John Lennox and the Greenock " Newsclout." By W. Stewart.
(Glasgow : MacLehose. 3a. 6d. net.)—John Lennox was a plucky bookseller and printer, first at Dumbarton and then at Greenock, who between 1832 and 1853 published local newspapers in defiance of the Acts imposing heavy stamp duties and advertisement taxes on the Press. After many defeats, he conceived the ingenious idea of printing a journal not on paper but on calico so as to evade a law which specifically referred to a news " paper." The Greenock Neweclout, so called from the cotton cloth on which it was printed, appeared in February, 1849, and reached its thirty-fifth number in November, 1850. The revenue authorities seem to have been checkmated by this device ; they had prosecuted Lennox repeatedly for issuing other unstamped journals printed on paper, but they made no attempt to interfere with his Newsclout. Lennox, however, had no imitators. He lived to see the first of the " taxes on know- ledge " repealed in 1853. -Mr. Stewart's interesting essay, reprinted from the Scottish Historical Review, is a good piece of original research. He does not fail to point out that the newspaper taxes were most unfairly administered, and that both of the historic Parties were to blame for their continuance.
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