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Untitled Article
corruptions wrought on the human mind by the possession of power . Priests have been examples of it in all countries and ages . We have no wish to taunt Roman * Catholics ; we hold the present generation as exonerated as they claim to be , from the sins of their forefathers ; but the locking up of the universal word pf God from the laity is an act of impious daring never to be
forgotten . There can be little doubt that the interests of their Order dictated this assumption . They concealed the title-deeds pf humanity that they might usurp the property . From the Reformation to the Revolution , the Censorship and the S tar-Chamber figure in our annals . The attempt to enlighten the public was subjected to a criminal punishment before it was
impeded b y a fiscal imposition . The tendency and the iniquity of Jhe two proceedings are much the same ; and while the old and straightforward method surpassed in atrocity , the modern invention excels in baseness . Were Milton ' living at this hour / he would indite a second Areopagitica , but with his dignified appeal there would mingle more of contemptuous remonstrance .
That the excise duties on paper , the stamps on newspapers , the advertisement duty , and the custom-house dues on books imported , are really a heavy tax on the diffusion of knowledge , is easily shown . Indeed the more the subject is investigated , the more extensive appears the injurious influence which they exercise . Whatever raises the price of books diminishes the number of readers . Only a certain proportion of people's income can be
expended on literature ; and whatever is taken for tax diminishes the quantity which that proportion will purchase . The lower we descend in society , the heavier the tax falls . Is it not monstrous that the poor boy , who patiently lays by his halfpence till they shall have accumulated into the shillings which will purchase some volume that may be his companion through life , should be kept back , by the interposition of government , though
it be but a single ; week , from the possession of his treasure ? We hatVe known sixpenny publications purchased by people so poor that the price was paid by weekly instalments . It is with the means of knowledge as with those of subsistence , — -an addition of price which is unfelt by the proprietor actually starves the labourer . And the evil , to the lower classes , multiplies itself by its effects upon those immediately above them , and who are , incidentally or avowedly , their instructors . The small tradesman ^ ,
the cheap schoolmaster , the village preacher , the natural teachers of the poor , who give out orally what they have derived from reading , these all feel the pressure , and are less qualified in consequence , to execute the useful task which devolves upon them in society . And higher yet , Christian ministers , of every denomination , established or dissenting , notoriously feel the evil , as a body , of having to commence the duties of their vocation under the unfavourable circumstance of a deficient supply pf
Untitled Article
268 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 268, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/52/
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