Napoleon and Barbès – Newspaper Stamp  

Neue Oder-Zeitung.  
Nr. 151, 30. Marz 1855.  
Mittagblatt  

X. London, 27 March. (Napoleon and Barbès. Newspaper Stamp.) We learn from the best source that Bonaparte’s visit to St James’s Palace – expected for 16 April – will give rise to a large counter-demonstration. The Chartists have namely invited the French refugee, Armand Barbès, to visit London likewise on 16 April, where he is to be received with a public procession and a large meeting. It is, however, questionable whether his state of health will permit a sea voyage.  

The Bill for the abolition of the newspaper stamp duty passed its second reading yesterday in the House of Commons. The principal provisions of this Bill are as follows: 1) The compulsory newspaper stamp is abolished; 2) Periodical publications, printed on stamped paper, enjoy as before the privilege of free postal transmission. A third clause concerns the size of printed matter transmitted by post, and another provides that stamped newspapers have to lodge security for possible libel actions.  

To characterise the old newspaper tax system, two facts suffice. The publication of a daily paper in London requires a capital of at least £50-60,000. The entire English press, with very few exceptions, puts up a shameless and unscrupulous opposition to the new Bill. Are further proofs needed that the old system is a protective system for the existing press and a prohibitive system against free intellectual production? Hitherto, freedom of the press in England was the exclusive privilege of capital. The few weekly papers representing the interests of the working class – daily papers were of course out of the question – eke out their existence through weekly contributions from the workers, who in England know how to make quite different sacrifices for public purposes than on the Continent.  

The tragicomic blustering pathos with which the leviathan of the English press – The Times – fights pro aris et focis, i.e. for the newspaper monopoly – at one moment modestly comparing itself to the oracle temple at Delphi, at the next assuring the public that England possesses but a single institution worth preserving, namely The Times; at another laying claim to the autocracy of world journalism and, without a Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, to the protectorate over all European newspaper hacks.  

The whole “cant” of The Times was fittingly dealt with in yesterday’s House of Commons sitting by the whimsical Drummond: “The present-day press is a mercantile speculation and nothing more. … Messrs. Walter (the principal shareholders of The Times) would naturally have as much right to set up a factory of political twaddle as Mr. Bright has a cotton factory. … The Times understands the business better than its rivals. The Walter family has always had adroit men at hand, lawyers of seven years’ practice or the like, people ready to stand up for and against anything. There are, for example, Messrs. Barnes, Alsager, Sterling, Delane, Morris, Lowe, and Dasent. These gentlemen are all of different opinions; the foolish newspapers that do not quite understand the business, such as the Morning Chronicle, attach themselves to a particular party. One is Peelite, another Derbyite, and so on. When the Peelite party flourishes, so does its newspaper; when it declines, the newspaper declines too. Those are obviously no businessmen. The true art – in which The Times is master – is to hire a band of gentlemen of different opinions and set them to writing. Of course, none of these gentlemen can be accused of inconsistency; the same man may always remain true to the same view, and these scribblers are individually very consistent, while, taken collectively, nothing in the world could be more inconsistent. The true perfection of journalism seemed to him to consist in – individual respectability, collective unscrupulousness, politically as well as literarily. That was very striking, and The Times always reminded him of one of his tenants, to whom he proposed to drain a marshy piece of land. By no means! said the tenant. Don’t drain it! In wet weather something is found there for the cow, and if nothing is there for the cow, something turns up for the pig, and if nothing for the pig, there is still something for the goose.”  

As regards the venality of the newspapers, positive proofs existed with respect to The Times, of which Napoleon said: “You have sent me The Times, the infamous Times, the journal of the Bourbons.” It was established in a work by O’Meara that it received 600 frs. a month from the latter. O’Meara had been in possession of the receipt for the money received, signed by the editor of the paper.  

O’Meara also established that Napoleon, before his exile to Elba, received offers from various newspapers, notably from The Times, to write for them. He had declined, but later had cause to regret his decision. We merely remark on this that in 1815 The Times insisted on having Napoleon, whom it portrayed as the centre of European demagogy, shot by court-martial. The same paper – in 1816 – wanted to bring the United States of North America, “this calamitous example of successful insurrection”, back under English coercive rule.