"late ingenious emblem" which was arousing the colonies. The snake of this cartoon was not allowed to die, but in its charmed life it appeared twice more in the newspapers at critical periods in American history. After a sleep of eleven years the snake appeared when the British Stamp Act was scheduled to go into effect, and after another rest it appeared at the outbreak of the Revolution.
TAXES ON NEWSPAPERS
During the Colonial Period two attempts were made to tax newspapers. The first was in Massachusetts, the second in New York. In both instances the tax was designed simply to raise revenue for the colony and not to restrict in any way the pub- lishing of a newspaper. In each colony the tax was paid by the ultimate consumer and not by the producer of the news- paper.
FIRST IN MASSACHUSETTS
The Provincial Legislature of Massachusetts published on January 13, 1755, an act, passed on January 8 of that year, which imposed a tax of a halfpenny on every newspaper printed on and after April 30, 1755. The act was to cover a period of two years, from April 30, 1755, to April 30, 1757. There were three papers published in Boston: all of these appeared with "the little red stamp," save those preserved for office files. The stamp, usually put on the lower part of the right-hand margin of the paper, was a bird with outstretched wings. Of it The Boston Evening Post spoke as follows in its issue for May 5, 1755:
The little pretty Picture here,
O' the Side looks well enough; Though nothing to the purpose 't is,
It will serve to set it off.
As has already been intimated, the subscribers rather than the printers paid for the adornment of "the little red bird" which stood for the tax. The Boston News-Letter in its issue for April 24, 1755, published the following announ
