The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-13 00:00:00

Mt.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1850.

Although Mr. MILNER GIBSON has disappointed
us of a discussion in the House of Commons on the
burdens imposed by taxation upon knowledge—his
anticipated motion for last evening having been un-
expectedly postponed—we have still remaining very
sufficient occasion for comment upon a matter of
such general and enormous importance to the com-
munity. We avail ourselves, moreover, of the op-
portunity with increased eagerness when we reflect
that the subject referred to is one affecting in a very
considerable degree the physical comfort, the
intellectual improvement, and the moral ame-
lioration of the whole framework of English
society. Through the operation of the ill-
considered duties levied upon advertisements,
the physical comfort of the more necessitous
portions of the population are manifestly interfered
with to a most grievous extent. Through the heavy
imposts upon paper as a raw material, the intellectual
improvement of the multitude is materially impeded,
if it does not prove actually in many instances to be
altogether prevented; while, through the combined
operation of these two ill-advised and ill-digested
methods of taxation the moral amelioration of
the masses is rendered almost an entire impossi-
bility, from the multiplication of those delete-
rious productions of a depraved and depraving
literature which sprout forth with the celerity and
fruitfulness of the fungus under the malign shelter of
these lamentable burdens upon true knowledge.
The opportunity which we have mentioned as
having been afforded us for allusion to this gigantic
grievance, even in the procrastination of the Par-
liamentary motion of the Right Hon. Gentleman, the
Member for Manchester, is none other than the
appearance of the pamphlet by Mr. CHARLES
h.:sign-1-, to which we yerterday made inci-
dental allusion. In this remarkable publication*
that distinguished publisher—whose name has ac-
quired a large and permanent popularity, not only
from his own incontestable scholarship, and especially
from kis undisputed abilities as a commentator upon
SHAILBrEitiI, but also in a very considerable degree
as a promoter of popular education, through the
diffusion in the cheapest form of the wholesomest
literary instruction—demonstrates with the lucidity
of a syllogism the cruel hardships inflicted upon all
who would strive to render themselves the
benefactors of their fellow-countrymen by ca-
tering at the lowest cost to their intellectual
requirements. To his exposition of the evils resulting
from this species of taxation we would most earnestly
commend all those who are unsatisfied that the in-
fliction is unnecessarily onerous. It will there be
seen how sksingle work like the " Penny CyclopEedia,"
than which no literary enterprise ever deserved more
the patronage instead of the oppression of Govern-
ment, may be made not only a profitless but an
absolutely ruinous undertaking through the apparently
insignificant imposition upon the paper of three half-
pence per pound. Never was the story of the arith-
metical increase of farthings on the nails of a horse-
shoe, a story immortelizsd in the golden history of
" Sandford and Merton" more lamentably illustrated
Out of this three-half-penny tax emerged a tremen-
dous incubus of thirty-two thousand Pounds, which
bas been ever since weighing upon the origi-
nator and publisher of this noble and
national cyclopre lia. Through the medium of im-
posts on the paper, the wrappers for the monthly parts,
and the millboards for the periodical volumes, a gross
sum of sixteen thousand five hundred pounds was

inst Excessive
•` The Struggles of a Boojc aga
Taxation." By Charles Knight. Svo. Pp. 16. London,
Fle:t-street, 1850,

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