LORD BROUGHAMpresented a petition from the Committee of Management of the Whittington Club and Metropolitan Athenæum in the Strand, praying for the repeal of the stamp duty on newspapers, the advertisement duty, and the excise duty on paper. In supporting the prayer of the petition, the noble and learned Lord said, that the reduction of the stamp duty on newspapers from threepence to a penny, had proved of great advantage to the middle and higher classes, and had been found advantageous as well, no doubt, to the proprietors of newspapers—a very useful, and, 1207 generally, a very respectable body, and one that was connected with concerns often of very considerable commercial importance; for he dared say that the Times and the Morning Chronicle were among the greatest mercantile concerns, in point of magnitude, existing in the city of London. But, however, much benefit these classes had reaped from that reduction, still the penny stamp was just as effectual as the three penny one was in shutting out the peasantry of the country and the rural population generally from the advantages of cheap and useful knowledge, because the friends of popular enlightenment had never yet been able to cross the threshold of the cottage door. But if the penny stamp were taken off newspapers, and valuable information of a practical character for the agricultural classes could be wrapped up together with general and local news, a salutary stimulus would be given to popular instruction.
§ EARL FITZWILLIAMpresented a petition to the same effect from the inhabitants of Sheffield, and took occasion to express his doubts as to the propriety of acceding to the prayer of the petitioners, being apprehensive that it would tend to encourage the dissemination of immoral and pernicious prints.
LORD BROUGHAMcertainly admitted it was necessary that the press should be watched, and agreed that in proportion as its operations became extended, so in proportion ought that vigilance to be increased; but he had the strongest confidence in truth, morality, and religion being always able to keep their own no matter how cheap books might become.
§ House adjourned till To-morrow.