252 THE CECILS
Paper Duties. The general opposition to this measure was based on the contention that the state of the national finance did not permit of so large a loss of revenue, and, moreover, it was regarded as a sop offered to the extreme Radicals to secure their support for other proposals of the Government. Lord Robert Cecil was courageous enough to oppose it on its own merits. " Can it be maintained," he said, " that a person of any education can learn anything worth knowing from a penny paper ? It may be said that people may learn what has been said in Parlia- ment. Well, will that contribute to their education ? " Such unbending Conservatism reads strangely at the present day ; yet had the speaker lived to witness the development of the half- penny press in this country, it is probable that he would have congratulated himself on the wisdom of his attitude.
Palmerston himself was opposed to the Bill, and even wrote to the Queen to the effect that if the House of Lords threw it out, they would ' perform a good public service." Gladstone, however, when the Lords did their duty, became all the more determined to have his way, and in the following year he again proposed the repeal of the Paper Duties. Hitherto it had been the invariable custom to make the different taxes which composed the Budget into separate Bills, each of which was passed through the Commons and sent up to the Lords. The Upper House could thus reject though they could not amend
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