1 8 The Newspaper World, five, the House of Commons decided during the session of 1853 ta abolish the tax on Advertisements. The Stamp Duty did not long survive the abolition of the Advertisement Duty. Two years later, this ancient financial impost, which had been exacted for nearly a century and a half, was abolished at a time when a gloomy war cloud rested over the country and to some extent obscured the importance of this pacific reform. Mr Glad- stone was no longer Chancellor of the Exchequer. On the fall of the Aberdeen administration he continued in office for a short time during Lord Palmerston's Govern- ment, but he retired from office on grounds which are historic, and the abolition of the duty was proposed by Sir George Comewall Lewis, and approved by resolution of the House on 15th June, 1855. For postal purposes the penny red stamp was retained, but it finally disappeared from the comers of our newspapers on 30th September, 1870, when halfpenny postage was introduced. Thus was the attack on one of the most obnoxious Taxes on Knowledge carried to a successful issue. Speaking to Mr John Cassell in 1850, Cobden had said, "So long as the penny lasts there can be no daily Press for the middle or working-class. Who below the rank of a merchant or wholesale dealer can afford to take in a daily paper at fivepence ?" The result of the high-priced Press was, as Cobden further pointed out, that it was written for its customers among the aristocracy, the millionaires, and clubland. "The governing class of this country," he added, " will resist the removal of the penny stamp, not on account of the loss of revenue {that is no obstacle with a surplus of two or three millions), but because they know that the stamp makes the daily Press the instrument and servant of the oligarchy."(^ Five years after this conversa- 2. Life of Cobden (John Morley), chap, xxxii.
