THE NEW POSTAGE-TAX UPON NEWSPAPERS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume V, Issue 233, 1 March 1865, Page 2

THE NEW POSTAGE-TAX UPON NEWSPAPERS.

From the letter of a correspondent of the New Zealand Herald we extract the following:— Sie—l was glad to perceive from a paragraph in your issue of Monday last —very appropriately headed “ The-Newspaper Postage Imposition”— that that very obnoxious law was likely to be repealed. It may have been inconvenient to the Weld Ministry that their trickery and incapacity should be exposed through the medium of the press, and the tidings carried into every corner of the land. They doubtless would consider themselves supremely blest if the people were reduced to that happy state of quietude and ignorance described by the couplet— Nothing to do with the laws hut ohey them, Nothing to do with the taxes but pay them. It was and is the glory of Rowland Hill that ho so cheapened the means of communication, that the humblest might equally with the wealthy enjoy the blessings of social intercourse. The principles which Rowland Hill inculcated and enforced respecting letters, are equally true concerning newspaper literature. Many who are unable to correspond with their friends by letter, through defective or limited education, keep up the acquaintanceship to a surprising extent by means of newspapers. Tbeir extensive diffusion also tends to the formation of sound and healthy public opinion on the great questions which agitato the country, and gives an outlet to that mental activity which would otherwise vent itself in a less beneficial direction.

The tax at most would net raise over £3OOO a year, as the principal journals in Auckland, if I have been correctly informed (and doubless in the South as well) have made arrangements to defeat she tax-gatherer by organising a less expensive but equally eifeotive mail service of their own ; and as to the weaker (hey w r onld go to the wall. There is little reason to doubt, that in 12 months, if this measure were persisted in, the number of journals published in this colony would bo reduced by 25 per cent., ana at what an amount of grumbling, discontent, and ill-feeling would this paltry £3OOO be raised. A wise and politic administration would never determine the arrangements of the postal services by receipts and expenditure alone. The great ocean mail services subsidised by the British Government show enormous deficits on some of the lines, but yet it is found to be to its interest to maintain them. Recently the British Government determined to double the postage on colonial letters in order to recoup these losses, but on further consideration has wisely deferred taking any action in the matter.

It would be rather too severe a test upon human credulity to believe that the creation of Ihe newspaper postage, on the part of the Weld Ministry, proceeds from an economical fit, after the little tit-bits of extravagance in the charter of Wellington steamers for the conveyance of the chargers and papers. Perhaps it bo more in harmony with their feelings and wishes if our newspapers were reduced to the standard of the Moniteurs of our Gallic neighbors in Port de France and Tahiti' Announcements OJpcieUe, a Jeuilleton on art and he drama, varied perhaps by one on some of the hicts of the “ powers that be,” to which attention had been “ invited” by the Commissary of Police and winding up usually with the programme of the ensuing Sunday’s vaudeville or mayhap horse races.