Taxes on knowledge facts for kids
Taxes on knowledge was a special name for a big campaign in Britain. This campaign fought against taxes on newspapers, their advertisements, and even the paper they were printed on. People believed these taxes made it harder for ordinary people to get information and learn. A famous saying, "A tax upon Paper, is a tax upon Knowledge," shows how important this issue was. It's thought that Alexander Adam, a Scottish headmaster, first said this.
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Controlling News Through Taxes
The "taxes on knowledge" were highest around 1815, when the Napoleonic Wars ended. At this time, the government, led by Lord Liverpool, tried to stop certain newspapers. They would even take editors and writers to court for printing things they didn't like.
The idea of taxing publications started with a law in 1712. Back then, the tax was only a halfpenny. But over time, it grew much higher, reaching four pence.
In 1819, a new law called the Newspaper and Stamp Duties Act was passed. This law made it hard for newspapers to grow. It was especially aimed at writers like William Cobbett. After 1819, "newspaper" was carefully defined. Any paper published more often than once a month and costing less than six pence had to pay the tax. This law hurt local newspapers outside London and stopped cheap political papers from being printed.
The Fight Against Unstamped Papers
Newspapers had to pay a special tax called stamp duty. The first big step in the campaign against these taxes was to print and sell newspapers without the stamp, making them illegal. This fight was called the "war of the unstamped."
A key person in this war was Henry Hetherington. In 1831, he started his unstamped paper, The Poor Man's Guardian. He wanted to see if the government would really try to stop him. Hundreds of people helped him sell these illegal papers. The National Union of the Working Classes also joined the fight against these taxes.
Even some important government officials, like Lord Brougham, believed newspapers should be much cheaper. He thought they should cost one penny instead of seven pence.
Changes in 1836
During the "war of the unstamped," almost 800 people were sent to prison for selling illegal papers. But the campaign worked! In 1834, the tax on pamphlets was removed. Then, in 1836, the newspaper tax was cut from four pence to just one penny. This was done by Thomas Spring Rice, who was in charge of the country's money.
However, the new law also made the punishments for avoiding the taxes much tougher. It also made more types of publications subject to the tax. So, even with the lower tax, it was still hard to have truly cheap or free newspapers.
The number of newspaper stamps sold shows how much things changed:
- 1801: 16 million stamps
- 1824: 26 million stamps
- 1837: 53 million stamps
- 1846: 78 million stamps
In 1836, a group called the Provincial Newspaper Society was formed. This group, later known as the Newspaper Society, actually started to oppose further tax changes. Even a big newspaper like The Times didn't want more changes.
The Campaign Continues
John Francis, who published The Athenaeum, kept fighting against taxes on publications in the late 1830s. This included a tax on paper and a tax on advertisements. The advertisement tax had been cut in 1833, and the paper tax was also lowered in 1837.
Charles Knight, a publisher, wanted the paper tax removed. But he thought the newspaper tax was good because it stopped very radical papers from becoming too popular. A group called the Association of Working Men to Procure a Cheap and Honest Press, formed in 1836, soon became the London Working Men's Association.
Within the Chartist movement, Henry Hetherington and William Lovett supported "Knowledge Chartism." This was a slower approach to completely ending the taxes and improving education for everyone. However, Feargus O'Connor, another Chartist leader, strongly disagreed with this idea. For a long time, the taxes on knowledge were not a main focus of the Chartist movement, until the late 1840s.
The campaign against "taxes on knowledge" made more progress in the 1850s, after the main Chartist political protests became less active. A group called the People's Charter Union was formed in 1848. Its treasurer, Richard Moore, played a big part in getting rid of the newspaper stamp duty. He helped create a new group called the Association for Promoting the Repeal of Taxes on Knowledge (APRTOK). This group managed to get Richard Cobden, a famous politician, involved.
William Edwin Adams said this successful effort was "a twelve years' agitation." Collet Dobson Collet was the secretary of APRTOK, and Thomas Milner Gibson was its president from 1850. Milner Gibson, a Member of Parliament, led a special committee in 1851 that looked into newspaper stamps. He once noted that the editor of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, Jeremiah Garnett, "was a free trader who did not like free trade in newspapers." This meant Garnett supported free trade in general but not for newspapers, perhaps because it would bring more competition.
The End of "Taxes on Knowledge"
The tax on advertisements was removed in 1853. Then, the newspaper stamp duty was abolished in 1855. Finally, the tax on paper was removed in 1861.
William Gladstone, who was in charge of the country's money, removed the paper duties. He tried in 1860, but the House of Lords (a part of the British Parliament) rejected his plan. This was unusual because the House of Lords usually didn't interfere with money laws. The next year, Gladstone tried again. This time, he put the paper duty repeal into a larger money bill for the whole country. The House of Lords chose not to reject the entire bill, so the paper tax was finally gone.
What Happened Next
Getting rid of the "taxes on knowledge" helped many new publications start in the United Kingdom in the second half of the 1800s. The British press became a true mass media, reaching many more people.
One of the first papers to really benefit was The Daily Telegraph. It started in 1855 as a penny paper, one of many cheap papers that appeared. The Saturday Review, a weekly magazine, also started in 1855 and featured new writers. New daily newspapers also began in towns outside London.
In April 1861, just before the paper tax was removed, a publication called The Bookseller shared some interesting numbers about London newspapers. In 1830, there were 64 newspapers, but only three were for working-class readers. By 1860, there were 177 newspapers, with eight for working-class people. The total number of copies sold each week had jumped from about 400,000 to over 2.2 million!
People's habits for reading newspapers also changed. More people started buying papers to read at home. Older ways of reading, like going to a special reading room or club, or renting a paper by the hour in a pub, slowly became less common.
Images for kids
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Meeting for the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge, 1851
