and in the jubilee year of the Society the Press Association paid to the Post Office for telegraphing messages alone £36,000, making it without doubt the largest customer which the Government has, or is likely to have.
Reform of the law of libel, as affecting newspapers, has been for some years past an object to which the Provincial Newspaper Society has devoted its best energies. With the support of the Society, the late Mr J. D. Hutchinson, M.P. for Halifax, after much honorable exertion succeeded in getting through Parliament the Newspaper Libel and Registration Act of 1881, which first gave to journalists "privilege" for any fair and accurate report of meetings lawfully convened, and formed the basis on which Sir Algernon Borthwick, Bart., M. P., was able to establish the more extensive and valuable Law of Libels Amendment Act, 1888. The promotion of the last mentioned Act was not, however, left exclusively to the country newspaper proprietors. There was a joint Libel Law Reform Committee, formed of representatives of both the London and the country Press, and out of that has grown the extension of the Provincial Newspaper Society which is indicated in its present more general title, "The Newspaper Society." This change was effected at a meeting held in London on 27th May, 1889, when it was resolved, in the presence of a large and representative gathering, to broaden the basis of the old Society, so that all newspaper proprietors might join; the word "Provincial," which for fifty years had formed part of the Society's title, being erased from it. Sir A. Borthwick was elected the first president, and Mr H. Whorlow, for many years associated with the old Society, continues to fill the post of secretary. The objects of the re-constituted Society, as set forth in the scheme then agreed on were these:—
1. To promote and safeguard newspaper interests in Parliament and in the different Government departments.
