The Sun.
London, England, 1828-10-04 00:00:00

means givens au
Even-this fact does by, no
adequate idea of the restrictions on tliecircida-
ion' of iiileotiespi;itipae or
rniso;nSiiioeitniednhyatsl:l
wealthy
iirely• to • himself,- while *not only fitnorig:fhe
poorer, but even among the.nn •
*pi. eight persons find it necessaryiri: diihftedrl;39
piper, autte.ach has to Bubinit td the incOnveiii.,,
eence of having only a hurried glance of whk he'
would wish •to peruse deliberately I hilve,
:Ictiown three men of 5001, a year, Clubbing to
take the Scotsman.' Now, -were_ the • pric:e re-
duced, many who content tbeithilVe's4ftli'aliielf,:.
or a third share at present,. would take:a whble
paper ; the club often' would be rediiced-to-fivr::,
and the club -of 'six to three. lii the United
States, it is rare for n paper -to be' read by'mOre)
than one flunk.
Colquhouti computes (from- data derived,' f
believe; from the Income Tax returns); that in
1812,Ahlite were in Britain 123,000 heads of
families, with incomes exceeding 8904. per annual,,
Their number may probably now be about
1405000, and in the United States, almost every
person with such a revenue would have a daily
paper. Now, front a Parliamentary document
printed in 1821, I find that tbeaverage circula-
tion (of the .London daily joh*rls , was.,abour
2,200'; and assuming that it is the 'ariWitib, it
follows that the impreeiens of all these papers
put together amount only to 35,400. Hence
we have reason to conclude, that were papers
untaxed, the wealthiest class alone would take
three or four times as many copies of the daily
papers as now serve the whole population of the
country ! A reduction of the duties would
have a proportional effect on the circulation.
But on this subject, the example of the United
States is worth a thousand hypothetical argn-
ments; and I now crave your attention for a few
minutes, while I contrast the simition of the
press in that country and in Britain.
The population of the British Isles at present
is very nearly double of the population of. the
United States, the one being above 23,000,000,
andtichek;:ther about 12,000,000. Deducting
the l,
the American population will be about
10,000,006.
In the British Isles, there ate at present, ac,
cording to Monsieur Moreau, 334 newspapers,
of which 19 or 20 are daily, viz. 16 ir. London,
and 3 or 4 in Ireland.
In the United States in 1810, there Were 361
newspapers ; in 1823, according to a table in my
possession, there were 598 ; and. in last spring,
iqr. Cooper estimated the number to be 800,
(" Notions of the Americans," vol. 11., p. 133.)
Of these, according to the statement of an Ame,
rican editor to me personally, and according to a
paragraph which appeared some months ago in
several American Journals, there are fifty pub:.
lished daily: New York; in the nionth of March
last, had 12 daily papers; Philadelphia 8 or 9 ;
Baltimore 5 ; Boston 3 or 4, &c. •
The whole number of papers printed annually
in Britain and Ireland, on an average of the last
seven years, as I find from the amount of stamp
duty, was 27,827,000. This gives an average
circulation of about 1100 for each.
soarutli
helen
amount,iAg American
epriceraelgililart;gaicsrtoaceuusrartstateelit:leittsifbe.ape(i
oirraairvyitletiiortleaaiglkoesaatipltc.gietilrritelicseuoalettaithieetit
entire
circulation
which print
m'ul
compose a
mass. But taking them at 1000 copies each,
and classing them as I find done in au Ameri-
can paragraph, the result is as follows:
. Copies printed annually.
550 'Weekly Papers . .
200 Semi-weCkly or tri-weekly 20,600,000
50 Daily

If this estimate is fairly made,6l4.t;
• 408101,eown
so
that
there are nearly two and a half
times
as many
papers printed in the United States as. in Bri-
taM, for less than half
the population (exclud-
ing the blacks). Combining the two ratios, it
results, that a,million of persona in the United
States purchase live times as many newspapers
as a million of persons in the British isles !
• But to draW the parallel justly, we must re-
collect the peculiar circumstances of the Ameri
cans. . They live so widely., scattered, that one
thOusandpersons are spread over as large a Sur-
face as ten thousand in Britain. Hence vast
numbers arc far frbul any post-office, and must
find it difficult to procure a paper though ever so
able to pay for it. Again, the class of person.,
.who - possess entire leisure and accumulated
wealth, and. to whom anewsgaper is a moral ne=
cesSary oflife, is coniparatively afnall in Amerio,
Tlabouring', claSseso balance this indeed, , I
have better wages theip than here ; but the'trutli
is
thatif a p4per could be had for two-pence a
„mt., the worst paid labourer could „afford tl
00. have a juster et it. We shall therefore '
idea of
the state of the press in each country, if we corn,.
Pare• time towns of the one with • those of -the
other.
• •
There is not . a town in Great Britain but
London, that doe , , ,
.. _ s
or can -support a daily paper.
In the United States every considerable town
has one or
thousand inhabitants, 1
Tray with nearly the same
number (both in the. State of New York) have
each then Daily at Paper, while neither 'Manches-
ter nor Glasgow has one ! Think of the capital
of Scotland wanting a paper of this description,
while an American town of the size of Dalkeitlt
has one !, Think too of Leith, with a popula-
tion of more than
.20,000, persons, trying in vain
.some-years ago to esta4sk#:,'Vveekly,mier !
Philadelphia. std
Liverpool' have nearly 'this,
same amount of population, but the English tom'
11LIS:pioblibly •
six times as much trade as tlrl
'Ainerica'n. Now, Liverpool' has eight wool:' v
papers, whiC:h put forth eight publications in :11