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POLITICAL DOUBLE SHUFFLERS.

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one of the most shifty, unstable men of his day, he can scarcely be called a politician, for like all agitators, the person he really sought to serve was himself alone. He chopped and changed just as it suited his purpose, and is properly introduced by the artist amongst the most adroit and vigorous of the political double shufflers.

The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel find themselves vis-à-vis, in allusion to their conduct with reference to Catholic Emancipation. Both had originally been consistent opposers of the measure, which was at last carried by the influence of the very men who before had been its most persistent adversaries.

But, if any one had "turned about and wheeled about," it was Sir Francis Burdett, and accordingly the artist introduces him as indulging in a very flourishing pas seul; he wears a self-satisfied smirk, and carries his thumbs in his waistcoat, in allusion to his own contention that he had been always consistent. Yet this self-satisfied aristocratic-looking personage not many years before had distinguished himself as the most prominent of radical malcontents, and had been drawn by his enthusiastic dupes through the city of Westminster in a triumphal car, decorated with the symbols of liberty, and preceded by a banner bearing the inscription, "Westminster's Pride and England's Glory."

The queer figure in the cocked hat is Sir de Lacy Evans, who figures as one of the dancers in allusion to his practice as compared with his professions. In 1833 he obtained a seat for Westminster, triumphing over his opponent Sir J. C. Hobhouse, who for fifteen. years had represented that constituency, both candidates professing to be zealous advocates for the abolition of flogging in the army. Sir de Lacy nevertheless, when commanding the British Legion at St. Sebastian, "jumped Jim Crow" by flogging his soldiers without mercy. Lord John Russell once sneered at every project of Reform, but his Lordship, as we have seen, "jumped Jim Crow" by repeatedly introducing the Reform Bill into the House of Commons, which was mainly passed by his persistent exertions; very properly, therefore, Lord John figures in HB's clever sketch among the most prominent of " Jim Crow" double shufflers.

Y

LORD JOHN
RUSSELL.

CHAPTER XII.

THE POLITICAL SKETCHES OF HB (Continued).

SYDNEY SMITH said of little Lord John Russell, that he was "ready to undertake anything and everything-to build St. Paul's,-cut for the stone, or command the Channel fleet," and this satire of the wit was true. He tried politics and he tried literature, and few people will say that he was entirely successful at either. As a politician, for instance, his general capacity for getting himself and his party into a mess, earned from the most intellectually powerful of his political opponents the enduring title of "Lord Meddle and Muddle." He has not been dead very long, yet what reputation has he left behind him as a dramatist-novelist-historian-biographer-editor -pamphleteer, all of which rôles he essayed at some time or other of his long and eventful career? His Nun of Arronca (1822) fetches it is true an exceedingly high price, because having been rigidly suppressed by its author it is now exceedingly rare. The best that can be said of Lord John-and that is saying a great dealis, that he was a consistent Liberal according to his lights, and that to him belongs the honour and glory of bringing about the great measure of Reform, which, as we have seen, was, mainly through his instrumentality, accomplished in 1832.

Lord John, as might have been expected, frequently appears in the "political sketches" of H3. He cuts an amusing figure in one where Jonah (Lord Minto) is about to be thrown overboard by Lords Lansdowne, Palmerston, and Duncannon, by order of the captain (Lord Melbourne), to appease the storm raised by Lords Brougham and Lyndhurst in reference to a rumour that Lord

SALE OF UNSTAMPED NEWSPAPERS.

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Minto (First Lord of the Admiralty), had instructed British cruisers to stop all Sardinian vessels carrying warlike stores for Don Carlos. Lord John, while clinging to the mast behind, and viewing with terror the impending fate of his colleague, evidently solaces himself with the conviction that his own weight is too insignificant to have any material effect upon the safety of the ship. Minto owed his safety to the Duke of Wellington, who therefore figures in the sketch as the whale; for, although convinced that his lordship had been imprudent, he successfully resisted Brougham's motion for a copy of the instructions, and thereby succeeded in lodging poor Jonah on dry land.

NEWSPAPERS.

One of the "sketches" in which Lord John Russell figures STAMP DUTY ON reminds us of a remarkable discussion which possesses considerable interest for every reader of the cheap newspapers of to-day. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (the Right Hon. Thomas Spring Rice) in opening his budget on the 6th of May, 1836, showed a disposable surplus of £662,000 only, which he proposed (in the usual way) to apply towards the reduction of taxation. He proposed, in the first place, to consolidate the paper duties and to reduce their amount in a manner which he proceeded to explain; and after accounting for £200,000, the balance of the surplus he intended to apply to the reduction of the stamp on newspapers. The duty minus the discount was fourpence, which he proposed to reduce to a penny, and to give of course no discount. The reader must not suppose from the foregoing, however, that all the proprietors of newspapers of that day paid the duty; on the contrary, the large majority evaded it in every possible way. The measure in fact was intended as much as a protection to the revenue as anything else, for the sale of unstamped newspapers throughout the country had be come so extensive that no series of prosecutions was found effectual to put them down. Every sheet, it is true, professed to bear on it the printer's name; but the name so appended was in six cases out of eight a false one. Exchequer processes were issued; all the power of the law was set in motion; in the course of three weeks three hundred persons had been imprisoned for selling unstamped

papers in the streets, but without in the slightest degree repressing the illegal sale. The Chancellor argued that the loss which the revenue would sustain in the first instance would be more than compensated by the enormous increase of duty to be obtained from the enlarged circulation; from the additional duty arising from the greater consumption of paper; and from the very large increase which might be expected from the produce of the duty on advertise

ments.

The opponents of the measure were of three classes: first, those who looked upon the proposal as radical and subversive; secondly, those who because a reduction is suggested in one quarter invariably consider it the correct thing to propose it in another; and lastly, the owners of the established newspapers of the day. The arguments of the first class assumed the following form: "In propor tion as any political party approaches more or less towards pure democracy and the right divine of mere numbers, its interests will require that the means should be increased of disseminating among the lower classes, and as nearly gratuitously as possible, the exciting and poisonous food which is at last to end in the revolutionary fever." The second class, strange to say, rested their hopes in this instance on the singularly slippery basis of soap. Sir C. Keightley moved (on the 20th of June) that instead of diminishing the stamp duty on newspapers, the duty on hard and soft soap should be reduced. The reduction of such duty would, he argued, by aiding cleanliness, promote the health and comfort of the people, while the lowering of newspaper stamps would do nothing of the kind, but would tend rather to introduce a cheap and profligate press," one of the greatest curses which could be inflicted on humanity." He contended, moreover, that it was absurd to argue that the poor were debarred from reading the public prints, when in a coffee shop, for three halfpence, they could obtain a cup of coffee and a sight of every newspaper published in London. Mr. Barclay, one of the members for Surrey, thought it impossible for any reasonable being to hesitate between the relative virtues of newspapers and soap; and

Annual Register, 1836, p. 237.

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as for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he could not believe for one moment that if left to his own unaided judgment he would hesitate to give his preference to the latter. The Chancellor nevertheless avowed in the plainest terms his preference for newspapers, and his conviction of the advisability of an immediate reduction in the stamp duty; the result, after the lapse of less than forty years, has conclusively proved the wisdom of the measure which he succeeded in carrying.

Newspaper proprietorship was then a monopoly ; and the argument by which the rich proprietor, the representative of the third class of opponents, sought to maintain his monopoly cannot fail to amuse the newspaper reader of to-day. The monopoliser who, to maintain the character of his paper and to supply the public with the best and earliest information, incurred the expense of procuring parliamentary reports, obtaining foreign intelligence, anticipating the arrival of the post by expresses, and by having correspondents in every quarter of the world where matters of interest were going forward, said, that should the measure pass, he must thenceforth either be content to lower the tone of the public press by not giving the same amount of accurate intelligence, or must carry on the contest with those who went to no expense at all. "The result would be not only the ruin of the property of the newspaper proprietors and the destruction of their property, but it would be something much more fatal to the general interests of the country, for the editors of the present respectable papers would not be able to compete with these predatory publications, and would be compelled to forego that extent of information which was then so accurately given. We should have the newspaper press "-mark this, ye omnivorous readers of to-day, who commence with The Times, adjourn to the Telegraph, peruse the pages of the Morning Post, wander through the columns of the Daily News, and finish off with the express edition of the Globe or Evening Standard, reserving your Saturday Review, your Truth, and your Vanity Fair for Sunday solatium-" we should have the newspaper press simply reduced to this state: that no longer would there be a regular and correct supply of information

CURIOUS ARGUMENTS OF THE NEWSPAPER PROPRIETORS.

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