Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/74

4NOTES BY THE WAY. that the case of The Poor Man's Guardian, of which he was the proprietor, should be carried to a higher court; and the trial took place in the Court of Exchequer in the year 1835, before Lord Lyndhurst, who was then Chief Baron. The Attorney-General conducted the prosecution on the part of the Government, and Hetherington defended himself. After a favourable summing up by the Judge, the jury returned a verdict of acquittal.

The result of this trial mainly determined the modification upon the press laws then in force; and in the following year, 1836, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Spring Rice, introduced a Bill which reduced the advertisement duty from 3s. 6d. to 1s. 6d.; the compulsory stamp from 4d. to 1d., and the paper duty from 3d. to 1½d. per pound. These changes in the law proved most beneficial; the unstamped papers ceased to exist; the prisons were emptied of offenders; and the new laws remained almost unchallenged during a period of twelve years. In 1849 associations were formed to procure the entire freedom of the press. On the 4th of August, 1853, the advertisement duty was abolished, Mr. Gladstone being Chancellor of the Exchequer; and on the 15th of June, 1855, the compulsory stamp on newspapers was repealed, the measure for this purpose being introduced to Parliament by Mr. Gladstone; but some changes having taken place in the Ministry, the work was completed by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. A permissive stamp on newspapers, however, followed. This was in use until the year 1870, when Government stamps on newspapers were finally abolished. Mr. Gladstone carried through Parliament the repeal of the paper duty, which received Royal Assent on the 12th of June, 1861.

During Leigh Hunt's proprietorship of The Examiner newspaper its price was thus stated after the title :

I have recently been able to secure a set of The Poor Man's Guardian. The first number was published October 2nd, 1830, and the paper was issued for the most part daily; the last number appeared on the 23rd of November, when the editor bids "farewell for a time," stating that "it is impossible to struggle against the illiberality (with one or two exceptions) with which our papers are received by the trade." Each number, in place of the ordinary impressed stamp, has a block on the front page of a hand press, on which is inscribed "Liberty of the Press," and round it the words "Knowledge is Power." Among the contents is an attack on flogging in the Army, and an account of a private soldier who had been found asleep on duty at the Tower. After three months' imprisonment he was brought into the Armoury Yard in St. James's Park to hear the sentence of the court martial "that he was to