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Leader (1850-1860), 19th April 1851, Edition Town of 1, Page 366, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      you must do justice by extending education to the independent labourer . The facts which we have stated , illustrate the degree and extent . to which the principle of concert has seized the minds of practical men . Call it "Socialism" and you frighten them ; but to the thing they are reconciled by the good which it is doing under their own hands- We entreat our readers to study the plain facts for themselves . We

      urge our Communistic readers to recognise in this Poor Law an existing institution affording the ground on which the great principle of their doctrine can be applied , practically , immediately , in such form as to win the approval of experienced men , and to alarm no class whatever . We urge our Democratic readers to recognise in this reform a great fundamental measure which may be the lever for raising the condition of the working classes above the level of starvation labour , under the

      sweating system of towns or the pauper labour ol the agricultural districts . We urge our oeconomical readers to investigate the undeveloped capacities of an institution which may be made the instrument for solving the formidable Labour question ; the more readily , since its capacity in that direction has already made itself apparent to a large number of practical men engaged in its local working . We who urge this investigation are but following in the footsteps of the Poor Law guardians in Sheffield , Fearnley Tyas , Cork , Galway , and several other places , not the least advanced of which is Thanet .

      Untitled Article

      FAREWELL TO THE WOOD . Wood-paving may be regarded , for any general purposes , as a thing of the past . It is condemned and sentenced , everywhere but in Lombard-street . The story of its fate is a stirring one , and it has a moral most instructive . Nobody could be more delighted than the Londoner was when wood first formed the road before his door . The sudden quiet was like a blessing from heaven . ' * ' It is , " said a denizen of Coventrystreet , " like being in the country" ! Regent-street became the drawing-room of carriageways . Luxury had achieved its crowning victory over difficulty , and the bustle of the metropolis was lulled to the ear without hindrance to activity . Blessings on the man that first imported wood !

      But soon the smile was saddened . The noblest of horses lay prostrate—kicking , galled , panting , broken-kneed , roaring , sprained , strained , dead ! Humanity shuddered at the suffering ; thrift shuddered at the expense in horseflesh . Wet wood will be slippery , and there was no denying the fact that accidents , frequent and cruel , wounded both heart and pocket—to say nothing of bones . Ingenious men suggested palliatives ; Leitch Ritchie , especially , advised the St . Petersburgh plan a surface of pitch and grit . Inventors , however , set to work to devise new surfaces of grooves , and we doubt whether Leitch Ritchie ' s suggestion was

      ever fairly tried . It was presumed not to answer . ( Jrit was tried without the pitch , but not the thing advised ; and even the grit was adopted , Whig-fashion , " too late . " The evident object of each company was , to hit upon something which could be made peculiar to its own patent ; the simple contrivance which fitted all was not exclusive enough . Meanwhile , the slipperiness continued ; grooves were still wet wood ; the material also proved to he liable to uneven pressure , and the surface became mountainoviHly fluctuating . Broken-kneed horses , damaged carriages , blocked ways , grumblings , and all attendant ills , accumulated to a monster grievance which not even the quiet could compensate .

      It remained to give the coup-de-grace ; and this was ( lone in a fashion as strange ; as any part of the whole Htory . Messrs . Cole and Scott , " Fin-nival ' s-inn , and Notting-hill , " put forth a . singular and mysterious advertisement which appeared in the Leader , announcing a company to nave" the streets with a precious wood of ancient , name ; the joke was final and fatal—wood pavement is Hlinking out of night as fast as possible . Sir Peter Laurie could not " put it down , ' but Messrs . Colo and Seott have torn it up . Alone they did it—unaided in money or exertion . Strange intervention of the " Deus ex machine" !

      ' Yet wood had its good qualities . ^ specially did it please us to see it around places of worship ; which it endowed , even in the heart of London , with an almoHt rural quiet . But the hewerw of wood could not learn the error of their ways , and ho their path is closed for ever . Others must try the pious hand at obtaining an equally quiet flooring for the public ways ; a contemporary haw

      mitfgested caoutchouc carpets ; and surely some contrivance will be at last found to supply the one want which wood pavement has taught us to feel . " Uno avulso non deficit alter . " Meanwhile , wood has ceased to grow in the streets of London .

      Untitled Article

      THE PENNY STAMP COMMITTEE , The first nail in the coffin of the Taxes on Knowledge was inserted on Monday week by Mr . Milner Gibson ' s motion for the appointment of a committee " to inquire into the present state and operation of the law relative to newspaper stamps , also into the law and regulations relative to the transmission of newspapers and other publications by post , and to report their opinion thereupon to the House . " The recapitulation of the steps which

      have led to this will not , we hope , be considered as a waste of time on the part of our readers . They are already aware that law and practice are at variance , nay , that the practice is utterly inconsistent with itself ; a consideration of the motives from which officials act is at all times interesting ; in the present case it is more than usually so , as the action of the Board of Inland Revenue is so grotesquely inconsistent as to make the discovery of their motives a difficult problem .

      About fourteen months ago Mr . Gibson , perceiving that the weak point of the stamp was the fact that it was illegally dispensed with in favour of publications which were allowed to be at the same time newspapers and not newspapers , obtained a return from the Stamp-office of fifty-one " papers registered as newspapers , a portion of which is published without stamps . " Fora whole year the unceasing attention of the Stamp Abolition Committee and its successor , the Association for Promoting the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge , has been directed to the anomalies shadowed forth in this

      return . They discovered that the illegal newspapers in the metropolis , which now amount to about sixty or seventy , might be divided into four classes : first , registered newspapers , not containing news , but stamping only a part of their impression , a proceeding contrary to law ; secondly , partially stamped monthly newspapers containing news , and thus guilty of a double violation of the law ; thirdly , weekly newspapers partially stamped , containing news or comments ; and fourthly , unstamped newspapers of all sorts .

      In the second class , the greatest offenders were and are the Freeholder , and the Household Narrative .- in the third , Punch and the Legal Observer bear away the bel £ ; the latter being a systematic digest of legal news for the benefit of the profession . We have already expressed an opinion that the motives of the Board of Inland Revenue have been of the most abstruse and recondite kind ; to suppose that their inconsistency has been the result of incompetency and stupidity would be harsh and severe ; a mature consideration of the facts about to be cited has convinced us that the Stamp-office has had in view only one object , namely , to get the stamp dead and buried as fast as possible by displaying the law in a ridiculous light .

      The efforts of the abolitionists out of doors have indeed been most ably seconded by the abolitionists in the Board of Inland Revenue , who have spent the past year in performing a series of acts theoretically tyrannical , cowardly , and insincere , but so devoid of any purpose , except the one of exposing the iniquity of the law and the impossibility of reducing it to practice , as to make charity and reason unite in dictating the opinion that they were actually so intended . 1

      The first notable proceedingof the board was to censure the Plymouth Journal for publishing unstamped slips containing the Queen ' s Speech ; the next was to suppress the little news column of the Norwich Reformer , a column so small , that its omission was of the least possible consequence to the paper . Acting on this broad hint , the abolitionists out of doors presented to the board for prosecution , first , two or three , and , at hint , about forty publications . The board selected two ; Mr . Casseil's Freeholder and Mr . Diekens ' s Narrative .

      In order to give the fullest scope to the friends of the freedom of the press , they first defined the law so strictly as to condemn all the partially ( stamped , and nearly all the unstamped press ; they then allowed themselves to be browbeaten and tnlenced by the thunder of the Freeholder , and , finally , they agreed with Mcshih . Bradbury and KvaiiH that a prosecution should be commenced againnt the Household Narrative . The prosecution of the Household Narrative haa been delayed ; but , wo aro told , it \ h to come on in

      theExchequer duringthe present month ; and wemay suppose that it will be no longer delayed , since "the pear" is now * ' ripe " enough for Messrs . Bradbury and Evans to be prosecuted without much danger to their property . As they are publishers of three other illegal newspapers , viz ., Punch , the Household Words , and the Ladies' Companion , it will be necessary to alter the law during the present session , since it cannot much longer be allowed to sleep on the Statute-book . Meanwhile the board has magnanimously refused to take notice of informations against divers organs of Chartism and Socialism which were presented to them . Had it not been contrary to official etiquette they would dbubtless have sent them notice that they might safely promulgate , not only opinions , but facts of daily occurrence—a liberty which would have been highly beneficial ; but this would have shown the office in too favourable a light , and perhaps have tended to the continuance of a law of which the board were evidently tired . Their actual course was much more useful . When the Leader and other papers demanded to be put on the same footing as the fifty-one favoured publications , the board sent a reply to the effect that a registered newspaper was not necessarily a newspaper at all , and that there was no analogy between the Leader and the papers alluded to . This reply was in direct contradiction to the letter sent to the Freeholder , where it was shown that a newspaper was such in virtue of its registration . But the board , not satisfied to be quite idle , aware of the apathy of country publishers , and knowing that the abolitionists were ignorant of the oppression going on in the country , got up a case for their enlightenment , and attacked the Wakefield Examiner for publishing unstamped slips . We have before us an account furnished in sober sadness by the directors of that paper of the hoax played off on them by the Stampoffice . We say a hoax , for to suppose that the office were in earnest in their pious horror at an offence which they had winked at every day in London , and which they still ignore in spite of informations furnished against similar offenders , would be malicious and uncharitable . We fancy we see Mr . Timm and Mr . Keogh enjoying their wine and their joke while concocting their rawhead-and-bloody-bones letter to Mr . Greenwood . They evidently considered his £ 10 fine as a subscription due to the abolition committee , who will know whom to thank , if some day they receive it in half bank notes as conscience money for cheating

      a Yorkshireman . But the final stroke , the last harmless atrocity , the crowning mercy of sham tyranny exerted in the cause of the freedom of the press has yet to be related . The different boroughs of the metropolis are in the habit of publishing local newspapers without a stamp ; one of these , called the Ratepayer and Tower Hamlets Reporter , was lately interfered with ; the board adjudged it to be a newspaper , forced it to find security , and to pay the advertisement duty on a stamped copy ; but they at the same time allowed the rest of its

      impression to appear on unstamped paper ! This is the climax of absurdity . We cannot expect any more such help as this , and we must do the rest out of doors . Our readers will recollect that , a fewdays after the meeting at St . Martin ' s-hall , Mr . Hume left with Lord John Russell a packet of illegal newspapers ; Lord John has studied them to some purpose , and has granted , unasked , the committee which he refused last year . He has emphatically denied that he desires the stamp to remain for any political purpose . Albeit unused to praise him , we have no doubt that his conduct in this matter is straightforward and patriotic ; but we have no right to expect that he will do more without pressure ; it is the people ' s business to improve the advantage now obtained , and to raise such a cry as shall oblige Government either to enforce the law or to repeal it . We have no fear of the result , as the repeal will' cost by far the least trouble . We therefore once more urge our friends to activity . Let every man and woman petition ; let all who are able take some illegal newspaper and send it with an information to the Board of Inland Revenue ; and let all who desire to impart or to receive information , or to obtain written copies of petitions , write to 15 , KtJHex-Htreet , without delay .

      Untitled Article

      UNIFORM AND REFORM IN Tlltf ARMY . It is a pity that the rentier activity which diatinguisheH our military managers does not busy itself a little more with eNHentiale than externals . Ther «

      Untitled Article

      366 m % t % t ** tT . [ Satohpat ,

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), April 19, 1851, page 366, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1879/page/10/