alone; and
another, which forbade newspapers to publish lectures delivered at
literary and scientific institutions, without the permission of the
lecturer.

The time was now fast approaching for the reduction of the stamp duty.
Government was getting wearied of the war with the hydra-headed
unstamped monster, and at last adopted the only expedient likely to be
successful in putting it down, which was to place the higher-class
journals in a position to rival them. From 1831 to 1835 there had been
no less than seven hundred and twenty-eight prosecutions, of which the
year 1835 alone had produced two hundred and nineteen. This fact, joined
to the influential agitation which was now being made for the repeal,
caused the Government to decide upon bringing in a measure of relief. It
took six months and an immense deal of speechifying to bring this
measure to maturity; but at last, in 1836, the stamp duty was reduced
from fourpence to one penny, being one halfpenny less than it had been
originally fixed at in 1760. The Tories were the great friends of this
reduction, and Lord Lyndhurst, who had been instrumental in abolishing
many of the most oppressive enactments with which the measure had been
clogged, wished to do away with the duty altogether. There was of course
a loss to the revenue at first. In the first half year of the new duty,
the number of stamps issued was 21,362,148, realizing L88,502. In the
corresponding previous half year, under the old scale, the number of
stamps had been 14,874,652, and the amount paid, L196,909, so that in
six months the number of stamped newspapers had increased by about one
half.

In 1837, _The Economist_ was started by John Wilson, and attracted great
attention by its statistical and politico-economical articles, Wilson
afterward became secretary of the treasury, and, having been sent to
India, died there, to add one more to the many illustrious victims that
our Indian empire has exacted. In 1838 a most amusing hoax was
perpetrated upon _The Morning Post_ and _Morning Chronicle_, which
announced the death of Lord Brougham, and published a most elaborate
biography of him. But the next day there came a letter from Lord
Brougham, declaring that he was still alive and hearty. The joke,
however, did not end here--for people were ill natured enough to assert
that he had been the author of the rumor himself, in order to learn what
the world would say about him; and so widespread had this seco