THE NEWSPAPER TAX.
THE time seems to be close at hand when time Stamp-duty on Newspapers must be given up. It is now paid by those only who are willing to pay it. Tens of thousands of unstamped papers have been sold in London weekly for many months, in defiance of the law; and within a few days a daily journal has made its ap- pearance without a stamp, and of course with the tacit connivance of the Government. Were a few merchants permitted to take wine out of the Docks without payment of the duty which is levied on the trade generally, what an outcry would be raised against the
injustice ! Yet this treatment is what the tax-paying portion of the press endure at the bawls of Atiaisters, NVII0 suffer the laws against
publishing unstamped newspapers to remain a dead letter as respects all who choose to disobey them. Persons who vend news- papers without stamps are liable to be fined and imprisoned, the papers may be seized, and all who are found with them in their hands may be mulcted in 201. penalties; but the law authorizing these punishments lies dormant. What is the reason of this? It is because the Government dares not incur the odium of enforcing the law : public opinion is too strong against it. Then it is plain that the law itself should be repealed, and the duty legally taken off: Any attempt to augment the severity of the law would be absurd and ineffectual, in the face of a successful resistance to the execution of existing enactments.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that he cannot spare time money which the Newspaper-duty produces. But he will not long be able to collect the duty : in self-defence, the proprietors of newspapers generally must adopt a system of passive resistance, the result of which will be the virtual abolition of time duty, just as in Ireland the tithes have been abolished. It will not go to take off part only of the tax—Messieurs the Unstamped, with the venders of their wares, the Unwashed *—declare that they will pay no duty at all ; and, as we have seen, the Government is forced to submit. Therefore it would be a paltry, unsatisfactory, and unfair measure to repeal part only of the tax. Doubtless, it would be unpleasant to those parties who have been in the habit of set- ting forth that the " taxes on knowledge" are fourpence, whereas on papers sold for sevenpence they are little more than threepence, to confess that they have been guilty of mystification on time sub- ject, and that the abolition of the "knowledge tax" will not enable them to take fourpence from the price of their papers. The repeal of a part only of time tax, while the machinery of discounts is re- tained, might answer the purpose of some persons better than a total repeal ; but no clear-beaded or right-thinking Minister will be mystified in this way.t The Chancellor of the Exchequer must not be made the tool of any set of men. His duty lies clear before him: if he cannot collect fourpence, he cannot collect twopence; and if he cannot do equal justice to all in the same business—if he is unable to force A to pay, what B front a regard to the law and to decency pays unwillingly, but yet pays—then he must, as a fair and upright Minister, state the case to the Legislature, and propose to treat all his Majesty's subjects in the same trade alike; and so cease from the partial collection of the tax. We assume that the repeal of the entire Newspaper-tax cannot be long delayed : for we have no right to impute to Mr. SPRING RICE or his colleagues the determination, any more than the wish, * t5nrassed, a favorite Tory designation for any porl!oa of the industrious poor.
f The discount ailowed to papers published at sevenpenee is twenty per cent.; to
those whose price is higher—the Spectator, for instance—only four per cont. discount. Is allowed on the Stamp duty. In this way, a direct premium is given to the production
of a low-priced article. No plausible reason can be assigned for maintaming the unjust difference; and if the matter is lenislatorially meddled with at all. it should be done away with. Government steps hey onus its province when it interferes so unnecessarily with the freedom of the public choice, by means of taxation.
veuld be made up by the increase of the Excise duty on paper; for, equestionably, more newspapers would be sold if the twice were Jae t!.e country from the expense of maintaining a few thousand 'A. That the maid number of Orangemen is about .220,000. vagabonds in red coats, who " serve his Majesty " by getting drunk,3d. That they are exclusively Protestants. practising thievery, and stabbing peace-loving "civilians" with 4th. That they are generally armed.
for that if the tax is not legally, it will soon be virtually, re- And though we do not mean to charge the Duke of CUMBER• pealed : and we challenge any man to prove that the recusant LAND with any intention of using the power thus illicitly parties would deserve blame for their resistance to the payment of placed in his hands, for the overthrow of our liberties, or for inter- an imposition which is not fairly levied. awing with the line of succession to the Throne, we are not so
Mr. nomE the other day, at the Crown and Anchor, produced a charitably disposed towards the faction whose tool, not instigator newspaper published in New York, which contained 1371 adver- and manager, he may be. We believe the Orange faction to be tisements; and he asked if Englishmen would not like to adverte capable of the most flagitious designs against the welfare of the in such a paper? To this, Englishmen who understand any thing of State. Of all political parties we hold them to be the most business will reply, Certainly not : advertisers grumble at thedouble desperate. We believe that they would eagerly join in any sheets of the Morning Papers, and would scarcely give thanks, plot that promised to raise their Grand Master to the Throne. much less money, for an advertisement among such ass unreadable Men who systematically labour to found secret political so mass. But would not the readers of a daily paper like to have cieties in the Army, which ought to be of no politics, must be such a one for ten dollars (about forty-five shillings) per annum ? singularly unscrupulous in the use of means. They well Again, for our countrymen, we reply, No. The American news- know, that in case of an Orange insurrection, it would be of the papers are wretched things compared with the English, and dear at utmost importance to have paralyzed the force of the Army. the price paid for them. No—we believe that Englishmen would They are quite alive to the extent of the power which they confer require better papers than the Americans, or even the French, are on their chief, when they enable him to say, " By means of a satisfied with. It would lead us into a long discussion to state the secret combination, I have the military at my beck." reasons for this opinion ; but we have no doubt that, at any price, It was asserted by Mr. HENRY MAXWELL, Grand Secretary to such papers as the French or the American would in this country the Orangemen, that the Duke of CUMBERLAND signed blank war- mest' die a natural death. rants for the establishment of Orange Lodges, but that he was We do not therefore anticipate that a permanent circulation of not aware that such Lodges were in process of formation in the trashy journals (among the masses, we mean—for,God knows, the Army ; and Mr. MAXWELL declared his own ignorance of their taste of the "fashionable world " is as base as poesilde) would to perpetuate gross injustice. We come then to a consideration
arise from the abolition of the newspaper-tax. We believe that of the consequences which would arise from the repeal of the ws paper- ta x. multitudes would buy newspapers who now scarcely ever see
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