to the magnitude
of the question. For this, several causes may be assigned,
but one is quite sufficient to explain it. The Newspapers
themselves,-and above all those published in London, with
one or two honourable exceptions, are against any repeal of
the tax, and have taken care to discourage all discussion
upon the matter. We should like to have seen a proposal
to repeal any other tax of two hundred per cent. upon the
prime cost of an article in universal demand, spoken of in
Parliament at intervals for four years, and made the subject
of public meetings ! What an outcry would all the libe-
ral journals have raised against it ! What appeals would
they have made to the peope ! What arguments and what
invectives would have filled their columns! How would
any minister have been attacked who ventured to maintain
the tax ! How sharply would any opposition have been
rebuked that remained inactive against it ! Yet the tax
of two hundred per cent. upon political intelligerice, upon
the very commodity in which these newspapers deal, never
obtains one word of blame or complaint ; and although it
is not reckoned prudent to write in its support, yet cold
water is thrown upon the discussion in every way, and all
who attempt to get rid of it are loaded with' constant,
though certainly very harmless abuse.
Whence arises this apparent opposing of their own inte-
rests in a body of men far from ignorant ? The answer is
easy. The great newspapers have a direct interest in main-
taining the tax. It tends to keep a multitude of competitors
out of the field ; and, above all things, it preserves to them
the power of charging a very high, almost an arbitrary,
price for advertisements. If there were twenty or thirty
papers in London, instead of five or six, it is plain that ad-
vertising would be reduced to perhaps a tenth of its present
exorbitant cost. It is also possible that the sale of the old
papers would fall off ; though of that there is much more
reason to doubt. The more respectable of the London
Journals, indeed, have had the honesty not to disguise this
truth. One or two, with a most praiseworthy disinteres-
tedness, have supported the repeal ; others have kept a sig-
nificant, but comparatively honest silence upon the subject;
while one or two have actually avowed that the removal of
the tax would he a benefit to them, and yet that they op-
posed it upon public grounds, against their own interest !
To the country it is quite indifferent whether the producers
of any necessary or useful article are pleased to prefer a
tax on it which raises its price three or four fold to all the
consumers of that article ; and the interests of the country
are what alone ought to be regarded by the Government and
the Legislature. The petition from a most respectable por-
tion of the citizens of London enumerates the evils of this
tax ; and we shall state them with some illustrations, the
rather because the newspaper press will continue for some
time to keep this important subject as much as possible out
of public view.
The price of a common newspaper, without stamp, is
three pence to buy : but the publisher sells it to the news-
man for twopence, and the tax is fourpence ; therefore the
necessary of political life—political intelligence—the very
staff of political life—is taxed two hundred per cent. To
the landlords who tax the staff of natural life twenty or
thirty per cent., perhaps more, this burden may appear un-
important ; to every reflecting man in the country it must
appear quite intolerable.
The petitioners most justly remark, that a Government
is bound to make all its acts generally and speedily known
to its subjects. Chiefly is it bound to make the proceedings
of the Legislature known. What can be more necessary
to good, or indeed to just and fair Government, than that
the subject should have early and accurate notice of the
laws he is to obey ? Those laws are changed from time to
time ; and what to-day is permitted is to-morrow made an
offence severely punishable ; or the civil right which this
year can be enforced at pleasure, is the year after not to be
enforced at all, because time has been suffered to run, which
but for a change in the law was quite immaterial. Can any
thing be more grossly unjust than to punish men for what
they cannot know to be crimes ; or to confiscate their pro-
perty without giving them a chance of saving it ? Yet this
must daily happen as long as laws are made without
any pains being made to bring the people ac-
quainted with their provisions. Many devices have
been suggested for effecting this publicity. None but
one can be adequate. Newspapers, if cheap, are sure to
be universally read, and in them all the people may see,
from day to day, each act of the Legislature, and many
acquire a thorough acquaintance with the rules laid down
for regulating their conduct, and disposing of their rights.
The Government says—newspapers shall only be read by
persons in easy circumstances, who have the least occasion
for such information, because they can receive it through
many other channels ! If you would reconcile men to new
laws, there is no such efficacious expedient as letting them
see every step in the progress of a measure, from its being
opened and defended against the objections first taken, to
its being finally passed into a law. The Government,
whose interest it is beyond that of all other parties, that its
measures should thus be made palatable to the people, says,
that all such information shall be confined to those whom it
is useless, or impossible, to reconcile by such means—the
rich—the professed politicians—those who have a variety
of other means of knowing all that passes at the seat of
power I
Nothing, as the Petition well observes, can be more use-
ful for the people of any country than to assist in person—
hut as that is impossible beyond a limited extent—to read
in the newspapers, all that passes at Criminal Trials. This
sort of knowledge affords one of the best lessons of practi-
cal morality which the people can learn. It inculcates a
reverence for the laws' to see them administered with in-
flexible justice—it begets an affection for the judicial
system to observe how these laws are administered in mercy
—and it conduces to a dread of violating them, that the
subjects of the realm should witness the trial as well as the

I plinishment of offenders. Happily there is no kind of
re;dinir so great a favourite of all classes, as trials, whether
criminalor cavil. But this useful, this instructive reading,
is withheld from the portion of the people which has the
greatest occasion for it. Noblemen may read trials for
theft, and ladies of quality may see the details of proceed-
in s against murderers and incendiaries ; but day-labourers,,
an common soldiers and sailors, can no more afford to buy
if
a tamped paper than to eat off plate. But it is not merely
in teaching the people the laws that are made to govern
tl4ni, or the trials that are held under these laws, that the
newspape:s conduce to good Government, and to the ad-
vahtage of thesubject as well as fibs rulers. All matters
of ;a public natinT—the acts of the Govnrnment--the con-
duct of the public servants—the occurrences of moment
abroad as well as at home--all that we learn of the course
of !events, interest, and ought to occupy a portion of the
people's attention. It is even the duty of free subjects to
consider these thin ;s, and to form their opinions upon them;
but the price of papers, raised by the stamps, keeps this
intelligence from them ; and the monopoly enjoyed by a few
papers, owing to the stamp, prevents the people from hav-
ing access to that full variety of opinions, arguments, and
statements of fact, in which alone free discussion can con-
sist ; and which can alone prevent deceptions from being
daily practised upon the country. That the people should
he habituated to political discussion, no man in these times
is hardy enough to deny. It is too late to prevent then:
frqm thinking on such sujects ; and the only question being
whether they shall think soundly and like well-informed
men, or ignorantly and lightly, and after the model of others
interested perhaps in misleading them, it is clear that any
impediment to the fullest political information, is both un-
just to the people, and dangerous to our institutions.
Perhaps the greatest of all the advantages of repealing
this tax remains to be told. Nothing can more completely
obstruct the progress of general knowledge than the stamp
on newspapers. Far the most efficient of all the means of
diffusing information among every class of the people are as
to be found in the newspaper press. The news-
papers furnish by far the best vehicles for disseminating im-
portant truths and useful information. Other works are
1 repulsive to ignorant men ; therefore they are closed books
to those who Most stand in need of being instructed. Books,
how cheap soever, and however popularly written, are not.
likely to be read by the uninformed. To buy, or to get,
and to begin.reading a volume, indicates a certain progress
in improvement to have been already made. But all men
will read the News ; and even peasants, farm servants,
farm servants, country day-labourers, will look at, nay pore
over the paper that chronicles the occurrences of the neigh-
bouring market-town. Here then is a channel through
which, alongst with political intelligence and the occurrences of
the day, the friends of human improvement, the judicious
promoters of general education, may diffuse the best informa-
tion, and may easily allure all classes, even the humblest, into
the paths of general knowledge. Every man of good sense must
at once perceive what an engine this would be in the hands of
the Educator ; but at present it exists not for any purposes
of his. The stamp paralyses that arm, which, were it re-
moved, might easily bring learning and science into the ha-
bitation of every man in the country. Can we wonder that.
the friends of education, not the mere advocates of political
knowledge, should have risen up against a tax which ob-
structs all their enlightened and humane efforts ? Can we
any longer sneer at the name given to the stamp—and
which designates it as a " tax upon knowledge."
Why, then, should this impost he continued any longer ?
There were two reasons stated by Lord Brougham in pre-
senting the London Petition, and which he appears to have
fully answered. The first is, the loss apprehended to the
revenue—the second, the encouragement supposed to result
from the removal of the tax to the production of noxious
papers.
1. The revenue could suffer little, if it did not rather
gain. No free country has so few newspapers in proportion
to its population as Great Britain. The Islands in the
Channel have fifteen times as many, and the United States
thirty times—there being no tax on newspapers in either.
No one can doubt, then, that the repeal would multiply
papers tenfold at the least ; and that instead of thirty mil-
lions of papers a-year, or less than six for every adult male
—fifty or sixty for every such adult would be printed and
sold. This would greatly augment the excise upon paper—
the revenue of the post-office—and above all, the advertise-
ment duties. It is, we are told, the opinion of persons the
best informed upon the question, that the revenue would
on.the whole gain considerably by the change.
2. The fear of increasing sedition, profaneness, and im-
morality is altogether chimerical, and the argument drawn
from thence is exposed at once. 'Those vile publications, at
present having no stamp at all, ninety-nine in every
hundred of them, are printed wholly without stamps, and
and therefore sold at a penny or twopence ; while the
more respectable papers, which pay the stamp, must be
charged sixpence or sevenpence. Thus the wicked and un-
wholesome article enjoys a monopoly at the expense of the
innocent and beneficial commodity—the contraband dealer
is supported and encouraged by a premium—while the re-
gular and honest trader is loaded with a duty of two
hundred per ee;:t ! Never yet was there a more absurd
and iniquitous tax imposed—but the argument employed
in its defence is, if possii;!e, more absurd still.
Let us hope that this evi: will soon be removed, and the
incalculable advantages secured to us of cheap and uni-
versal information. But our wishes will certainly be alto-
gether fruitless if we do not bestir ourselves ; and having
already shown that the existing newspapers are not very
willing to assist in obtaining this reform, it is the more
necessary for all other periodical publications which favour
the cause of improvement to exert themselves ID its sup-
port.

MR. BURKE'S HISTORY OF THE LANDED
GENTRY.—This original and important work, of which two vo-
lumes have now been published, has been undertaken by Mr.
Burke as a sequel to his well-known and established " Dic-
tionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the United King-
dom," and upon a somewhat similar plan ; so that, when
completed, the two publications will embrace the whole body
of the British Peerage, Baronetage, and Gentry, and will
furnish such a mass of authentic and available information in
regard to all the Principal Families in the Kingdom, as has
never before been brought together for general reference and
utility. The two volumes which have already appeared con-
tain detailed accounts of about 800 eminent houses, and em-
brace particulars of nearly 20,000 individuals connected with
them.

The Roman Catholics are inclosing with a stone
wall the large piece of land which they have purchased near
St. Leonards, Hastings. It has an imposing appearance.
The report is that they are going to build a college ; but it is
not positively known.. There can be no doubt, however, that
it is intended for a very large establishment.—Brightou
Gazette.

The anniversary meeting of the Southern Unitarian
Fund and Tract Societies was holden at Chichester on Friday
last, when the Unitarian cause was powerfully advocated.—
Brighton Guardian.

A SIGNIFICANT REPLY.—" Thomas," said a
sponging friend of the family to a footman, who had been lin-
gering about the room for half an hour to show him to the
door, " Thomas, my good fellow, it's getting late, is'nt it?
How soon will the dinner come up, Thomas?" "The very'
moment you're gone, Sir," was the unequivocal reply.

The first case in which Lord Brougham (then a
very young Advocate) was engaged before the circuit court of
Justiciary at Ayr, some time, we believe, about.lBo3, was that
of Kate M'Lean, who the embryo Chancellor volunteered
gratuitously to defend from a charge of blanket stealing, ap-
parently from a desire just to get his hand in. A friend of
Mr. Brougham, in Edinburgh, wrote to Kate's agent here,
(from whom we had the anecdote the other evening), stating
that Mr. B. would undertake the defence of any case, free of
charge, in which the agent might be professionally engaged-
Mr. Brougham delivered the letter of his friend to the Agent,
but his excited appearance and vehement manner did not im-
press the collector of evidence with a very decided opinion in his
favour ; but, willing to oblige his correspondent, he waited on
the young Barrister at Mrs. Simpson's, then hostess of the
Black Bull, and put the statement of facts in Kate's case into}
his hands, accompanied with such arguments as he thought
likely to promote the cause of his client, and which, he re-
marked, he was afraid might not occur to so green a practi-
tioner as Mr. Brougham ; to which observation Mr. B. re-
plied,—" Give me the facts, Mr. —, and leave the
arguments to me 1" a remark, the independence of which led
Mr. to hope better things of the "flighty looking chap ;"
nor was he mistaken, for next day Mr. B. made a most able
defence for Kate, before Lord Henderland, and the result of
his exertions was the acquittal of Kate M'Lean, which seemed
very much to gratify the young man.—Ayr Observer.
WASHINGTON IRVING.—Our distinguished fel-
low-citizen, Washington Irving, has purchased a small pro-
perty of about ten acres, eminently romantic in its location
and appendages, on the banks of the Hudson, near the resi-
dence of his nephew, Oscar Irving, about three miles south of
Tarrytown. On the premises just mentioned there is still
standing an old stone house, built in the ancient, Dutch style
of architecture, during the French war, by Wolfred Acker,
and afterwards purchased by Van Tassel, one at least of whose
descendants has been immortalised in story by the racy pen of
its present gifted proprietor. It is the identical house at which
was assembled the memorable tea party, described in the le-
gend of " Sleepy Hollow," on that disastrous night when the
ill-starred Ichabod was rejected by the fair Katrina, and also
encountered the fearful companionship of Brom Bones in the
character of the headless Hessian. The characters in this de-
lectable drama are mostly known to our readers ; but time,
that tells all tales, enables us to add one item more, which is,
that the original of the sagacious schoolmaster was not the in-
dividual generally considered as such, who still resides in this
country, but Jesse Martin, a gentleman who bore the birchen
sway at the period of which the legend speaks, and who after-
wards removed further up the Hudson, and is since deceased.
The location is a most, delightfully secluded spot, eminently
suited to the musings and mastery of mind; and it is-jibe:4
sign of the proprietor, without changing the-style or-nipeeCtif -
the premises, to put them in complete repair, and ocsnpythem,-..
as a place of retirement and repose from the 'Business and
bustle of the world.— Westchester Herald. , . •