The Sun.
London, England, 1859-02-18 00:00:00

whatever was written, however temperate and learned it
might be, if it was adverse to the opinion of the Govern-
ment and the House of Commons, was regarded as a wicked
and seditious libel, and anything which touched on reli-
gion or the Established Church was an impious and blas-
phemous publication. Such was the opinion entertained
of publications which now would be thought as innocent
and perhaps as dull as anything that could be read. The
House of Commons was agitated to an immerse degree be-
cause a publication contained a translation of a State paper
of the States-General ; it was said to be, wicked and sedi-
tious, and a committee was appointed to inquire into the
matter, and a bill was passed placing heavy duties on paper,
on newspapers, on pamphlets, and it provided that every
publication should be registered in an office of the Govern-
ment ; and that was the origin of the system of registration
which was kept up to this day. Attempts were made to
enforce the principle on authors, but as the Government
could not make up its mind whether it was better that the
names of authors should be made known or not, that was
not done, and the law remained in the state he had described
until the close of the last century. At that time this
country waslhreatened with an invasion, a hostile expe -
dition had landed in Ireland, and England was said to be
full of sedition, and the Ministry assented to another law,
in which registration was carried on in the minutest form ;
the owners of every newspaper were to declare whether
any foreigners were interested in those papers, so that
they might be prevented from making them the instru-
ments of hostility to the country. An act was passed
which, though repealed, contained provisions which now
formed part of the present law. In 1799, the Govern-
ment brought in a bill which, in an apologetic tone, spoke
of conspiracies at home and abroad to subvert the Govern-
ment; stated that further powers were required by
the executive to prevent men from reading the public
journals, unless with a license from justices of the
peace. There was one exception. for alehouses were pri-
vileged places for the reading of public journals. That
was a moral restriction ; it was productive of much evil, by
associating literature with drunkenness, and the tapster was
made the guardian of literature, and it became a practice to
resort to the public-house for the purpose of reading the
public journals. Even type-founders, and all persons re-
motely connected with printing, were brought under the
grasp of the Government, and required to have licenses in
order to carry on their callings. One would have imagined
that such enactments would has, e died out in time, but they
remained in existence, and the only difference now was that
the law put the power of moving in the crown instead of in
the hands of the common informer. Such laws ought not
to be left dormant on the statute-book, leaving it inthe power
of the executive to revive them whenever they chose. One
would have imagined' that the constitution of the country
was sufficiently protected against its supposed enemy; the
press, but when the war was ended, and men's minds were
capable of examining into the evil results which had been
produced by that war, and they began to discuss whether
it was not necessary to have reform in Parliament, the Go-
vernment of 1819 took the alarm, and considered whether it
would not be necessary to enact new laws, and put further
restrictions on the press. At that time there may have been,
and he believed there were, many publications so extrava-
gant, that it might have been right to have repressed them
by the arm of the law ; but instead of the Government pro-
secuting journals and pamphlets injurious to the state, they
endeavoured generally to lay greater restrictions on the
liberty of the press. Carrying out this design, they intro-
duced another measure, requiring that any person publish-
ing any newspaper or pamphlet should give security on
their recognisances and two sureties for the printer and
publisher, who were amenable to the amount of £3OO in Lon-
don and £2OO in the country, if the work contained any
seditious or blasphemous libel. Two years after measures
were taken in mercy to mitigate the penalty on conviction,
but the pressure on publications was increased by making
the security, which was £3OO in town, £4OO, and that
which was £2OO in the country, £3OO, and the security was
extended not only to seditious and blasphemous libels, but
to what was considered in a court of law private libels, and
this enactment was to be used as a protection not only to
the state, but to private individuals who thought themselires
aggrieved. This was the extreme measure, but the trade
of printers and publishers was put on a different footing to
others, and you could only justify such a course by the
exigency of the times, or else to say that every person em-
ployed in literature was a public delinquent, a common
" barrator," who ought to be restrained in the exercise of
his calling. Some time after this, when Parliament had
been reformed, an agitation was raised to relieve current
literature from the difficulties imposed on it, in consequence
of the enormous taxes to which it was subject, and the re-
strictions from which it suffered. After a struggle of many
years the taxes in question were diminished, direct taxes
were repealed, and at last a measure was introduced by the
right hon. gentleman the member for the University of
Oxford, by which he proposed to repeal all the provisions
of the law which had been passed in connexion with or in
relation to, the collection of the duties, and especially that
enactment which comprised all the restrictions in the shape
of registration and the requiring of declarations to be filed
in a government office with regard to the ownership of
public journals and pamphlets. But when the measure
was discussed, objections were raised as to the expediency
of remitting what was called the protection against the
abuses of the press. The then Chancellor of the Exche-
quer, finding that he would only have a fiscal measure im-
peded by questions of a political character which would
lead to discussion and debate, consented to withdraw
the provisions repealing the existing law, and confined
his bill to the revision of taxes, and left the provi-
sions in question on the statute book. The object
of his (Mr. Ayrton's) motion was to sweep away all
those statutes, and to submit newspapers and pamphlets to
the general law which affected all other publications. There
was no principle on which one publication which was longer
or shorter than another, which cost 3d. or 6d. as the case
might be, should be made the subject of exceptional legisla-
tion. He found in the statute book, without these special
enactments, ample protection for all kinds of publications.
The law of copyright required that every publication, long
or short, even if it were limited to a single sheet, should be
delivered, within a definite time, to the trustees of the British.
Museum, or the publisher would be fined. It was also re-
quired that the owner of any publication, for which it was
desired to obtain the benefit of copright, should register it
at Stationers'-hall. These laws afforded sufficient means of
ascertaining who the proprietor of a publication was; and
there were various enactments directed expressly against
criminal publications. There was one statute by which the
authorities were enabled, whenever any publication was ad-
judged to be a libel, to have all the impressions of it seized,
so that it could no longer be circulated, to the injury of
society. There was another statute for the suppression of
obscene and improper books, passed two sessions ago.
These laws-were sufficient to reach the case of criminal pub.
lications. But the statutes to which his motion referred,
whilst they were most inconvenient and injurious to pub-
lishers, failed to accomplish the object for which they were
passed. They were only a restraint upon honest men.
They were passed to enable the revenue to be collected, and
when the duties were taken off, the statutes should have
been allowed to fall into abeyance. The Commissioners of
Stamps and their officers should have no more to do with
them. But in 1856, a member of that house, the late hon.
member for Tewkesbury, moved by a high sense of morality,
and, in fact, taking upon himself to be the guardian of the
public morality, addressed a remonstrance to the Commis-
sioners of Stamps, pointing out that in the borough he re-
presented publications were issued which he thought cal-
culated to demoralise the people, and against which he re-
quired the commissioners to enforce the law. Upon this
the Commissioners of Stamps submitted the question to the
law officers of the crown. He (Mr. Ayrton) invited the
Government, in a former session, to lay on the table of the
house the case submitted and opinion given by the law
officers of the crown, but the late Government met him with
an official stereotyped answer, that it would be contrary to
usage to disclose such matters. But the Commissioners of
Stamps themselves afterwards printed a circular, stating
they had been advised by the Attorney-General that it was
their duty to enforce the law. The consequence was that
many persons in the country were obliged to take great
trouble and seek out their friends to become security for
them ; some had to travel a hundred miles to find the proper
person before whom they were to appear; and the greatest
vexation and annoyance was inflicted on the printers of pro •
vincial journals, whilst in London there were others who
understood the true position of the case, and took no notice
of the circular they received. One person, in order to put
the decision of the commissioners to the test, published
what was called the Free Press, which was purposely thrust
on the commissioners' notice; they were reminded that ac-
cording to law it was a newspaper, and asked why they did
not prosecute it. There was some mystery about the Free
Press; it was inspired by persons of very curious tempera-
ment : in fact, it was a kind of hornets' nest, and the com-
missioners answered in a very dignified manner that they
would deal with the Free Press as seemed to them meet.
But the law made pamphlets as well as newspapers sub-
ject to registration, and obliged them to give security to the
crown. Some one sent a pamphlet to the commissioners, and
asked why they did not compel the publisher to register
that ? The commissioners endeavoured to avoid these in-
convenient questions; but when theylet slip the fatal remark
that they could not say whether pamphlets should be re-
gistered until they had perused them, a host of pamphlets
were sent up for their perusal. The controversy came to an
end by the commissioners declining to answer the last letter.
It appeared then that the commissioners of stamps or excise
had it entirely at their own discretion either to enforce those
laws or not. Now, he asked whether they were the proper
authorities to deal with such a matter, or whether these
stringent provisions ought to be kept on the statute-book
for the mere amusement of those gentlemen, long after in
the exercise of their duty, as watching over the revenue,
they had ceased to have any connexion with the press ? For
allthese arrangements were intended to secure the revenue,
and when there was no longer any tax on these publications,
it was right that the interference of the commissioners, whose
functions only related to taxation, should be brought to an
end. This was the object of his bill. The obnoxious sta-
tutes he wished to repeal were not only perfectly idle and
useless for any good purpose, but they were positively mis-
chievous and injurious. The general law of the land was
amply sufficient for the prosecution of libel, or to oblige any
man, after having once been guilty of an act tending to a
breach of the peace, to give security for his good behaviour.
But the existing statutes treated honest and honourable men,
ethnogsaegisntagtointes should hreosulpdec::brele business,
aled. as though they were
commencing a criminal undertaking, and he thought it time
The SOLICITOR-GENERALPe said the hon. member
had referred to some statutes which were perhaps not to be
called obsolete, as they were still amongst the modern enact-
tmheinntgss owfinthohe realm, alm , but which were intended for a state of
of that house longerexisted No doubt many members
entertainedt a different opinion from that of
the hon. member as to e necessity for them at the time
they were first enacted, but
with nil him as to the utter NvaitaC,lT would be of one opinion
necessityehar enactments
n ae t n
af
enactmentso
er n tcso nostfui net
such
no
as ges
them at the present day, Hear,
He did not com-
mit himself to the abolition(ofall t 1
statutes; but there were a great maney
no officer of the crown could b© willing, or even, he might
say,
ever would be willing, to put in force; there remained
on the statute book threats of penalties and imprisonment
against those who should disregard those enactments, whilst
practically they were disregarded every day, and yet never
were any of those threats put in execution. Now, he took it
to be a sound principle that whenever a statute contained
penalties that never would be enforced, it would be well to
repeal that statute. He did not, therefore, offer any oppo_
sition to tho introduction of the hon. gentleman's bill.
When it was introduced they would see the enactments to
which it was intended to apply. Several of those to which
the hon. member had referred, ho agreed with him that it
would be desirable either to repeal or greatly to modify, but
there might be some which were still useful, and which
it was desirable to retain; this might be considered when
the bilthvas laid on the table.
THE EDUCATION GRANT IN SCOTLAND.
Lord MELGUND moved that the annual vote of money
for education in Great Britain should henceforth be divided

into two votes, one vote to be taken for England, and ano-
ther for Scotland. He urged that the condition and circum-
stances of the two countries with regard to popular educa-
tion wereso dissimilar, and the distribution of the grant in
Scotland itself was so far from being uniform, comparing the
districts of sparse population with the great towns of Edin-
burgh and Glasgow, that it was expedient to afford the
Scotch members an opportunity, separate from the voting
of the general grant, of discussing the application of that
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