MOTIONS REGARDING THE STAMP-DUTY AND CHEAP PUBLICATIONS.
During the troubled state of the country in 1819 and 1820, certain legislative measures had been adopted, known by the name of the Six Acts, for the purpose of checking the course of sedition. Some of these had expired by the lapse of time; but one, which subjected cheap periodicals issued for the purposes of agitation to a stamp-duty still remained on the statute-book. On the 31st of May, Mr. Hume brought forward a motion for the repeal of this statute. He had intended, he said, to have made this motion during the preceding session, but he congratulated himself upon the delay, as the changes which had taken place in the government were favourable to the question he now advocated. But Mr. Hume soon found himself mistaken. Mr. Canning and others when in opposition had condemned this statute as a tyrannical and unwarrantable attack against the liberty of the press; but to a man they now resisted the motion, and abused and ridiculed the mover. It was lost by a majority of one hundred and twenty against ten.