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The idea has long been abandoned ,, even by poets and novelists * to the wildest romancers , of a man selling his soul io the Evil One for riches . Yet something like a parallel to this absurd and disgusting fiction actually exists at the present moment . It may
be found , not in the insanity of some wretched individual , but in the deliberate conduct of the great British nation , so far as the nation identifies itself with those by whom it has been governed . By the taxes on knowledge the pnbiic mind is sold to ignorance and degradation for the sake of revenue . To realize an incomie
of a few hundred thousands , or say it be a million or two of pounds per annum , we barter the means of spreading through the great mass of society , that humanizing and beneficent knowledge \ vhich , as Solomon says of wisdom , is more precious than rubies . On behalf of the nation it may be said , that hitherto the nation has not governed itself , and should not be held responsible for the acts of its rulers ; that it has not loved darkness rather than
light , but been held in darkness by those who could have said , Met there be light ; ' and that the people are therefore rather to be regarded as the objects than as the agents of the offence which has been committed ,, —as the victims rather than as the instigators of the crime which has been perpetrated . This defence involves a heavy accusation . It supposes an aristocracy so selfish as to seek the retention of power by obstructing the progress of
civilization and improvement , by perpetuating the degradation of their species and their countrymen , and by preventing the diminution of ignorance , vice , and misery . This ground ought not to be taken till its firmness has been tried . Let the fact be brought to the test . The people are not to be blamed for acquiescence in the privation of that knowledge , the worth of which can only be appreciated by those who have , in some degree , its possession ;
but a sufficient sense of its importance has now gone abroad to render longer acquiescence culpable . The people must clear themselves by petitioning for the repeal of these taxes ; and the legislature must clear itself by granting the prayer of those petitions , and thus remove every stigma save that of having originated the evil in question , and retained and aggravated it until those whom they snould have enlightened had exposed its enormity .
There is something so extraordinary in the notion of levying taxes upon knowledge , that many good easy people will at once set down the expression as a vehicle of misrepresentation . They will regard its employment as the trick of a political party . And yet , if they persist to shut their eyes on present things , the history of the past may show that the ruling few have ever been very capable of bandaging the mental sight of the subject many , wh ^ neVer- their own interests required it . This is one of the Worst
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^ § 6 * r
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TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 267, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/51/
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