Owen promised, on leaving Arneside, not to forget the old place and his old friends; and though he soon became a prosperous man, he lost none of his interest in those who were proud of being regarded by him. Reports arrived of the importance of the young Arneside scholar in L——; in that large and busy town, which was like London to the imaginations of the villagers. Owen was Secretary to the Mechanics’ Institute there, in course of time, after having won two or three prizes, and introduced the study and practice of his favourite short-hand. A straggler from Arneside had met him in the streets of L——; had been with him when he was stopped by three people within a hundred yards, all eager to ask him something about the newspaper,—the Western Star; and had finally watched him into the hotel when, well dressed in black, he had passed in with several gentlemen who were attending a public dinner there. Owen must have grown into something very like a gentleman to be attending a public dinner, and to be consulted three times within a hundred yards about a newspaper. One of Owen’s tokens of remembrance was this weekly newspaper, a copy of which he sent down regularly to the landlord of the Rose, Mr. Chowne, to be circulated through the village when it had been read in the tap-room. This was considered a very handsome present; and, indeed, some of his careful friends, remembering that sevenpence-halfpenny a week is 1l. 12s. 6d. a year, consulted together about sending him word that he was too generous, and that they were scrupulous about accepting so expensive a remembrance from him. His mother, however, heard of this, and put an end to all scruples by expressing her confidence that her son would do nothing which he could not properly afford; and it afterwards transpired from some quarter that Owen had told somebody that this newspaper cost him nothing, an intimation which certain of the village politicians interpreted as meaning that he wrote the whole of it. From the moment that their version of the story was adopted, the eagerness with which the “Western Star” was received was redoubled; and those who could not read listened with open mouths while those who could told the news, and magnified as they went along. The gossip about the Turkish Sultan and his Ministers now became interesting, as well as the speculations about the magnetic pole; and there was no end to the astonishment at Owen’s learning, which seemed to extend from courts and cabinets down to razor-strops and Macassar oil. No day of the week passed without his being pronounced a wonderful young man.

The most incomprehensible thing to the whole village was that Owen sent down warnings in his letters, more than once, that the “Western Star” must not be trusted as if it told nothing but truth. Its reports were declared to be often unfair, and its politics wavering and unprincipled. There was some talk in L—— of trying to get up another newspaper; and it would be a pity if (as was too likely) it could not be done; as an opposition might improve the “Western Star.” This declaration seemed to exhibit an unparalleled modesty and disinterestedness on the part of Owen. Nobody would have found out that his newspaper was not perfectly fair, if he had not himself said so.

One motive to such transcendent virtue might be discerned. The reports which, Owen said, were the least of all to be trusted, were those of Mr. Arruther’s speeches and conduct in the House. Owen was known to be no admirer of Mr. Arruther as a Member of Parliament; and, that the “Western Star” had always praised this gentleman, and called upon his constituents for gratitude, was supposed to be owing to the laws of good breeding, which might forbid any public blame of so rich and grand a person as Mr. Arruther. But Owen’s private letters spoke very plainly of the Member; of his idleness about his duty; of his prejudice in favour of the aristocracy; and of his constancy in opposing every measure which could tend to the relief and enlightenment of the working classes. He wished that he could give his old friends the means of knowing what grounds he had for saying all this; but the London papers took little notice of Mr. Arruther, and nothing would be found against him in the “Western Star.” He must beg any of the Arneside people who had votes to try to ascertain how Mr. Arruther had voted on such and such questions, and make up their minds for themselves whether they were properly represented.

On the days when the “Western Star” arrived, man after man dropped in at the tap-room at the Rose, to try for his turn, or to listen to any one who might be reading aloud. Nurse would never be persuaded to go and listen too, though a seat of honour would have been awarded her, by the window in summer, and near the fire in winter. She felt that she had rather wait; and a rule was made that she should have the first loan of the paper. Such was the rule, if it had but been kept. But when she had her proper turn, it did not always happen that Ambrose was ready to read, or that she was at home that evening; and she never chose to detain the treasure beyond a single day, when so many better scholars than herself were longing for it. And there was some underhand work about this matter. The newspaper had sometimes disappeared from the table at the Rose; which happened because some impatient person had bribed the pot-boy to let him or her have it first, or had slipped in through the open door, and carried it off: and then, by the time it came round to nurse’s cottage, it was so thumbed and dirtied and torn at all the creases, that poor scholars read it at a great disadvantage; so that, altogether, Nurse was not much enlightened by the “Western Star.” Yet, the first thing that she remembered on waking, every Saturday morning, was that this was the day of the arrival of the newspaper; and Ambrose was sure to be reminded of it by some gentle hint during breakfast.

He went in at the Rose, one Saturday evening, to see what was doing. There sat Farmer Mason, looking more shabby than ever; as he had done each time that Ambrose had seen him since the fire. He came to learn if the advertisement and list of subscriptions in his favour were in the “Star” to-day. Nothing like them appeared; and he was drowning his disappointment in a third glass of spirit and water. Some Job’s comforters were present who asked him how he could expect that his friends should consume the little money they had obtained for him in advertising; and added what they had heard about the unwillingness of many people to assist a man who had shown himself so imprudent as not to insure. Mason did not boast of any more patience than Job.

“As for the insuring,” said he, “it is all very well for the rich to talk. They insure themselves; having several properties which they make to secure one another; it being the last thing likely that all or many should be burnt down. But the very cause which prevents their insuring should teach them to excuse us poor men for not doing it.”

“Besides,” observed the landlord, “there are so many country people that do not think of insuring against fire! Indeed, I scarcely know a farmer that has done it; and why should Mason act differently from his neighbours?”

“And why don’t the farmers insure? Why does not every body insure?” cried Mason. “Because of the tax which the rich escape paying by making one estate insure another. As long as the government is to have 200 per cent. upon fire insurances, there will be plenty of people to keep me in countenance for what some few are pleased to call my neglect.”

“What business has the government to interfere with a man, when he is trying to provide against misfortune?” asked the shoemaker of the village. “It is a direct reward to carelessness to tax carefulness. And 200 per cent. too!”

“Yes: 200 per cent. If the premium is calculated at 1s. 6d., the government imposes a 3s. stamp. If you go and insure 1000l. worth of goods at 15s., we’ll say, you must pay a duty of 30s. to government. Where is the wonder that a man would rather trust to Providence to keep the fire from his roof than submit to such a tax? The true matter of wonder is, that any government could ever shut its eyes to this!”

“Something has happened about sea-insurances which might have opened their eyes, as I know from my brother, who is now master of a ship from the next port,” observed the landlord. “The last time he was here, he told me what I had no idea of before. While we have more and more ships passing in and out, the duty on sea-policies is falling off. Where the business transacted has increased one-fifth, the duty has fallen off two-fifths: that is to say, our merchants and ship-masters go and insure in Holland, and in Germany, and in the United States of America, or any respectable place where the stamp is not so high as in England. The government might as well take off this tax at once, with a good grace; for, in a little while, all the insurers will be driven across the water. Since the duty will soon yield nothing at all, they may as well let us keep a useful branch of business among us, instead of giving it away to foreigners.”

“I am sure,” said poor Mason, sipping from his glass, and recurring to the faults which had been found with him,—“I am sure it is no unreasonable thing of me to look for another advertisement or two, considering how little can be done by one. Only think how many people may chance to miss seeing the paper that once, or may overlook that particular advertisement, when they might be ready enough to give, if it did but come often enough before their eyes. And I suppose it cannot cost a great deal to print ten or twelve lines; and when once it stands ready for printing, I suppose they charge less each time, as is done in other cases where there is less charged in proportion to the greatness of the custom.”

The landlord knew that this was the way in America. His brother was in the habit of advertising the departure of his ship from an American port. He paid for his advertisement (which happened to be a short one) 2s. 2d. for one insertion; for 3s. 3d. for two; and only 6½d. more each time, for as long as he chose. An advertisement of eight lines, which would have cost him two guineas in England at the end of a week, cost him in America only 5s. 5d. It is the advertisement duty which makes an advertisement as expensive the twentieth time as the first in England; and, bad as the duty is altogether, this is the worst part of it; for, as Mr. Mason was saying, repetition is all in all in advertising.

“There is talk of taking off a good part of the advertisement duty,”^[A] observed the shoemaker.

“There will be less use in taking off a part than the government expects,” replied the landlord, “for the very reason that the principle of an advertisement duty interferes with the lowering of the price on repetition. If the government now make, as they say, 160,000l. a year by this tax, they would find their profit in taking it off altogether by——”

“The increase of the paper duty, from the multitude of advertisements there would be.”

“That would be true; but I would have the paper duty off too; and so I should look to another quarter for the compensation. Much more than 160,000l. a year would drop into the treasury from the increase of traffic of every kind which must happen in consequence of freedom of advertising. Our greater traffic of late years has not yielded more advertisement duty. We had better try now whether giving up that duty would not cause greater traffic, and so an increase of duties upon other things.”

“One might easily find out,” observed somebody, “whether the Americans advertise more than we do, from having no duty to pay. That would be the test.”

“The only test; and what is the fact? There are half as many again of advertisements in the daily papers of New York alone, as in all the newspapers of Great Britain and Ireland.”

“Without London. You leave out the great London papers.”

“Not I. I include the great daily papers of London. We have twice as many people as the United States, and more than twice as much business; yet we have only one million of advertisements in a year, and the United States have ten millions—that is to say, their advertising is to ours as ten to one. And when you further consider, as my brother says, how many of the Americans are busy on the land instead of in trade, and how many more we have occupied in trade, from which the greater part of advertisements come, it is hardly too much to say that their advertising is to ours as forty to one. Depend upon it, we are under the mark when we say that the duty suppresses nineteen out of twenty of those advertisements which would be sent to the newspapers if we had the same freedom as the Americans; and that no mere reduction will prevent the suppression of millions which it is for everybody’s advantage should appear.”

“Yes, indeed; and why we should be compelled to pay to the Government for making known that we have something to sell ten miles off, when a shopkeeper may freely put a bill in his window to tell what may be had within, it is not altogether easy to see.”

“There is one thing easy to see,” observed Joy, the builder; “and that is the figure that people make of our walls, sticking them all over with bills. I have more trouble than enough with pulling them down from the end of my master’s house; and as sure as I next pass that way, I find it all covered over again with red and black letters, and ugly pictures. My master calls it making a newspaper of his gable. And as for the chalking,—it is said that men and boys are hired to go about chalking all the walls in the country; and before ever our mortar is dry, there is some unsightly scrawl or another on the new red bricks. ’Tis too much for the temper of any builder. For my part, I make no scruple of threshing any one that I catch with the chalk in his hand, man or boy.”

Ambrose stood up for the practice of plastering the walls with bills; he having been often amused, and even led to read, by a tempting display of this kind. But it did not take long to convince him that he might be better amused, and more comfortably advanced in his reading, if he could but be supplied at his own home with a sufficiency of pictures and articles to study. He saw that it was pleasanter to sit down at his mother’s deal-table for such purposes, than to stand in a broiling sun or drizzling rain, looking up till the back of his neck ached like that of a rheumatic old man.

Mason was at first equally disposed to advocate the chalking. He had himself sent his poor boys about to represent on every conspicuous brick surface within five miles, a large house in flames, with the inscription underneath, “Remember Farmer Mason and his large young family, burnt out of house and home.” He believed that he owed nearly as much to this as to having employed Grice the crier to bawl his case through two or three parishes.

The shoemaker hoped that fellow Grice did not take anything from Farmer Mason for doing him this service. Grice was known to be prospering in the world; and it was a cruel thing to take money from a ruined man, the same as from a fortunate one. Mason sighed, shook his head, and applied himself to his glass. Perhaps the landlord winced under the last remark, conscious of being now actually running up a score against Mason for drink, which he would never have thought of tasting if he had not been tempted to the Rose, for the sake of seeing the advertisement of his calamity. To have defended Grice would have been going rather too far; but Chowne ventured to show that Grice was no worse than some other people.

The Government, he said, took large sums of money from all distressed people whose calamities are advertised. When there was a famine in Ireland, several thousand pounds of the money subscribed for the relief of the famishing went to the Government in the shape of advertisement-duty; and when the floods of the last autumn had laid waste whole districts in Scotland, the profit which the Treasury made by the announcement would have rebuilt hundreds of the cottages which were swept away. And this profiting was not only on rare and great occasions. There was not a poor servant out of place who had not to pay to the Government for the chance of getting a service; and to pay exactly the same as the nobleman who wishes to sell an estate of ten thousand a-year, and to whom a pound spent in advertisement-duty is of less consequence than a doit would be to the servant out of place.

Mason sighed, and said that the thing most plain to him was that he was destined to be stripped of all he had, since there was a pluck on every hand,—first the fire, and then Grice, and the Government, and everybody. But though he was disappointed in what he came to see in the newspaper, he did not mean to go away without seeing it; and so he would trouble the landlord for another glass of spirit and water. It would be hard if he did not see the paper now, as he had no money to pay the pot-boy, like some people, for a sight of it. He did wonder, and he was not the only one that wondered, that the landlord chose to make a profit of what was sent him as a present,—taking one little advantage from one, and another from another; for nobody supposed the pot-boy put in his own pocket all the good things he got every week.

Chowne wondered what his friend Mason meant. If people chose to make presents to his servants, it was nothing to him: but,—as for his making anything by the paper,—he could tell the present company, if they did not know it already, that there was a law against letting newspapers. He should now take care to tell his pot-boy the very words of the law,—“that any hawker of newspapers, who shall let any newspaper to hire to any person, or to different persons, shall forfeit the sum of five pounds for each offence.” If, after this, the lad should choose to run the risk, it would be at his own peril; and nobody would now suppose that a prudent man like himself would run the risk of being fined five pounds, a dozen times over, every week.

O, but that must be an old, forgotten law, that nobody thought of regarding. Were there no newsmen in London, letting out newspapers at twopence an hour?

The law was not so very old, Chowne said. Our good King George the Third had been reigning just thirty years when it was passed. If it was disregarded in London, he supposed people had their reasons for disregarding it; and he was far from wishing to defend that bit of law; but, for his own sake, he should not break it. So, perhaps, friend Hartley, who had been getting the paper by heart, apparently, while the others were talking, would have the goodness either to read aloud, or to hand the sheet over to somebody who would.

The reader had been anxious to see what was said about Arruther’s being absent during two nights,—the most important of any in the session to some of his constituents,—and voting with the majority on another question, after having led people to suppose he was of an opposite opinion. But this paper was really ridiculous in its support of that man. Here were a hundred reasons for his doing as he had done; and not one good one. Hartley had no idea of being gulled as this paper would gull him, just for the sake of whitewashing Mr. Arruther; and he began to read what the paper said. A good deal of argumentation followed, which, however animating and wholesome it might be to the persons engaged, was dull and useless to Ambrose, from his knowing nothing about the subject discussed. Seeing no chance of the party arriving at the accident and murder parts in any decent time, he determined to go home and tell his mother that they must wait, and that he did not know whether the paper was entertaining or not, this time. All were too busy leaning over the table and listening, to take any notice of him when he went away; and, as he never drank anything, Chowne did not consider himself called upon to bestow more than a slight nod on Ambrose, as the lad made his rustic bow in passing out.

Whom should he meet at the next corner but Ryan? Ambrose’s wits were certainly brightened by some means or another; for he bethought himself of the use Ryan might be of to poor Mason, by serving as a walking advertisement of his misfortune. The moment he had heard that the rag-merchant was going to offer his company and his news to old Jeffery to-night, instead of always troubling nurse Ede to entertain him, Ambrose blurted out the story of the fire, the subscription, the rapacity of the Government in regard to advertisements, and the advantage it would be to Mason if the rag-merchant would take up his cause, and beg for him through the country.

“Ay; that’s the way,” said Ryan. “Always something for me to do as I travel the country! However, I’ll do it with all my heart. My errands are not all begging ones, as I will show you. I give as well as beg sometimes. Here, take this. This is Owen’s tract (I mean the tract that was put down) come to life again. I’ll give it to you this once; and if you can get anybody to join you in buying it at twopence a-week by the time I come again, I can order it for you. Not that you can have it weekly: the carriage would cost too much; but——”

“It can come by post, can’t it? The ‘Western Star’ always comes by post, and no charge.”

“Very likely; but this is not altogether like the ‘Western Star’ or other newspapers that come by post, as you will find when you look at it. But you can have four numbers together, once a-month, when the monthly things come for the clergyman and Mr. Waugh. Give my love to nurse, and tell her rags are down. She must take a penny a pound less if she has any to sell. The rags from the Mediterranean and the east are not all wanted, and the American paper-makers have come here to buy; and while that is the case, mine will be but a bad business. Our paper-making is a joke to theirs; and, for my part, if something does not happen soon to quicken the demand for rags. I think I shall give up going my rounds, and bid you all good bye.”

“No: don’t say that, Mr. Ryan. We should be sorry not to see you twice a-year, as we have done as long as I can remember.”

“Well; if you wish to help my trade, and so go on seeing me, do your best to spread this publication. If you will believe me, there are ten thousand a-week circulating of it already; and that requires a good deal of paper,—see!”

Ambrose was approaching, as slowly as he could put one foot before the other, the fifth time that his mother looked out for him from her door.

“So, here you are, my dear; and the paper, too!—and a picture at top of it to-day! That’s something new. I wonder whether it be Owen’s drawing. He could draw if he was to try, I’m sure.”

“’Tis not Owen’s paper, mother; but a much finer one, and not costing scarcely a quarter as much as Owen’s.”

And he told how he had got it; and helped his mother to make out the pictures, as she looked at them over his shoulder.

“Who is that lady, I wonder now,” said nurse, “with her hands fastened, poor thing! and a great arm out of a cloud whipping her? What fine feathers she has in her queer hat! and what a whip! with a man’s face at the end of every cord.”

“That is Britannia and her task-masters, mother. Those are her task-masters,—those faces in the whip; and they are our rulers: there are their names. And below there is—‘Many a tear of blood has Britain shed under those tyrants that make themselves a cat-o’-nine-tails, to bare the bones and harrow the feelings of the sons of industry.’ How cruel!—Then there is—here, in this corner——”

“A great chest all on fire. I see.”

“A printing-press, that is; but what the great light round about it means, I don’t know; but it does not seem to be burning away. Then, opposite, there is a black person, with an odd foot and a long tail; and see what is flying off from the end of his tail!”

“A crown, I do believe; and what is the other?”

“A mitre. The lines below are—

And do look behind! There is the church window, and two men hanging. I think the fat one is the parson. Who can the other be?”

“But, my dear, I do not like this picture at all. It seems to me very cruel and wicked.”

“Well, let us look at the next. Here is a man that has tumbled into the kennel; and a woman with a child in her arms falling over him; and nobody helps them up; but all the boys in the street are pointing at them. What is written over behind there? ‘Gin palace.’ Ah! those people are drunk, poor creatures!”

“My dear, don’t say ‘poor creatures!’ for fear I should think you pity them. They deserve all that may happen to them; and I hope the paper says so.”

The paper said something very like it. It told the story of a man who had beaten his wife, and turned her out of a gin-shop when she had followed him there, with her infant in her arms. In his drunken rage, he had pushed the door so violently as to squeeze the infant in the door-way, and cause its death. This was related very plainly, and followed by some forcible remarks on the disgusting sin of drunkenness. Mrs. Ede was much pleased with all this, and with more which Ambrose read when she had lighted her candle, and sat down to darn his stockings. There was a story of a master who was kind enough to offer to make another trial of a run-away apprentice; and the rebuke which a magistrate gave to a mean-spirited wretch who would have frightened his little daughter into telling a lie to save him from justice. Then came a short account of what was doing at the North Pole; and afterwards, directions how to keep meat from spoiling in hot weather. In the midst of this, Ambrose stopped, quite tired out. When he came to “wiped with a dry cloth,” his breath failed him, and the lines swam before his eyes. He had never before read so much in one day. Nurse was sorry not to hear what should be done next with the meat; but she hoped Ambrose would be able to go on to-morrow. Meantime, she spent a few minutes in glancing over what was to her an expanse of hieroglyphics.

“Ah! here is a song!” cried she. “This is the way the song was printed in Owen’s paper.—Never mind, my dear. You have done quite enough. Never mind the song now.”

Ambrose could not help trying, and for some time in vain, to make out this bit of apparent poetry. It turned out at last to be a list of country agents and their abodes: a list so long as to fill a quarter of a column.—When the laugh at this mistake was done, nurse began to tell her son what a very happy mother she considered herself. It was a pity, to be sure, that poor Mildred did not get home in time to hear all that her mother had heard; and, indeed, nurse sometimes wondered whether her girl did not stay out later than she need; and whether it was a fancy of her own that Mildred was not so fond of being at home as she used to be. But still, everybody knew Mildred to be a very steady, virtuous girl, unlike two or three at the mill who might be mentioned; and, while many mothers were anxious about their lads, not knowing whether they passed their evenings at the public-house, or playing thimble-rig in the lane, or going into the woods after dark with a gun, nurse was wholly at ease about her boys. Owen was doing honourably, which partly made up for his being at a distance; and here was Ambrose improving his learning by finding out for her how meat should be kept in hot weather, and meeting with awful lessons about drunkenness. It made her feel so obliged to him! and she knew he had a pleasure in delighting her: a sort of pleasure that poor Mrs. Arruther and her son seemed never to have had together, for all his fine education. And there were many much humbler people than the Arruthers who were not near so happy as nurse. If she could but make out whether anything heavy lay on her girl’s mind——But the present was not a time to speak of the only great trouble she had. It would be ungrateful to do so to-night.—There was one more thing she should like to know, however; and that was why, when this paper blamed violence and falsehood in men that got drunk, and in bad fathers, it was itself so violent about our rulers, and told so much that she thought must be false about them. She had no wish to find fault with anything that Ryan had brought; but she had rather think the paper mistaken than believe that our rulers were so cruel as it declared.

Ambrose looked again at the pictures; thought the people who wrote the paper must be pretty sure what they were about before they printed such things; feared that the rulers and the church must be a bad set; and reminded his mother how virtuous this publication had proved itself about gin.

If nurse had known all, she would not have felt the surprise she had ventured to express; and if Ambrose had known all, he would not have concluded that because some vices were condemned and some virtues honoured in one page, the next must be pure in the morals of its politics. This newspaper was an unstamped, and therefore an illegal, publication. It was obnoxious to the law, and therefore an enemy to the law, and to all law-makers. Moral in its choice and presentation of police reports, and of late occurrences of other kinds, judicious in its selections from good books, and useful in those of its original articles which had nothing to do with politics, it was cruel, malicious, and false in its manner of treating whatever related to law-makers. It was what in high places is called inflammatory. Its tendency was, not to enlighten its readers about the faults of their representatives, errors in the practice of government, and the evils arising from former faults and errors; but to persuade the people that rich men must be wicked men; that the industrious must be oppressed; and that the way to remedy everything was to strip the rich and hang the idle. Its object, in short, was to make its readers hate an authority which it chose to disobey.—If no injurious authority had interfered with the establishment of this paper, (which establishment it had not availed to prevent,) the political part of this paper would have been as moral as the rest. There is no abstract and peculiar hatred in men’s minds against rulers, any more than there is against poets, or jewellers, or colonels in the army, or any other class; and no one class would have been selected for reprobation here, if there had been no provocation, on the one side, to defiance on the other. If there had been no fear of punishment for saying anything at all, there would have been no temptation to say what was unjust and cruel, to the injury of every party concerned. But, for the sake of the four-penny stamp, a temperate and very useful publication had been put down; and there had arisen from its ruins,—another, not like itself, but seasoned high with whatever could most exalt the passions, and thereby enlist the prejudices of the multitude in its support against the law. This could have taken place only under an unwise and oppressive law; unwise in affording facilities for its own evasion; and oppressive in debarring the people from an immeasurable advantage, for the sake of a very small supposed profit to the treasury.

As Ambrose unfolded the paper, on being satisfied with what he had seen of two sides of it, two or three little papers fell out, and fluttered down to the ground. They contained a puff of the paper, and were to be circulated by him, no doubt.

Why did not Ambrose read this announcement to his mother? Why did he not, the next day, give her some of the benefit of the other two pages of this paper? If nurse had been able to read for herself about the “devilment” with which the publication was to be stuffed, and about the nature of the contract between masters and workmen, she might, by a few words of parental wisdom and love, have saved her son and herself from future intolerable misery. One grief lay heavy at her heart already; a grief which had its cause in the gross ignorance of one of her children. Another was in store, arising from the imperfect knowledge and mistaken credulity of her second son. In the enlightenment of the eldest lay her only security for her maternal peace.

Owen’s visions had not all been realized. He had not yet got his thirty or forty pounds by publishing what he had to say on short-hand and universal language. He had not even published at all. This arose, first, from certain difficulties represented to him by Mr. Muggridge, and fully confirmed by a London bookseller; and, next, from his having grown modest as he grew enlightened. He was much less confident at L—— than he had been at Arneside, that he could say anything very new and very valuable on a universal language.

The bookseller’s first difficulty was about Owen’s remarks being published as a pamphlet. He was right enough in saying that the young man did not know what he was about in wishing to publish a pamphlet. In order to intimate the risk, Mr. Muggridge told him that not one pamphlet in fifty pays the cost of its publication; and showed him how clearly impossible it was that any other result could take place. Pamphlets were triple taxed; and by what means could so small an article pay its expense of production, three kinds of tax, and the trouble of the publisher, and leave any surplus for the author? First, the paper was heavily excised; then there was the pamphlet duty of three shillings per sheet; and then the advertisement duty. And the risk of not selling the whole must not be forgotten. The duty must be paid upon every copy of the largest edition, before a single one was sold; and if no more than twenty were purchased, and all the rest went as waste paper to the tobacconist, there would be no drawback allowed: not even time given to see whether there would be any sale or not. There were no bonded warehouses, where books might be lodged between their manufacture and their sale. To issue a pamphlet must be a speculation of unavoidable hazard——

To all but the Government, who makes sure of the taxes beforehand.

To all but the Government! And what did the Government get by it? The practice tended to the suppression of pamphlets, and not to the profit of the treasury. The very oppressive pamphlet duty yielded to the Government 970l. a-year. For this mighty sum were hundreds of intelligent men kept silent who might have uttered thousands of opinions and millions of facts which would have been useful to their race, but who had neither power nor inclination to issue in expensive volumes thoughts which would have been worth setting forth in cheap tracts. For this mighty sum were thousands of rational beings subjected to that restriction of commerce which is the most to be deprecated, and the least capable of defence,—the commerce of thought. What would be said to regulations of commerce which should practically prohibit a silver coinage, while it allowed but a very minute supply of copper? What would be thought of the injury to those who had it not in their power to deal with gold? Yet in the far more important interchange of knowledge and opinion, this monstrous virtual prohibition subsisted for the sake of the 970l. a-year which it brought to the treasury!

Owen could scarcely believe that the produce of the tax could be so small till it was explained what its attendant expenses were. Fifty prosecutions in the year cannot be conducted for nothing; and the average of prosecutions in a year for the neglect of payment of the pamphlet duty was fifty. In some years, the average of prosecutions had been so much larger, or the horror of the tax had so availed in deterring from that mode of publication, that the Government had sustained an actual loss of 200l. under that head of duty. If Owen meant to publish at all, he had better swell his matter into a good thick volume—a ten shilling octavo, which would escape the pamphlet duty, and cost no more in advertising than an eighteen-penny pamphlet.

And what chance was there of his making it worth his while to publish a book? Owen would know. Little chance enough of his being recompensed for his toil, and rewarded for his talent; though he might perhaps recover the money he must lay out. If he printed five hundred copies, the expenses would be about 170l., of which 30l. would be tax of one kind or another. Then eleven copies must be given to various institutions——

But Owen did not mean to give any away, except two or three copies to old friends.

He must. There was a law by which eleven copies of every work entered at Stationers’ Hall must be presented to institutions where they are as sure to lie unread as if they were already the waste paper they will be some time or other. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are among the eleven favoured places: those rich Universities, which are exempted from that paper-duty which must be paid by every little tradesman who issues a hand-bill about his stock, and every labourer who buys his daughter a Bible when she goes out to service, or puts half a quire of foolscap into her hand that she may write sometimes to her parents. Well; these expenses being all paid, there would remain to be divided between the author and the publisher, when every copy was sold, neither more nor less than 20l. That is to say, the treasury would take 35l., and the author and publisher together 20l., and this in the best possible case,—that of every copy being sold.

This statement disposed Owen to refrain from becoming an author at present,—at least till he had asked an experienced London publisher whether Mr. Muggridge did not labour under some mistake. The answer from London was that Mr. Muggridge’s statement was perfectly correct; and added that, in this country, not one-fourth of the books published pay their expenses, leaving out of view all recompense of the author’s ability and industry; that only one in eight or ten can be reprinted with advantage; and that, in the case of the most successful works,—works of which the very largest number is printed and sold,—the duties invariably amount to more than the entire remuneration of the author.

From this moment Owen applied himself to make some other use of his short-hand than publishing it. He became the principal reporter for the “Western Star.”

Now a power came into his hands of whose nature and extent he had not formed any conception before he made trial of his new occupation. Upon him it now depended how much the good people of L—— and a wide district round should know of the law proceedings, of the public meetings and dinner speechifyings that took place in the town and neighbourhood. Upon Owen it depended whether the misdemeanours of certain citizens should be held up as a warning, or obligingly concealed; whether the corporation should be allowed to take its own way in quiet, or subjected to be watched by the townspeople; whether one side or both of a political question should be presented. There was no competition, as the “Western Star” was the only newspaper in the place; and nothing could be easier than it now would have been to Owen to influence the opinions of the whole reading public in L—— as to all matters of general concern, by his own. Nothing could be easier than to give his own view of any question discussed at a public meeting. It was only laying down his pencil, and folding his arms till a speaker had done, and then making a note of his first and last sentence; while the best speakers on the other side had their best sayings put at length, and to the best advantage. As it was impossible to issue the whole of what every body said, the most natural process seemed to be to print what Owen liked most, and must therefore think the most worth carrying away. Owen himself felt that this was an unreasonable and pernicious power to be in the hands of any man; and, earnestly as he desired not to abuse it, he was so well aware that every man must have his peculiar tastes and political partialities,—he saw so clearly that no one report of his in the “Western Star” was in matter precisely what it would have been if prepared by any one else, that it offended his judgment and his conscience to be left in a state of irresponsibility in the discharge of a duty of such extreme importance. He felt that responsibility to any one mind was out of the question. If Mr. Muggridge, or any other censor, had been set over him, the only difference would have been that the public would have seen affairs through Mr. Muggridge’s medium, instead of through Owen’s: but there was another kind of responsibility to which he would fain have been subjected; and that was, public opinion. If he had known that other papers beside the “Western Star” would also publish the proceedings he was reporting, he must not only have avoided any gross act of suppression or embellishment, but must have vied with other reporters in selecting whatever was most weighty, by whomsoever said, and on whatever aspect of a question. In free competition alone, he saw, lay his security for his own perfect honesty, and that of the public for being truly informed about public proceedings.

Owen was now in a somewhat similar position to that of the reporters of the London newspapers, some years ago, when a very few journals, compromising matters among themselves, and, secure from competition, sported with public curiosity as they chose. If a fit of yawning seized those gentlemen in the midst of a parliamentary debate, they went to the next tavern to refresh themselves with a bowl of punch; and Burke and Fox might take their chance for its being known beyond the House that they had spoken at all. Thus, if Owen grew tired, he had only to go away, and add next morning that “the meeting separated at a late hour, highly gratified,” &c. &c. Again, the old London reporters did not like having to work three nights together, and gave themselves a holiday on Wednesdays. In like manner, Friday being a busy day with Owen, he might have skipped over all Friday doings, and have allowed a dead silence to rest on whatever happened on that unlucky day. He had been rather roughly treated by one of the opulent friends of the Mechanics’ Institution; and, if he had not been too honest, he might have omitted a hundred notices which he printed of this gentleman’s zealous exertions for the good of the town; or have made nonsense of the sentiments he uttered, or have taken care that his name should not remain upon record in the local history of which reporters are the faithful or unfaithful compilers. This is the way that Mr. Windham’s light was hid under a bushel for a whole session, when he was most conscious of his own brilliancy, and most eager to illumine the public. He had offended the reporters; and to punish him, the people of Great Britain were kept in the dark.

Besides the temptation which he had in common with them,—that of suppressing through pique and prejudice,—Owen was subjected to another. Again and again was he insulted by the offer of a bribe, or by an attempt at intimidation. One day, when he had been reporting in court, Mr. Arruther crossed over to him, and with a dubious manner, between shyness and condescension, asked him to drop in and take a glass of wine with him at his inn, that evening, as he had something to say to him.

Owen had never used any disguise as to his opinions of Mr. Arruther’s parliamentary conduct; and he therefore believed that if the gentleman bestowed any thoughts on him at all, they could scarcely be very affectionate ones. He was surprised, of course, at finding himself received with as much cordiality as a person of little sensibility could throw into his manner. The wine on the table was excellent; the invitations to partake of it hearty; and the object of the invitation presently disclosed.

Mr. Arruther could not conceive why Owen troubled himself to report all the law proceedings that took place in the court. Many of them could interest none but the parties concerned. What had the public to do, for instance, with his cousin Ellen’s quarrels with him about his mother’s property? Where was the use of printing law-suits,—dull things to read, as they were tiresome to manage? Owen explained that his business was to report. It was the affair of the readers of the paper what they would skip as dull, and what they chose to consider indispensable. He understood from his employer that no part of the paper was more narrowly watched than the law reports; and this was not surprising, as it was by means of these law reports alone that a great number of persons could gain accurate information respecting the laws to which they were subject. If he were obliged to regard the representations made to him as to what should be left out of the paper, there would soon be nothing left in it: for there were few kinds of intelligence that it was not the wish of some person or another to conceal: but, if he had to choose what particular department should be omitted, it should certainly be almost any rather than the law-reports. Other kinds of information had some chance of travelling round by some different means; but the newspapers were almost the only guides of the subjects of the State as to their duty to the State. He knew that Mr. Arruther was of opinion that the people had nothing to do with the laws but to obey them; but people could not well obey the laws without knowing what they were: so that Mr. Arruther, who wished the laws to be obeyed, should not grudge the people the little they might learn of them through the newspapers.

“Then, pray,” said the gentleman, “do not cut short that cause about Thirlaway’s road, that kept us all waiting such a confounded time this morning. Give it all; let them have every line of it; and if you find it likely to fill your paper, you can leave out my affairs, to make room for it.”

“I hope to be able to manage both, sir. The leading arguments on each side of all the causes tried this morning can be offered without transgressing our limits.”

“Better print the other entire. Do you know, Mr. Owen, I will give you a shilling a line to see how complete a thing you can make of it, provided you leave out mine to make room.”

“You do not know the person you have to deal with, Mr. Arruther. A man cannot be a reporter for a twelvemonth without knowing something of the practice of ‘feeing the fourth estate,’ as people say. I am upon my guard, sir, I assure you; and the less you say on this head the better, for your own sake.”

“On your guard! Bless me! What an expression,—as if I had said anything wrong! Do you suppose I do not know the customs of your craft? Till the management of a newspaper becomes a less expensive affair than it is at present, I do not know what better plan there can be than making out the pay of reporters for what they bring to the compositor, by letting them take fees for what they suppress. Such a custom is so convenient to all parties, that I wonder at your pretending to dislike it.”

“When you call it convenient to all parties, sir, you seem to forget the principal party concerned. However it may be with the proprietor of the paper, and with the reporter, and those who tender the fee, it is not very convenient to the public that their supply of information should depend on the length of a few purses, whose owners may wish to make private certain of their proceedings which ought to be public. It may prove convenient to some of your constituents, sir, if not to you, that it should be known exactly how you stand in that cause which was tried this morning. It is always convenient to electors to know as much as they can learn of the character of their representatives. I believe that I have no right to keep back such information; and the report will therefore appear to-morrow, at the same length as is generally allotted to causes of that nature.”

Mr. Arruther explained in vain how particularly provoking his mother’s will had been; how unexpected it was that his cousin Ellen should have been stirred up to sue him; how little idea he had till this morning of the extent to which his lawyer had deceived him about the merits of his own case; how glad he should be if the whole could now be dropped and privately arranged; and, finally and especially, how little the public had to do with whether he tried to keep his mother’s property, or quietly let it go to somebody else. It was in vain that he urged all this. Owen could not see why any of these considerations should interfere with the advantage which the readers of the paper would derive from the knowledge of Mr. Arruther’s proceedings. That this gentleman had a bad cause to maintain might be a very sufficient reason for his present condescension, and for his offering to double and treble his bribe; but it afforded the strongest possible inducement to Owen to publish the whole, for the guidance of those who had it in their power to withdraw this unworthy man from public life. Mr. Arruther grew angry when all the offers he could make for the suppression of the report were simply declined.

“I do not know, sir, what has made you my enemy,” he observed. “But you are my enemy, sir. Don’t deny it. Do you think I am not aware of what you have done, first in trying to deprive me of the support of the editor of the ‘Western Star;’ and, when you could not succeed in that, in exposing me privately wherever you could?”

“How do you use the word ‘privately,’ Mr. Arruther? If you mean that I have whispered things to your disadvantage, or used any kind of secrecy in what I have said, you are mistaken. If you mean that I have printed nothing against you, you are quite correct; but the reason is, that I have not had the power. If there had been any independent newspaper in the district, where I might have said what you allude to, it would have saved me the trouble of writing many letters, and have enabled me to do my duty much more effectually than it has been done. If you feel yourself aggrieved from the same cause; if you desire an opportunity of publicly contradicting what has been said about your scanty attendance at the House, and the course of your political conduct when there; if you really wish for a fair discussion of your public character, you will assist those of us who are anxious to set up a newspaper as nearly independent as the circumstances of the time will allow.”

“Not I. We have too many newspapers already. I shall not countenance the setting up of any more.”

“Too many already,” repeated Owen, smiling as his eye fell on a little table on which lay seven or eight newspapers, received this morning, and destined to be replaced by the same number to-morrow. “Too many! That depends on how they are divided. Perhaps you forget, sir, that while Members of Parliament have seven or eight to themselves every day, there are seven or eight thousand people who see but one paper, and seven or eight millions of persons who never see one at all. You may feel yourself ready for your morning ride before you have half got through such a pile of papers as lies there, and may find it a tiresome part of your duty to read so much politics every day; but if you steal into the dark bye-places of a town like this, and hear what people are saying in their ignorance against being governed at all; if you go out upon the sheep-walks, and see the country folks growing into the likeness of stocks and stones, for want of having their human reason exercised; if you will ride down any Saturday into our own village, and see the scramble there is for a single copy of an inferior provincial paper, you will presently lose the fancy that we have too many newspapers already.”

“Too many by that one copy you spoke of, in my opinion, Mr. Owen. The people in Arneside did very well without any newspaper when I was a boy, I remember. I wish you had been pleased to consult me before you took such a step as sending them one. You should know better than to fall into the propensity of the time, for pampering the common people. You talk as wisely as anybody about putting gin in their way, and I do not see that they want news any more than gin. That was one of the few good things my mother used to say. When some complaint came to her ears about the price of newspapers, she asked whether anybody thought any harm of taxing gin; and whether the common people could not do without news as well as without spirits. She was right enough, for once. The common people can do without news. News is a luxury, as somebody said.”

“O, yes. News can be done without; and so can many other things. You may lock a man into a house, and he will still live. You may darken his windows from the sun at noonday, and the stars at night, and he will still live. You may let in no air but what comes down the chimney, and he will still live. You may chain him to the bed-post, you may stuff his ears, and cover his eyes, and tie his hands behind him, and he can ‘do without’ the use of his limbs and his senses, and of God’s noblest works: but it was not for this that God sent his sun on its course, and set the stars rolling in their spheres, and freshened the breezy hills, and gave muscles to our strong limbs, and nerves to our delicate organs. He did not make his beautiful world that one might walk abroad on it, while a thousand are shut into a dark dungeon. Neither did he give men the curiosity with which they watch and listen, and the imagination with which they wander forth, and the reason with which they meditate among his works, that the one might be baffled, and the others fettered and enfeebled. And what does any one gain by such tyranny? Does the sun shine more brightly when a man thinks he has it all to himself, than when the reapers are merry in the field, and the children are running after butterflies in the meadow? Would Orion glow more majestically to any one man if he could build a wall up to the high heaven, and stop the march of the constellation, and part it off, that common eyes might not look upon it? If not, neither can any one gain by shutting up that which God has made as common to the race as the lights of his firmament, and the winds which come and go as he wills. That word ‘news’ is a little word and a common word; but it means all that is great as the results of the day, and holy as the march of the starry night. It is the manifestation of man’s most freshly compounded emotions, the record of his most recent experiences, and the revelation of God’s latest providences on earth. Are these things to be kept from the many by the few, under the notion that they are property? Are these things now to be doled out at the pleasure, and to suit the purposes of an order of men, as the priests of Catholic countries measured out their thimblefull of the waters of life, in the name of him who opened up the spring, and invited every one that thirsted to come and drink freely? To none has authority been given to mete out knowledge, according to their own sense of fitness, any more than to those priests of old; but on all is imposed the religious duty of providing channels by which the vital streams of knowledge shall be brought to every man’s door. If, in this day, any man who seeks to be a social administrator desires that the few should cover up their reservoirs lest they should overflow for the refreshment of the many, it is no wonder if his cistern grows so foul as to make him question in right earnest at last, whether there be not something more poisonous in the draught than in gin itself; and much that is perilous in the eagerness of the crowd who rush to lap whatever cannot be prevented from leaking out.”

“You mean to say that our universities are fouled reservoirs, I suppose? It would become you to speak more modestly till you have been there.”

“I know nothing of what is within the universities, further than by watching what comes out. The vague idea that I have of the knowledge that pervades them is perhaps as reverential as you, or any other son of such an institution, can desire: but I own that my reverence would be more ardent and affectionate if I could see that that knowledge made its partakers happier than it does.”

“Happier! How can you possibly tell? How should you know, when I am the only university-man, I believe, that you are acquainted with?”

“I judge by what I see. When men enjoy, the next thing is to communicate; especially when by communicating they lose nothing themselves. But it is not so in this case. What have the universities done towards showing the beauty and holiness of knowledge, as the most universal and the highest blessing which God has given to the living and breathing race of man? What have the universities done to diffuse their own treasures into every corner of the land? How have they applied their knowledge towards the promotion of the happiness of the state,—opening their doors to all who would come in, discovering or sanctioning the best principles of legislation and government, countenancing public and private virtue, and being foremost in proposing and enforcing whatever might fulfil the final purposes of knowledge by making the greatest number of rational beings as wise and happy as the circumstances of the age will admit? While I see nothing of all this attempted by our universities, I feel more respect and affection for the studies which are going forward within a Mechanics’ Institution (crude and superficial studies, perhaps, but tending to promote the substantial happiness of the race), than for the pursuits of a university, or any other place, where intellectual luxury is reserved to pamper the few while the many starve.”

“I do not see much starving in the case, when we have not only too many regular newspapers, but scores of unstamped publications, which circulate their scores of thousands each. Precious stuff for your common people to batten upon!”

“When we once come to the question of quality, sir, there may be less to be said than about quantity. Is there anything here,—or here,”—taking up the “John Bull” and the “Age,” “that will make the public wiser and better than they would become by reading the ‘Twopenny Treat’ or the ‘Poor Man’s Guardian.’ That there is any such ‘precious stuff’ for readers to batten on is the fault of those who, by keeping up one newspaper monopoly, have created another.”

“What new monopoly, pray? And what public would ever endure two monopolies of the same article?”

“There are two publics to suffer by the two monopolies. While the tax-gatherers take five-pence out of every seven-pence that is given for a newspaper; while the practice of advertising is so kept down by the duty as to deprive the proprietors of their legitimate profits; while a capital of between thirty and forty thousand pounds is required to conduct a good daily paper, no journal will or can be honest, cheap, and successful; and the middle classes, who can afford to see only one paper, will suffer by the long-established monopoly of the old journals. While men of more wit than capital are tempted or driven to evade the law; while adventurers below the reach of the law are virtually invited to defy and vilify it, the large class of poor readers will suffer by the pernicious monopoly which not his Majesty nor all his Ministers can break up, as long as legal newspapers are made to cost seven-pence, while illegal ones may be had for two-pence.—Have you seen any of these illegal publications?”

“Yes. Precious stuff! Falsehoods in every sentence; blunders in every line; as any one who chose might show in a minute.”

“Unfortunately, no one will choose it, in the present state of affairs. It must be easy enough to controvert any publication so bad as you describe; but the opportunity is not allowed. These falsehoods and blunders are crammed down the people’s throats, and no one can unchoke them, because the law interferes to prevent the free circulation of opinions. I know of a young man at Arneside who actually believes that all master manufacturers make it a principle and a pleasure to oppress and worry their workmen, and that all rulers study nothing so regularly and strenuously as how to wring the hearts of the greatest number of people. He reads this (among a hundred better things) in one of these unstamped publications, which would either have never existed at all, or have treated very differently of politics, if the Stamp Commissioners had taught it no lesson of hatred against the law.”

“Ah! you mean that brother of yours. I heard how he was going, poor fool!”

“If he is a poor fool, what is it that has prevented his being wise? He has shown his disposition to become so by his eagerness after such reading as he can obtain; and if he has got so far as to learn the strength of a bad argument, alas for those who step in to prevent his getting farther, and learning its weakness in the presence of a better! If he cannot find sound political teachers, where lies the blame?”

“If you had newspapers quite free, who do you suppose would write for the common people? We should be inundated with blasphemous and seditious publications.”

“When a man goes with his money in his hand to purchase a newspaper, do you think he is asked whether he is one of the common people? And when newspapers sell for the cost of production and a fair profit, who is likely to produce the best, and sell the most,—the respectable and educated capitalist, or the ignorant and needy agitator? When newspapers have fair play, their success will depend, I fancy, like that of other articles, on their quality; and I never yet heard of any instance in which any class of people failed to purchase the better article in preference to the worse, when both were fairly set before them. Moreover, I never heard of a wise and kind government, whether of a single family, a city, or a nation, that did not desire rather than fear that its proceedings should be known and discussed.”

“Ah! that shows how little you know of the plague and mischief of being talked over, when any business is in hand. If you were in the place of those who have to transact affairs on the continent, and in our colonies, you would be too much vexed to laugh at the nonsense that people believe about us. There is nothing too monstrous or ridiculous to be credited. A plague on the foolish tongues that spread such things!”

“Or rather on the policy which allows such reports to be originated and to pass current. If a multitude of the King’s subjects at home, and of his allies abroad, believe all that is monstrous of his government, and all that is ridiculous of his people, it seems time that better means of knowledge should be given to both. While the world lasts, social beings can never be prevented discussing their rulers and their neighbours; and if we are annoyed at their errors, the alternative is not silence but truth. When newspapers circulate untaxed, and not till then, there will be an approach to a general understanding, and to social peace.”

“You are not exactly the person to talk of social peace, I think, Mr. Owen, when you are bent on setting me and my electors at variance by publishing my family quarrels, in spite of all I can say.”

Owen did not choose to remain to be insulted by further entreaties that he would take a bribe. He rose, observing that this was a case in which he had no more concern than with a quarrel in the Cabinet, and no more option than in announcing an earthquake at Aleppo. He was a reporter, and nothing more. If Mr. Arruther had anything further to say, he must make his appeal to the proprietors of the “Western Star.”

A few last words were vouchsafed to him before he left the room. Their purpose was to assure him that if this report appeared, he need never apply to Mr. Arruther for assistance, in case of his fool of a brother getting into any scrape, or he himself ever being tried for libel, or any disaster, public or private, befalling him. If Owen should, on consideration, decide to accommodate Mr. Arruther, that gentleman would see what he could do on any occasion when he might be of service.