TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE.
WE see with pleasure, that Mr. E. L. BULWER has given notice of a motion to repeal the Stamp-duty on Newspapers and the Excise on Paper, and to substitute in their place a trifling pay- ment on the transmission of newspapers by post. So that, after all the expectations held out by our .Liberal Government, of the abolition of this most disgraceful of taxes, at their hands, they have left the work to be performed by an individual member, whom they probably will not even support in his endeavours. We should scarcely envy the reflections of a conscientious Whig leader, after his not impossible ejection from office, on looking hack to the opportunity he had so shamefully omitted of breaking 'down this odious barrier between the people and the light. Might he not say—" The curse of my party has fallen on my impotent efforts : I could not when I would. I would not when I eould !" This should be inscribed over the door of the mausoleum a a Whig Cabinet.
We trust the Press will not fail to aid Mr. BULWER in his me- ritorious effort : not because it is their own cause, but, through them, of the country, whose best interests are, more particularly in conjunctures like the present, vitally concerned in lowering the price of' useful knowledge. The Ministers must not attempt to urge the argument of re- venue. It is no defence of the worst of taxes,—to say nothing of the productive amount of a small postage, the extent of which, in the probably great increase of the circulation of newspapers, is not to be calculated. Independent of this, such a defence, in the mouth of a Ministry that owe office wholly to their having pre- viously maintained a different language, is preposterous. If the revenue should suffer, let them go the round of' retrenchment, which they have only begun in the Navy Board. Is nothing to be done, for the sake of knowledge and education, by our Liberal Government, with the Customs, the Excise, and many such strongholds of ignorance and idleness ? The Pension List, we know, is sacred.
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