The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-21 00:00:00

_DUTY ON PAPER.
MEETING OF MANUFACTURERS.
An important meeting of paper-manufacturers was
held at the London Coffee-house, Ludgate-hill, on
Thursday, for the purpose of taking steps to preetire
the total abolition of the duty on paper in the ap •
proaching session of Parliament. Similar meetings
were recently held at Manchester and Edinburgh,
and a deputation from the Manchester meeting, con-
sisting of Mr. Crompton, Mr. Potter, and another
gentleman, attended at the present meeting to offer
their co-operation. Sir William Magnay, Mr.
Dickenson, Mr. Gaussen, Mr. Pewtress, Mr. Law-
rence, and a number of other gentlemen interested
in the subject of the meeting, were present.
J. Dicxxesore, Esq., having been called to the
cha'r, said he had great satisfaction in explaining to
so numerous and respectable a meeting the injurious
effects of the Excise-laws on the manufacture of
paper, and in calling on them to use their most stre-
nuous exertions to obtain a repeal of the duty that
pressed so heavily on their manufacture. In 1836
the paper manufacturers obtained a partial reduction
of the tax, and they obtained an equilisation of the
Excise duties on different kinds of paper; from which
measures, however, the manufacturers had not de-
rived the expected advantages, and he trusted they
would be enabled to obtain redress for the intolerable
grievances which now oppressed the trade, by the
total removal of the duty ; for he felt convinced that
by no other means could the remedy they sought be
procured. The reduction of duty before granted by
the Government had, indeed, been of service, and the
public had derived great benefit from the consequent
reduction of the price of paper. The reduction of price
had, of course, greatly increased the consumption ; and
thus it might have been expected to have benefited
the paper manufacturer; but the increase of consump-
tion had not been adequate to the expected demand,
and reduction of price had exceeded the proportion
due to the diminished duty ; consequently, the manu-
facturer had suffered, though the public had reaped
considerable advantage. The duty at present pressed
very heavily on some branches of the paper manu-
facturer, to the amounts in some cases, of 150 per
cent. ; and on the larger portion of the produce of
the mills, it amounted to 80 per cent. The depres-
sion in the price of paper had been occasioned partly
by the reduction of the duty, and partly by the eva-
sion of the payment of any duty by fraudulent
makers. The Excise had, for the purpose of pre-
venting frauds, adopted many stringent regulations,
which were greatly annoying, and tended to injure
the trade in many ways ; but, nevertheless, the frauds
continued. In one instance that had come within his
knowledge, it was the practice of a manufacturer,
whose name he would not mention, to pay the Excise
duty on half the paper he manufactured, and to re-
tain the duty on the other half. He (Mr. Dickenson)
had paid much attention to the subject of collecting
duties and preventing fraudulent practices ; but he
felt convinced that it was impossible for any law or
regulation, however stringent, to prevent fraud in the
paper maker, if so disposed, and it was a known fact
that frauds to a great extent were still continued.
The Excise regulations greatly impeded trading ope-
tions, and the interference with the manufacture was
carried as far as it could be endured ; but notwith-
standing their vigilance, the Excise could not prevent
fraud. The uncertainty of the law also afforded an-
other strong ground for the repeal of the tax altogether ;
for in some cases articles that came in direct compe-
tition with the paper maker were at one time declared
to be chargeable with duty, and at another time to
be exempt. Mr. Dickenson then alluded at some
length to the process of manufacturing sheeting and
roofing paper, for which a patent had been obtained in
1833. In that manufacture the fibrous material,
after being torn to pieces by passing it between spiked
rollers, was mixed with pitch and tar, and then rolled
out into sheets. The patentees got an officer of Excise
to examine their mode of manufacture, and he was of
opinion that it did not come within the meaning of
the Act imposing a duty on paper. The paper makers
complained of this, and in passing the Act of 1836 it
was intended that such manufacture should be ren-
dered liable to the duty. According to the strict
letter of the law that species of manufacture was pre-
viously chargeable ; but, when it was found that it
was about to be especially included in the Act of
1836, the parties got Mr. buncombe and others to
wait on Mr. Spring Rice, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and in consequence of their representa-
tions a clause was introduced in the Bill to exempt
that manufacture from the payment of duty. The
parties afterwards undertook to manufacture mill-
boards and scale boards, as well as roofing and
sheathing by their patent process, but after a lapse of
two years the Excise again claimed the payment of
duty on such articles. The parties pleaded their ex-
emption, and as another Act for regulating the duties
on paper was about to be passed, the matter was not
pressed.
In the subsequent Act of Parliament a
clause was specially introduced for rendering such
manufacture liable to duty. The words were very ex-
plicit; they expressly stated that mill-boards, with
whatever material made, or by whatever process manu-
factured, should be chargeable with the same duty as
paper-14s. per cwt. Notwithstanding this Act,
the parties set to work in defiance of it, and though
the case had been represented to the Board of Excise
again and again, they refused to interfere. He (Mr.
Dickenson) went to Mr. Wood on the subject, and he
obtained a promise that the matter should be examined
and reported. The Surveyor-General of Excise did,
in fact, report that the process was altogether dif-
ferent from that of making paper, the material being
in one case mixed, when dry, with pitch and tar, and
in the other case the material was reduced to a pulp
with water. It was, 'indeed, well worth making an
alteration in the mode of manufacture, if by that
means an article serving the same purpose as many
kinds of paper would be brought into the market
duty free. He had no doubt, from the first, that the
article was chargeable with duty, and he adduced
these variations in the opinion of the Excise officers,
and on the interpretation of the Act of Parliament,
to show the great grievances to which paper manu-
facturers were subject, from the uncertainty of the
law as well as from the duty itself. It was impossible
for the fair trader to compete with those who manu-
factured a similar article without paying any duty,
and they who had long carried on a useful trade had
a right to demand at least fair play and no favour.—
(Cheers.) In asking for a repeal of the duty on
paper, they would have the satisfaction of thinking
that such a measure would be greatly beneficial to many
other trades besides their own. Millwrights, smiths,
mould-makers, printers, booksellers, bookbinders, pub-
lishers, and a great many other trades, would derive
advantage from the repeal of the tax; and paper
would become an article of much more general use
for several purposes to which other substances were
now applied. The tax on paper, among other impor-
tant prejudicial effects, produced great injury on the
publication of books. The late Mr. Rees, of the firm
of Messrs. Longman and Co., stated in evidence, be-
fore a Committee of the House of Commons, that on
an average not more that one book out of three suc-
ceeded and paid its expenses ; it therefore became
necessary for the publishers to remunerate themselves
by the profits of the one successful book for their
losses on the others. The authority of Mr. M`Culloch
confirmed this opinion, with the addition that not
more than one pamphlet out of twenty pays its ex-
penses. • According to the present Excise regulations,
the privilege that was granted to the dealer in cotton,
and to other dealers in taxed articles, was refused to
the publisher; for whilst they were permitted to keep
their goods in bond without paying duty until a sale
was effected, the publisher was compelled to pay duty
on all the sheets that were printed, though the greater
portion, perhaps, became afterwards useless. If the
tax operated thus injuriously on publication, it
must also operate prejudicially on education ; and in
these times, when education was considered the right
of the poor, and that it was the duty of the rich to
provide the means, it was more than ever essential
that so great an hindrance to the spread of know-
ledge should be removed. The dfficulties and delays
which attended obtaining the drawback of the duty
on paper exported, constituted another source of injury
to the English paper maker, and gave the foreign
manufacturer great and unfair advantages. Formerly
the difficulties of obtaining the drawback of duty were
only annoyances,,without seriously affecting the fo-
reign trade • but, since the recent Custom-house
frauds, the Government, smarting under the effects of
the losses they had sustained, had made new and
more stringent regulations on the shipment of goods,
and now all packages of paper and books were taken
out of their cases, looked over, and then bundled
without care into the cases again and shipped. The
mischief did not end there, for it had been long the
custom to pack books and paper going to the West
Indies, or on long sea voyages, in tin cases, and in
the resoldering of these cases and examining the pack-
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Mr. Dickenson said he had endeavoured to point
out some of the most prominent disadvantages attend-
ing the duty on paper, and some of the benefits that
would be derived from its repeal; but no one could
conceive the whole extent of the good that would re-
sult from the total emancipation of paper from the
excise. He felt assured that nothing less than a total
repeal would do. The Board of Excise had endea-
voured to make their arrangements so as to be as little
vexatious as possible to the fair trader, but nothing
short of very strict supervision could detect fraud, and
&with all the precautions now taken many frauds were