[268] "The Postmaster-General, sensible of this Diminution, lately directed the Payments thereout to the other Officers and Clerks in the Office to be discontinued, and reimbursed some of them out of the Revenue; but this is not the only Expence to which the Public is subjected by the Increase of these Orders. The Number of Newspapers to be forwarded every Night is now so great, that ... a separate Office is allotted ... and 18 Extra Persons are employed, at an Annual Expence of £400, to perform the Duty of sorting and packing up the Newspapers; besides it is in Proof that Letters and written Papers are frequently enclosed in them, by which the Revenue is defrauded, without a Possibility of Prevention, while the present Mode continues; as the number is by far too great to admit of a general Search for Enclosures."—Tenth Report of the Commissioners on Fees and Emoluments, 1788, p. 29.
[269] 6 Geo. IV, cap. 68, § 10.
[270] "Was there no way by which, without the necessity of constant contention, private men might be prevented from using the Press to make their opinions public? The pamphleteers were not rich, but they were often persons of education, and not penniless. When only a few copies of their writings were wanted they could pay for them, but now that reading was become more common, and that great numbers of copies were printed, the cost had, to a great extent, to be paid by the readers. If these sheets could be taxed their distribution might become difficult, and when any one attempted to evade the tax he could be punished, not as a libeller, but as a smuggler."—Collet Dobson Collet, History of the Taxes on Knowledge, London, 1899, vol. i. p. 7.
[271] Chambers's Encyclopædia, London, 1908, vol. vii. p. 473.
[272] "There was no doubt but that, in the first instance, the stamp duty upon newspapers had been imposed for political purposes."—Attorney-General, 26th March 1855, Parl. Debates (Commons), vol. cxxxvii. col. 1129.
[273] "Whereas many papers containing observations upon Public Acts tending to excite the hatred of the public to the constitution of this realm, and also vilifying our holy religion, have lately been published in great numbers, and at a very small price, and it is expedient that the same should be restrained."—Preamble of the "Six Acts," 1819.
[274] "Sir Francis Freeling states that he succeeds to the enjoyment of the privilege of franking which had previously appertained to the situation of the Comptroller of the Inland Office, when he held the situation of Principal and Resident Surveyor, and that it was deemed a measure of economy to provide for the remuneration of this officer by these means in lieu of salary."—Eighteenth Report of the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry, Post Office, 1829, p. 26.
[275] About 12 millions a year. Ibid., p. 464.
[276] H. Joyce, History of the Post Office, p. 419.
[277] "These laws (the Six Acts) were specially directed—not against the morning Newspapers, which had been cajoled or frightened into comparative silence, or shared in the then general feeling in favour of a 'strong Government'—but against the Radical writers and speakers, 'Cobbett, Wooler, Watson, Hunt,' as Byron reminds us, all of whom had contributed, by cheap political publications and strong political harangues, to raise a demand for reform, loud enough and daring enough to be most troublesome to the authorities."—F. K. Hunt, The Fourth Estate, London, 1850, vol. ii. p. 49.