The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1851-07-29 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD, TUESDAY, JULY 29, 1851.

Kiln-pool. --ztanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 29, 1851.

THE NAVIGATION LAWS.

EVEN the limited powers to compel reciprocity left
in our hands by the insane Repeal of the Naviga-
tion Laws the Government refuse to exercise. They
will wait till the triumph of the Peace Congress, or
till the Greek kalends, or any other free-trade festi-
val, and see if, in the meantime, foreign nations
will do as the fox who had lost his tail requested
his fellows. If the time were anything different to
what it is, and the Government actually assuming
to rule the cc,untry, this might be esteemed a per-
manent blow to the Shipping Interest and to
General Commerce. No one, however, we suppose,
hoped much from such a Government as this. Its
tenure is too nearly expired, and the fact of its
living upon sufferance too well known, to make any
interest in the country expect to be relieved during
its existence. Mr. Labouchere fancied himself
replying to Mr. Herries when he said that the Ship-
owners had cried out ever since the time of Mr.
Huskisson. No doubt, at intervals, they have;
but the Shipping Interest has been suffering not
only since the time of Mr. Huskisson, but since
the time of Lord Shelburne : not buffering so as to
prevent some progress, but so as to prevent the
amount of progress that the interest might other-
wise have attained. And how could it have been
otherwise ? The repeal of the Navigation Code is,
perhaps, what the French Revue des Deux ilfondes
called it, the "most perfect specimen of national
insanity." Consider what it is. We give " reci-
procity" to Prussia, who has nothing to give us in
return. We open our trade to Sweden, and Nor-
way, and Denmark, that have almost nothing to
carry. We open it to France, that laughs at us,
and will not give us a single cargo; to Spain and
Portugal, equally exclusive; and to our chief rival
of all, America. The Navigation Laws were re-
pealed under a distinct pledge that America would
reciprocate. Well, she has taken the trade between
England and her Colonies, and has told us that
the trade to California is a coasting trade ; we
suppose, because it goes round half the world.
However, we are to wait; but how long, or for
what, is not said. Thanks to the Earl of Derby,
power was reserved to the Crown to take measures
to enforce reciprocity, where countries are so evi-
dently determined to evade it as America, or to
refuse it as France; but the great organ of the free-
traders says the Crown is not to do that "at the
dictation of Parliament !" An excellent maxim in
the reign of Henry VII., but not just so suitable
to the present time. Indeed, the Shipping and all
other interests may be well content that nothing
be done at the " dictation" of the present Parlia-
ment, for the extinction of which the country looks
forward hopefully.

STAMPS ON NEWSPAPERS.

WE are promised, but happily only promised, a
completely new era in the history of the Press—a
sort of paradise of ambitious writers—a day of
great prosperity for the whole race of pen-and-ink
politicians—

" The Gordian knot of policy who can unloose
Familiar as their garter."
If what the Times and the Select Committee on
Stamps advocate is to become law, Mr. Thackeray
may cease to discuss the status of literary men any
longer. We shall have such a race as ruled the
public opinion of France for the last twenty years,
and placed that Great Republic in its present envi-
able position ; overthrew dynasties from their
garrets ; achieved restoration from their second
floors, and established commonwealths from their
entresols. It is proposed to abolish the newspaper
stamp completely, and all the concomitant restric-
tions that were appanages of the Stamp Laws.
This, of course, opens a brilliant career to the am-
bition of that penny press, to which we owe the
morality of Holyoake, and the decency of Mr. G.
W. M. Reynolds, and, perhaps, also the courageous
infidelity of Mr. Patterson, whose spirited attacks
on Christianity the Baillies of Edinburgh rewarded
with the tread-mill.

Surely the Whigs are bidding desperately for
a little popular clamour, when, just twelve
months after the French Republic has been
forced to replace the timbre on their news-
papers, and even to license their hawkers, they
propose a course solely levelled (to quote again
from France) against " the press of order." That
it is so levelled, any reader can in a moment see.
The recommendation proposes that the stamp duty
be abolished upon newspapers, but, at the same
time, that a journal the size, for instance, of the
LIVERPOOL STANDARD, shall pay one penny
postage, and that a copyright in intelligence be
established. The first proposal is a blow at the
respectable press—the second is openly and scan-
dalously a sop to the Times and the London morn-
ing papers. What possible advantage can it be to
an established journal to take off a stamp, and
charge a penny postage for the transmission of
the paper, while it was easy enough to extend
to newspapers, properly so called, the benefit
of the Treasury minute, under which, at pre-
sent, the unstamped copies of the Athenceum and
the Literary Gazette are published ? By that
minute there is a stamped and unstamped edition—
the former for sale in town, the second to go by
post. In both the publications we have named,
there are many columns of advertisements; but
they have not that bugbear of the Stamp-office
called " news." It is true they may review a
pamphlet of the previous week on a current subject
of the day, and they may, and do, give the most in-
teresting and recent accounts of the state of science
and literature all over the world; but they do not
give the state of the Markets, nor the occurrences
at the Police Courts, or other such matters, and
therefore they enjoy a privilege that newspapers
have not. Those who see the policy of this, have a
clearer conception than we. But the suggestion
of creating a copyright in general news and intelli-
gence, simply stultifies the remainder of the Com-
missioners' report. The Times has long been
trying to extinguish the evening papers, by multi-
plying editions up to two o'clock in the day, as
they did during the convulsions of 1848. They
now hope to destroy the evening press utterly by
the absurd demand of copyright in news; and they

desire also, by dropping the stamp and obtaining
such copyright, to crash great portions of the
country press. They say, indeed, as much. In
their leader of Saturday, they inform us to the
effect that there are many country districts in
which they might greatly increase their circulation,
and in which the local journals take their news.
Their news ! Impudence really can be sublime.
Is not the Morning Post's- foreign intelligence, as
regards Europe at least, ten times more full and
more honest than theirs ? Did not the Morning
Herald beat them repeatedly and signally in the
Indian Express; and is there a journal in London
more accustomed to take the local news of the
country papers, without acknowledgment, than
the Times—nay, do they not weekly take the
Saturday's Police from the Sunday papers ? Yet
these are the people de seditione guerentes ! The
Times supported this recommendation of the Com-
mittee for no other reason than that the relief from
the stamp might enable them to flood the provinces,
as they hope and fancy, with a cheap metropolitan
press, conveyed by express train at so much per
cwt:, and sold unstamped in the chief towns ; and,
lest others should attempt to invade the monopoly,
they demand a copyright in every " dreadful acci-
dent" and " drunk and disorderly" that they may
choose to chronicle. But copyright in news is an
absurdity. It is unknown to our law, simply be-
cause it is unknown to common sense. If a report
of a speech in Parliament, for instance, is a true
report, how can it be varied, and which of the
London morning papers is to proceed for an inva-
sion of copyright ? If an account of an accident
is a true account, what paper is to prove that an-
other had no friend or reporter who communicated
the occurrence. The " manager" of the Times, of
course, testified to the Committee that the circula-
tion of his journal was so great as to be a loss to
the proprietors. To vary Thomson—

" Their gain is small because it is so great."
We should have liked to ask by what influence it
was that the issue of the stamp returns was stop-
ped ? But that might have been embarrassing.
One thing only is clear, that the Times and Vaux-
hall-gardens are the two great wonders of the day.
The first increases at a rate incalculable, and the
other puts on " one million additional lamps every
night"—that is, if you believe the " managers" of
both.

If there is to be a material alteration made,
giving more facilities for the publication of news-
papers,
it must be done on some principle that will
effectually break down monopoly, whether that
pretends to take the guise of general good or not.
The recommendations of the Committee on the
Stamp Duties are both impolitic and impracticable.