A JOB OF THE "TIMES."

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 768, 24 August 1853, Page 3

A JOB OF THE "TIMES."

(From the " Britannia," April 23.) Tiie " Times" uas been purchased bt the government for some tliikty thousand per Annum ! This purchase, doubtless so useful to the Cabinet and so profitable to the proprietors of the Leviathan of Printing-house-square, has been negociated by Mr. Gladstone, and the burden of the purchase money openly saddled on the country for the sole benefit of the men now in power. In the transaction there has been no concealment, and the consideration for the annuity has been shown in the sudden conversion of the leading journal to the views of Mr. Gladstone on the perpetuation of the injustice of the Incometax, and sundry daily eulogiums on the care, caution, and due regard for their interests which the right honorable gentleman's Budget displays. In this case there has been no expenditure of secret service money, as in the notorious matter of Lord Clarendon and the World, but a plain, simple, and open grant of the annuity, out of the public revenue, to the powerful renegade. Newspaper jobbing was an old failing with Whig Governments. In the days of Spring Rice _ we had the broad sheets cut down in their dimensions to suit the then Government organ, the Chronicle. Again, in later times, the yearly returns of stamps were forbidden, in order to screen the sad fall that had happened in the circulation of the Government organ ; and only a year or so back we. had the expose of the negociation between Lord Clarendon and Mr. Birch, and the deliberate purchase of the Satirist of Ireland in defence of Whig policy. The Whig hankering after a job, with the press has naturally passed across the council-table to Mr. Gladstone, who, wise in his generation, determines not to endanger himself for a small gain, but to sin largely and profit largely by his sin. Mr. Gladstone peddles not with minor papers. lie strikes for the leader, pays high, and wins. Nay more, with a boldness which would become a great criminal, he makes others contribute the bribe which he tenders in his own name, and the benefit of which he and his colleagues are alone to reap. Mr. Gladstone deprecates th£ title of a bold financier ; but he has secured that of an impudent briber, We are retailing no on dit, and no club report in this matter. We are merely quoting from Mr. Gladstone's Budget. Under the excuse of increasing the facilities of publicity, and under the pressure of an adverse division, Mr. Gladstone cuts down the advertisement duty so sixpence, and couples it with a remission of the stamp now attached to supplements, under the proviso of these supplements being confined to advertisements. With the rarest possible exceptions, the Times, and tb? Times alone, among the daily papers,

pays the present supplement tax. *And it alone I is ever likely to require a supplement when the | privilege of circulating it untaxed is confined to j the publication of advertisements. It alone now finds a daily supplement requisite, and it alone reaps an enormours fortune by. the thousand advertisements it crowds into its daily extia sheet. Every advertisement column in the Times costs to advertisers at least 20/., every page amounts to 120?. and every full supplement brings, exclusive ; of duties, eight hundred pounds to the treasury of I the Times. In earning this enormous income, the Times has to pay one penny extra on each of its forty thousand daily sheets, and thus to contribute > 166/. per diem to the stamp revenue. Heavy as j this tax is, the profit is far heavier. Yet from this tax, so easily borne, so amply repaid, the Times is to be freed. I

In another part of the Budget, the tea-dealer, the malster and the tobacco merchant are to be taxed according to the rent they pay for their business premises. The supplement tax is to the Times a rent for its business premises. The Times is to be freed from the rent it now pays, whilst the tea and tobacco merchant are to pay a fresh tax. Verily the Times is a power. It is as rare an occurrence to find the Times without a supplement as to discover such an addition to another daily paper. During the past week four da>s produced a full sized supplement with its penny stamp, and the other twain a halt supplement with a halfpenny stamp. The tax has been heavy—not less than nine hundred pounds. The income has been great also, not less than four thousand four hundred pounds sterling, in addition to the usual gains of the paper. For the future the Times is to be freed from this nine hundred pounds per week, and thus bribed to support its new friends at the expense of the country. The amount of this bribe is enormous. On the average the Times publishes four full-sized supplements weekly, to the amount in taxes of about 650/. per week, or more than thirty-two thousand pounds per annum. Such is the retainer offered by Mr. Gladstone for the advocacy of the Times, and all this done at the expense of the country ! Of course Mr. Gladstone and the Times are equally above such mercenary motives. The whole matter has been an accident, and, like many other accidents, has produced results very satisfactory to those whom itallects. It is one of those mistakes which thieves are apt to make in their own behalf.