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Untitled Article
those of the county ; after a time they will feel a pleasure in discussing a measure affecting the whole nation , and then their curiosity will be excited to read about other nations . The strongest objection we know of to a penny stamp is , that it would prevent the existence of cheap local newspapers . If
there were no small beginnings , there could b ^ no progress , — no attainment of intellectual power , —and the brutal and debasing ignorance of some millions of our countrymen would be perpetuated from generation to generation . The next assertion we find in the pamphlet is , that without a stamp , newspapers could not be conducted with the same ability as at present , through the excessive competition that would arise . In other words , these consistent advocates of free trade
actually tell the public , that the way to improve the quality of a commodity is to tax it ! Wonderful discovery ! But what still more wonderful stupidity on the part of the public , by which they should have been led to imagine that it was nothing but competition that made capitalists expend their money in improvements , in order to gain the command of a market ! Learn every one , and know , henceforth , from the testimony of
Mr . Mudie , Mr . Knight , and the Chancellor of the Exchequer , that it was only the obligations of the stamped journals to government that induced them to get their newspapers printed by steam , and that induces now the proprietors of those journals to expend 15 , 000 / . per annum in the salaries of reporters and editors . Learn , moreover , that if the stamps be taken off , the laws of human nature will be reversed , and the anxiety of every newspaper proprietor will then be to offer the worst possible commodity to the public , as the surest means of
success . We hear much of the inferiority of American newspapers , but the fact may be explained , without resorting to the absurd hypothesis that it is to be attributed to the absence of a stamp duty . Every tiling manufactured in that country is inferior to the English for one and the same reason . Competition in the
United States has in no branch of industry reached the same point as in this country . Increase the number of literary rnen in the United States , and the number of newspaper establishments , so that the supply shall be greater than the demand , which has never yet been the case in America , and there will be immediately a visible improvement in the American journals ; but already an improvement has commenced , and in a few years they will equal if not excel our own .
If there were any real ground for apprehension , it is not that the competition of newspaper proprietors would be too severe without a stamp duty , but not severe enough . The sftle of the unstamped newspapers , in holes and comers , proves that there would be an immense market for cheap journals , if the
Untitled Article
Moiul Interest * f the Productive Classes . S 6 l
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1836, page 261, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2656/page/69/
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