The tax on newspapers began 1714. "The attacks on the ministry generally appeared in short pamphlets, newspapers, and loose sheets, which were sold at a penny each. Lords Oxford and Bolinbrook, laid a tax of a halfpenny on these cheap publications; but they failed in their object of suppressing them: Swift sorely complains, that while the tories were discouraged by the sum, and left of buying the loose sheets of their party, the whig papers continued to flourish, a proof of the superior wealth, popularity, or wit, of the opposition." History of Europe. This tax, in the shape of a stamp, still continues, and, by some small talking people, is called "a tax on knowledge." But if we look closely into this affair, perhaps we shall discover the contrary. In consequence of their being stamped, they go free all over the country; positively free of any cost by post, and so have they gone, I believe, from the beginning. In Pope's day he wrote "Gazettes, sent gratis down and frank'd, For which my patron's freely thank'd." If it was not for this stamp, the postage would have to be paid by somebody, in some shape or other, if out of London. But by having the stamp, which the printer has already paid to the government, this arrangement greatly facilitates the delivery; the postman hands in the newspaper as directed, and is off in an instant. Shenstone, the poet (who died 1763,) divided the readers of newspapers into seven classes, viz: 1. The ill-natured to look at the list of bankrupts; 2. The poor to the price of bread; 3. The stock jobber to the lies of the day; 4. The old maids to the marriages; 5. The prodigals to the deaths; 6. The monopolizers to the hopes of a bad harvest; 7. The boarding school, and all other young misses, to all matters relative to Gretna Green. The writer has often made enquiries, why the farmers take a country newspaper? and has invariably been informed: The master to know the state of the London markets, in corn and cattle; the mistress to read the horrible accounts of fires, accidents, and murders; the sons to know where the hounds throw off, and other sporting subjects; the daughters to know who are married and dead. "There is a marked difference between the newspapers of France and England: in France, every journal has its party; in England, every party has its journal; in France, the people are made by the journal; in England, they are edited by men, who write similar opinions to those to whom they are addressed." "There are 525 newspapers in Great Britain, 130 of which are issued from London." Sheffield Mercury, 29th July, 1843. What an interesting series of volumes the history of all these folio sheets of four pages," which ever were issued, would make? what a view of human nature would they unfold? Talk of novels, romances, tragedies, comedies, and farces, these would vanish into insignificance; talk of poetry, from pastoral to epic, nothing would be equal to this history. The various trickery, bribery, threatenings, both by the government and individuals, the various motives which influenced all the parties engaged; the pullers of the wires of this momentous machinery, of these most interesting and momentous periods. What species of writing could equal this? Nothing that as -*yet has gone before us! If the spirit of the whole could be all condensed, distilled, and rectified, then steamified, gasified, and electro-magnetised into a book, it would surpass every curious object that has as yet presented itself to man's wondrous and inquisitive mind. But we shall never have it. It can now be only enjoyed in imagination; and, reader, if this part of the enjoyment is pleasant to you, I heartily wish you health and long life to revel upon it. There is one part, however, which the English cockney "might have, that part of it which is now in existence, viz: to see the whole of the present elite drawn out in groups, in one of the London squares, each standing under the banner of its own establishment, from the gin-swilling, porter-guzzling, draggled-tail reporters and compositors, up to the claret-sipping, nicely dressed editor, accompanied by the queen's ministers, the whipper-in of the house of commons, and all the owners, publishers, and proprietors. But unfortunately the mere sight would instantly dissolve the benumbing charm, on which at present so much stress is laid, in the oracular announcements, beginning with the big plural WE! This sight would be as astonishing as curious, and as wonderful as the sight of the bristles and scales on the backs of the tiny insects alluded to in the following couplet : "Great fleas, have lesser fleas, and these were made to bite them, Or the hidden treasures which are in the bowels of the Hinalayan mountains, from their verdant podium to their snowy apex, if lashed up and scattered by the tail of an overbearing comet, while it "Backward and forward switched its train, LITERATURE. "The tree of knowledge, blasted by disputes, Produces sapless leaves instead of fruits." DENHAM. "THE edition of The Holy Scripture, which is, I believe the fourth alteration in matter and doctrine, in regard to translation, cannot be considered as the actual state of the English language of the time of King James. It was made on the model of Parker's, or 'The Bishops' Bible,' which was forty years earlier. Hallam says, 'It may be better English, but it is not the English of Daniel, Raliegh, or Bacon." " THE HEBREW. "Who can describe the stately and giant-built Hebrew? the most simple, the most philosophical, and the most ancient of written tongues: with letters like blocks of marble, with words like king's palaces, with sentences like cities walled up to heaven; though robed in the beauties of holiness, yet rugged as the mountains about Jerusalem; unchangeable in its idiom, unvarying and solemn in its tone, from generation to generation the language of rigour and of judgment, of adoration and obedience, spoken first in the garden of Eden, or by the builders of Babel, written first on tables of stone by the finger of Jehovah-for ever preserving its awful dignity, whether sung by the seraphim above, or by the choirs of the temple, whether carried to the highest heavens of sublimity by Isaiah, or brought down to play among the roses of Sharon and the lilies of the valley of Solomon, and destitute alike of the elasticity of the Greek, and the natural prowess of the Latin, unable to soar with the one or change with the other—but ever marching with the slow and measured tread of an ancient army of elephants." Sir D. K. Sandford writes, "That any one who has studied the poetry, the history, and philosophy of the Hebrew, even as specimens of composition, should lightly esteem them, is impossible In lyric flow and fire, in crushing force, in majesty that seems still to echo the awful sounds once heard beneath the thunderclouds of Sinai, the poetry of the ancient scriptures is the most superb that ever burned within the breast of man. The picturesque simplicity of their narration gives an equal charm to the historic books; vigour, beauty, sententiousness, and variety, enrich and adorn the ethical parts of the collection; nor is that seeming carelessness, which constitutes a principal charm of these writings, either naturally incompatible with the observance of certain rules, or actually uncontrolled by such as denote an intimate acquaintance with the management of style." Some author has beautifully written : "A glory gilds the sacred page, It gives, but borrows none." Religion was the great subject of discussion from the reformation down to the revolution, and through that period to the time of the house of Brunswick. "The church was a state engine," and "Theology was applied to the use of politics."* Montesquieu observed: "The English clergy will not be averse to the dominion of the oligarchs, because in fact they will share in the advantage of it: the oligarchy will employ all the engines of power and profit, to gain the sanction of religion for their purpose." "I speak not of men's creeds, they rest between Man and his Maker." BYRON. Henry VIII., James I., and Charles I., were conceited bigots, full of high prerogative notions, and would not let religion alone. Whilst all the queens left it pretty much to the bishops; who, with their star chamber court, high commission court, and the confused proceedings of the other courts, and other usurped powers, made life such that no one who had an opinion of his own could calculate of being safe for a week. Dr. Dunham emphatically observes: "In all cases where sovereigns interfere with religion, that interference is fatal to religion." The quantity of books and pamphlets published will never be enumerated; a mere catalogue would astonish the most incredulous. Some opinion may be formed, when I state, that on such trifling subjects as the death of Prince Henry, in 1612, there were thirty-two tracts published; eleven on the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Count Palatine; six on the death of the queen, in 1619; and thirteen on his (James's) death. The king's pamphlets, in the British museum, which began 1640, to the restoration, number 30,000. There were 320 living poets during the life of Shakspeare, of 52 years. The great mass of them are gone, some into oblivion, some piled up as useless and curious lumber, in some learned libraries, many to the trunk maker. A catalogue of those with queer, quaint, and fulsome titles, would alone make a small book; these, with their contents, show the temper, the taste, the feelings, and the easy way of living, and the manners of the age. *The reader will not now feel surprise, nor be unable to account for "the Blue Laws of Connecticut," penned as they were during this period of our history. "They still may help to thicken proofs That do demonstrate thinly." SHAKSPEARE. There were numbers of petty poetic publications, called "Penny Merriments," and little religious tracts of the same size, called "Penny Godlinesses." As Selden observes, "More solid things do not shew the complexion of the times, so well as balads and libels." "However absurd were most of the doctrines about which the German churches wrangled so furiously, they were at least subjects of speculation, and as opening a field for the gymnastics of arguments, were so far respectable than those wretched points of strife, so long contested between the church of England and its various opponents; such as whether the clergy ought to wear surplices or copes; whether it is becoming a good Christian to pay reverence to the altar, and bow at the name of Jesus, or stand up at the Gloria-Patria; whether steeples ought to be surmounted with weather cocks, vanes, or crosses; whether the communion-tables should stand in the middle of the church or altar-wise. Such were some of the few mighty questions at issue between the parties; such were the levers of discord, by which Protestant England was heaved from her very foundation. See the controversies of Strype, Jewell, and Laud." Moore. In Hone's "Every Day Book," I find it stated, "The common prayer book, since it was first published, in 1545, has been under sixteen alterations." With this statement, and a short account I have given of the laws upon the subject of religion, (vol. i. p. 152,) who will not conceive that any one then living in England might very well exclaim: "Life is darkened o'er with wo." In "The Art of Governing by Parties," it is recorded that James-anticipating his succession to the English crown-asked some of his courtiers, before he left Scotland, "Do I mak their jidges? do I mak their bushops?" and being answered that he did, he exclaimed, swearing, "I will mak ony thing that pleases me to be the law and Gospel!" But it is not recorded that this insolent upstart temerity provoked any sort of rebuke from these courtiers. But the commons, at their first meeting, fully aware of James's high pretension, took care to tell him, by their speaker, that he could not be a law-giver by himself, "that new laws could not be instituted, nor imperfect laws reformed, nor inconvenient laws abrogated by any other power than that of the high court of parliament, that is, by the agreement of the commons, the accord of the lords, and the assent of the sovereign." And at the end of the session they told him, "Your majesty |