Taxes on knowledge

"Newspaper taxes, taxes on knowledge, stamp taxes." Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Journalism. Ed. Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor. London: British Library, 2009. Print.

• 454: The 'Taxes on knowledge', as they came to be known, were first imposed in 1712. They consisted of stamp duty on newspapers, taxes on both advertisements and paper, and were primarily intended to curb the circulation of cheap periodicals. Initially the sums involved were small, although the tax on newspapers, the most controversial of the three, was increased substantially in 1797 and in 1815 to 4d per sheet. Radical working-men referred to this tax as a 'slave-mark,' particularly after one of the 'Six Acts' of 1819 extended the impost to virtually all periodicals published more frequently than monthly and selling for less than 6d. This drove cheap political papers out of the market and made it difficult for the provincial press with limited resources to compete against powerful London dailies like the Times. Beginning in 1830 a significant movement against the 'Taxes on knowledge' commenced, which involved large numbers of reformers in London and the provinces. Many were radical working-men who viewed a penny press as a means to achieve economic and political change. Others sought repeal as a way of spreading education among the poor or promoting free trade. Of the three taxes under attack the advertisement duty was the first to go. It was reduced by 50 per cent in 1833 and abolished in 1853. Likewise, the excise duty on paper was halved in 1836 and then repealed in 1861. Smaller, less controversial duties on pamphlets and almanacs were ended in 1833 and 1834. But it was the newspaper duty that evoked the fiercest response among reformers during the 1830s. Between 1830 and 1836 more than 400 illegal unstamped periodicals, many of them selling at a 1d, were published in defiance of the law. Some went out of business quickly, while others fought a continuing battle against attempts to suppress them.... Finally in 1836, the Whig government brought the agitation to an end when it reduced the Stamp Duty to 1d. After 1836 most of the unstamped newspapers disappeared, while some of a non-political nature were allowed to publish. Many radicals became embittered by the failure to abolish the tax and turned to Chartism and other forms of political protest. Finally, in 1855 the government of Lord Palmerston repealed the Stamp Duty and established a "free trade in newspapers". In that year the Daily telegraph became the first 1d daily newspaper to be published successfully in Britain. This was the starting point for an unprecedented expansion in journalism that culminated in the emergence of a mass press in the final decades of the century.
  • See also: Altick 1957, Brake 2001, St Clair 2004, Turner 2010, The Warden (Trollope, 1855), Martineau in Household Words