NINETEENTH CENTURY.
876
nature ; provided such bills, lists, or accounts do not contain any other matter than what hath been usually comprised thereiaj or to the prin- ters or publishers of the foregoing^ -matters, or any or either of them.
27. That nothing in this act contained shall extend or be construed to extend to charge with stamp duties any work re-printed and re-pub- lished in parts or numbers, whether such work shall be wholly reprinted or shall be republished in an abridged form ; provided that the work so reprinted and re-published shall have been first pnnted and published two years at the least pre- vious to such re-printing and re-publication, and provided the said work was not first published in parts or numbers.
The above enactments were designed to tram- ple down all liberty of the press in this country, and they were placed upon the statute book dur- ing the ministry of lord Castlereagfa,* and de- nominated, par excellence, the " Six Acts," com- pared with which, all former severities vanish into trifles. In the regular exercise of his call- ing, in order to obtain a livelihood, the British pnnter was made a perpetual candidate for imprisonment, banishment, or transportation. He was, moreover, constrained to involve friends as sureties before he could undertake some par- ticular branch of his business ; and thus subject himself to the payment of ant fine that might be imposed for offences not definable by a written law, but arbitrarily engendered in the breast of any attomey-genend — ^magnified in the micro- scopic eyes of a special jury — and assuming some monstrous shape on being exposed to the fiat of any time-serving judge.
A short time clearly proved how futile and abortive in the extreme was these severe enact- ments, so far as the suppression of violent in- vectives against the ministry, or seditious writings was intended by it, but supereminently calculateid to encourage newspaper monopoly. The ope- ration of any restrictive laws against the press has invariably led to the contrary results to those contemplated. We have shewn the origin and progress of the tax raised progressively, penny after penny, with the increasing thirst for information among the people, until it amounted to one hundred per cent, upon the original price of a newspaper, and proved the most impolitic tax that ever was made a source of revenue. The tax was overlooked in the restlessness of the times, and amid the whirlwind of other taxes with which the people were saddled. The British ministry had a double object in view in taxing newspapers. The first was revenue ; and the second, the banishment of immoral and slanderous publications from general circulation. A third object may be added; namely, the limitation of public animadverrions on their conduct to as narrow a circle as possible, by en- hancing the market price of them. Did it serve
« Robert Stewart, vru born Jane IB, I7S9, succeeded hisftttlieru marquis of LoDdondary, In 1831, Middled, by >>i* own band, at North Cray in Kent, AuguM 13, 1813.
the purpose ? Except in the way of emolument, did It produce any oeneficial or moral effect? Did it even answer the main end they had in view by it ? We submit it did not. The minis- terial press suffered by these measures to a far greater extent than the opposition press did. Neither Mr. Percival* nor lord Londonderry could recognise one of the first maxims of Mr. Pitt; which was, to let the press correct the press, and to permit scurrility and abuse to be neutralized by their over excesses, and be ren- dered nerveless and powerless by the ridicule of one writer, the indignant declamation of another, the contempt of a third, and the hatred of every silent or neutral party. The press and the press alone, can correct its own abuses and licentious- ness. If these abuses are put down in any other way, it must be by the total destruction of the press itself. In short, these measures have been the unfortunate means of making newspapers more the slaves, the mere machines of faction, than they ever were before. The price nar- rowed the selection, and effectually interposed, so far as the labouring classes were concerned, between the desire to obtain information, and the exercise of free discussion. The more diversified public opinion is, the less extensive will be its ramifications, and the less danger to the mo- narchy is to be apprehended from it; therefore, the best security would be to let the press be un- fettered and untaxed, and the fullest scope given to ever writer to develope his views, and to every reader to exercise his jiidgment as he please8.t
1819, Dee. Died, Bryan M'Swynv, printer of the Courier London newspaper since its com- mencement in 1792.
1619. The National Omnibtu, in eight pages folio. This periodical was given gratis to coffee houses, and sold for one penny by the newsmen, the necessary remuneration being looked for from the profit of the advertisements inserted in it. At first fortnightly, and afterwards weekly.
1819, Feb. The imperial Magazine; or, Com- pendium of Rdiffiout, Moral, and Philosophical Knowledge, No. 1, printed and published by Henry Fisher, printer in ordinary to his majesty, at the Caxtoii printing-office, Liverpool. 1«.
1819, April 24. 1%* Yorkshire Gazette, pub- lished at York.
1819. Pamphleteer.
1819. 7%e Musical Magazine.
- The right hon. Spencer Perdval, chancellor of the ex-
chequer, was assassinated in the lobby of the honse of commons, May 11, isia, by John BeUingbam, who was executed for the oSience on the 18th.
t To show the raidd extension of newspapers in the absence of all taxes upon them, we have only to look to America, and there we shall find the numbers to be amazing. In 1730, in the North American colonies, there were but seven newspapers; In 177s, there were thirty- seven : in 1810, in the United States alone, there wera three hundred and fifty-nine. Including twenty-five pub- lished dally, which circulated 23,300,000 copies in the year; in 1S37, six hundred and forty, circulating about thirty millions of copies j and in 1834, there were one thousand two hundred and euty-five. These papers can be sent by post to the distance or a hundred miles, for the postage of about a halfpenny .(The population of the States was then about 13,000.000) and they have more ncwa- papeis than the whole of Europe with igo.ooo.ooo.
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