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    well as literature would have their able expounders in Penny Magazines , Guides to Knowledge , London Journals , and Caskets . But the tax can be evaded , and is evaded , by the ignorant and the ferocious ; the man of talent and the lover of

    PEACE IS BY LAW PRECLUDED FROM COMBATING THE FIGMENTS OF THE FOOL , AND FROM REPROVING THE VIOLENCE OF THE desperado . ' Aye , but , ' say the Ministers , with the candid and honest * Chancellor of the Exchequer at their head , though we clearly enough see the motive of the argument set up by the monopolists , and though we repudiate that argument as far as regards the public benefit , or the rights of authors , we must retain

    the tax , for we cannot afford to repeal it . Here it is that I shall join issue with Ministers ; here it is that I shall show that ( while they grant , or promise to grant general demands to the people , which do not benefit the people , and which do irritate the Aristocracy , and cause public jealousies ) they deny what they might safely grant , grant profitably to the people , and gain the love of the people by granting .

    Having paid some attention to the workings of our fiscal system , and having considerable interest in the removal of the prohibition of my publishing political speculations , I addressed the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the subject of his professed inability to afford to give up the taxes on newspapers . I did not merely and vaguely complain of the evil : I went farther , and suggested a means by which that evil might be abated , without the loss of a single shilling to the Treasury .

    I am in justice and in manliness bound to observe , that though my letter was written at a very busy period of the Parliamentary sessiori , and though Lord Althorp must of necessity have had many matters to engage his attention , my letter was replied to by return of post . Such promptitude is a very great merit in a Minister .

    But though I admire the Minister ' promptitude , I do not feel bound to leave a fallacy unexamined or an evil unrernedied , because the one has been promptly forwarded , or the other promptly justified . The letter ran thus : — c Downing Street , Nov . 21 .

    * Sir , —I am directed by Lord Allhorp to acknowledge your letter of the 19 th , and to thank you for the suggestions contained in it . The proposal of raising money by licences has been very frequently recommended , but there are many objections to it , and it has never been considered advisable as a general measure . The partial adoption of it

    * It it no part of my nature to take advantage of my own obscurity to offer insult to those whom birth , wealth , or office , places sd far above me an to render it impossible for them to reply to me . I deny neither honestv nor candour to Lord Althorp . But 1 confes * that the emphatic and j > erpetuul ascription of those qualities to him has often made me ask what compliment i » it to a man to » ay , having nothing do conceal , you do not H * j ami hqving nothing to daire , you do not Mkal f

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    768 Hints on the Errors of Parly .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1834, page 768, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2639/page/22/