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the mass of readers are not philosophers , it does not follow that they have a greater appetite for falsehood than truth . To interest the ignorant it may be necessary to strip science of its technicalities , but not to hold it up to ridicule . It has been found that even
children may be amused and instructed by works of a higher order than the nursery tales of the last generation , and the immense sale of the ' Penny Magazine' is a triumphant proof , not indeed that every body can understand the Principia of Newton , but that a journal may attain the greatest possiole circulation , without pandering to either vice or folly . With this fact before our eyes , what is the sale of ' The Poor Man ' s Guardian , ' and
all the other cheap but intemperate periodicals published in defiance of the stamp duties ? To whom is it not evident that they only maintain a feeble existence by means of their illegality , and that the moment they shall lose their notoriety as victims to government prosecutions , and be exposed to the competition of journals equally cheap , but more able and intelligent , they will die a natural death .
A word or two to those who profess to doubt whether newspapers are , after all , a means for the dissemination of knowledge . Compared with innumerable works of higher pretensions in every department of literature and science , a newspaper seems a very humble instrument of mental cultivation , and many honest and well meaning men would make it appear that they regard it with contempt , and believe that we are guilty of a misnomer , when we call the stamp duty upon newspapers a tax on knowledge .
Those , however , who speak the most disparagingly of newspapers , are often among those who do not profit the least by them , and would not , perhaps , ungratefully deny the fact , if the same information were communicated , not in the form of a loose sheet , but in that of an octavo volume , hot-pressed , and published in Burlington-street . The most important class in society , the class which gives the tone to public opinion , the middle clasSj is
not composed of literary students , or classical scholars , but , to a great extent , of mere newspaper readers . Go into the house of a merchant or tradesman of wealth and influence , you will find a library of books , but evidently intended more for show than use ; a few of the li g hter works of literature , belonging to a book club , on a side table , one or two of the Monthly Magazines lying about , but even these rarely perused by the head of the family , who will not be slow to confess that nine-tenths of the time
which he spends in reading are devoted to the newspaper . Yet you will not find that he is deficient in general information ; no man can read habitually the vast mass of miscellaneous intelligence embodied in a daily paper , s' he Times * for instance , without imperceptibly becoming acquainted with many branches of literature and science , of which he would otherwise have known nothing . No daily paper is exclusively filled with news of a
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The Taxes on Knowledge . 107
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 107, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/23/
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