Napoleon and Barbès.—The Newspaper Stamp

The Bill to abolish the newspaper stamp passed its second reading in the House of Commons yesterday. The main articles of this Bill are as follows: 1. The compulsory newspaper stamp is abolished; 2. Periodicals printed on stamped paper will continue to enjoy the privilege of free distribution through the post. A third clause concerns the size of printed matter distributed through the post, and another decrees that stamped newspapers will have to furnish security in case of any action for libel. The old newspaper duty system is sufficiently characterised by two facts. The publication of a daily paper in London requires a capital of at least £50,000 to £60,000. The whole English press, with very few exceptions, raises a shameless and disgraceful opposition to the new Bill. Is further proof needed that the old system was a protective tariff system for the established press and a system prohibiting free mental production? Press freedom, in England up to now has been the exclusive privilege of capital. The few weekly journals which represent the interests of the working class—daily papers were, of course, out of the question manage to survive thanks to the weekly contributions of the workers, who in England are making very different sacrifices for public purposes than those on the Continent. The tragicomic, blustering rhetoric with which the Leviathan of the English press—The Times— fights pro aris et focis[a], i. e., for the newspaper monopoly, now modestly comparing itself with the Delphic oracle, now affirming that England possesses only one single institution worth preserving, namely The Times; now claiming absolute rule over world journalism, and, without any Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji[107], a protectorate over all European journalists.

All this cant[b] by The Times was properly disposed of in yesterday's sitting of the Lower House by the whimsical Drummond:

"Nowadays the press was a mercantile speculation, and nothing else.... Why Messrs. Walter", the principal shareholders of The Times, "should not set up a manufactory of gossip just as well as Mr. Bright should set up a manufactory of calico?... The Times seemed to him to carry on their business [...] better than their rivals [...]. The Walter family have always found a convenient man [...]—a seven years' barrister or some one of that stamp, who was ready to take up anything. [...] There was Barnes, Alsager, Sterling, Delane, Morris, Lowe and Dasent. [...] These gentlemen were all of different opinions. Now, the foolish papers who did not understand the matter, like The Morning Chronicle, for instance, took up with some particular party. One was a Peelite[108]; another a Derbyite, etc. When the Peelite party was thriving the paper throve too, but when the Peelites went down, down went the paper. It was quite clear these were not men of business. The thing was to get a set of gentlemen of different opinions"—and The Times is a master of this—"and to set them writing. Of course, you could accuse no one man of inconsistency; he might always have held the same opinions; and so individually these were most consistent, while, collectively, nothing in the world could be more inconsistent. It seemed to him that the very perfection of journalism was—individual honesty, and collective profligacy, political and literary. There was [...] a great advantage in this, and The Times newspaper always put him very much in mind of one of his farmers. When he suggested draining a bit of bog the farmer [...] replied, 'No, no! don't drain it. In wet weather there's something for the cow, and if there's nothing for the cow there's something for the pig, and if there's nothing for the pig, there's some-thing for the goose.' [...] As to the bribery of newspapers there was positive proof respecting The Times of which Napoleon said, 'You have sent me The Times,—that infamous Times, the journal of the Bourbons'—and it was stated in a work by Mr. O'Meara[c] that the Bourbons paid The Times 6,000 f. [...] a month. He had found the receipt for the money, signed by the editor. Mr. O'Meara also stated that before he was exiled to Elba Napoleon received several offers [...] from the editors of newspapers, and among them offers from The Times, to write for them. Napoleon declined to accept the offers made to him, but afterwards regretted the course he took."[d]

In this context we merely observe that in 1815 The Times urged that Napoleon, whom it presented as the centre of European demagogy[109] should be shot under martial law. In 1816 this same paper wanted to bring the United States of North America, "this disastrous example of successful insurrection", back under English despotism.

Notes

[14] The Corn Laws, the first of which were passed as early as the fifteenth century, imposed high import duties on agricultural products in order to maintain high prices for these products on the domestic market. The Corn Laws served the interests of the big landowners. The struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy over the Corn Laws ended in their repeal in June 1846.