§ MR. SCHOLEFIELDbegged to ask the hon. and learned Attorney General what steps had been taken to try the ques- 895 tion raised by the Board of Inland Revenue, as to the right to publish monthly papers at other periods than "the first day of every calendar month, or within two days before or after that day," according to the terms of the Act 60 Geo. III., cap. 9? The House was probably aware that certain persons in Scotland and in this country were in the habit of publishing monthly newspapers in the middle of the month; a practice the legality of which, it appeared, was questioned by the Government. One newspaper had accordingly been started for the express purpose of testing the point, and inducing the Government to try the question. The Board of Inland Revenue had sent a letter to the publisher in the usual form, protesting against the publication; and the solicitor to the publisher had returned an answer, declaring his willingness to accept the service of a process. The Board of Inland Revenue, however, instead of acting against the party at once, had allowed the matter to remain in abeyance; a state of things, he need hardly say, which was highly inconvenient. He therefore wished to know what steps the Government intended to take in the matter?
The ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, that in order that the answer might be satisfactory, it was necessary that he should give a short explanation. Upon the 60 Geo. III., the Act of Parliament to which the hon. Gentleman's question referred, it was enacted that any paper or pamphlet containing public news, intelligence, or occurrences, or remarks thereon, and published periodically at intervals not exceeding twenty-six days, should be deemed to be a newspaper, and liable as such to the stamp duty. In the same Act it was provided that papers liable to the stamp duty, namely, papers published at longer intervals than twenty-six days, must be published on the first day of every calendar month, or within two days prior or subsequent to that day, otherwise they would be liable to a penalty of 20l. Now, the object of that enactment he took to be to prevent the proprietor of a paper which was not liable to the stamp duty, in consequence of being published at longer intervals than twenty-six days, resorting to the expedient of publishing the same paper, in point of contents, but with a different title in the intervening period of time with the view of evading the duty. With respect to the Stoke-upon-Trent paper, to which the question of the hon. Gentleman, he be- 896 lieved, referred, it was undoubtedly not liable to the stamp duty, because it was published at longer intervals than twenty-six days; but it was liable to the penalty of 20l., by reason of its not being published at the period prescribed by the Act of Parliament, and, the attention of the Inland Department having been called to that circumstance, a letter was sent to the publisher of that paper informing him that he had infringed the Act. As the hon. Gentleman had stated, the reply received was a sort of invitation to prosecute; but inasmuch as there had been no evasion of duty, as the revenue had not suffered at all, and as all that the party had rendered himself liable for, was a penalty of 20l. on the information of the Attorney General, he certainly did not think it inconsistent with his duty to abstain from filing an information under all the circumstances. The hon. Member for Montrose (Mr. Hume) had on a recent occasion contrasted the conduct of the Inland Department in the case of the Dunfermline News with their conduct in the case of the Stoke-upon-Trent paper. He begged now to state to his hon. Friend, that it appeared that the publisher of the Dunfermline News had, for the purpose of evading the duty, resorted to the contrivance to which he had referred, of publishing the same paper under a different title in the middle of the month. Proceedings had accordingly been taken in Scotland to call the party to account for having infringed the law in that respect; and he begged to add, that if the publisher of the Stoke-upon-Trent paper should pursue the same course, he (Attorney General) should feel it to be his duty to file an information against him.