he
peace their sale fell off. Hence we find, that in 1821 no more than
twenty-four millions of newspapers were disposed of. Since then the
spread of education--slow as it has been--has increased the
productiveness of journalism. During the succeeding eight-and-twenty
years, the increase may be judged of by reference to the figures we have
already jotted down; the sum of which is, that during the year 1848
there were issued, for English, Irish, and Scotch newspapers, eighty-two
millions of stamps--more than thrice as many as were paid for in 1821.
The cause of this increase was chiefly the reduction of the duty from an
average of three-pence to one penny per stamp.

A curious comparison of the quantity of news devoured by an
Englishman and a Frenchman, was made in 1819, in the _Edinburgh
Review_--"thirty-four thousand papers," says the writer, are "dispatched
daily from Paris to the departments, among a population of about
twenty-six millions, making one journal among 776 persons. By this, the
number of newspaper readers in England would be to those in France as
twenty to one. But the number and circulation of country papers in
England are so much greater than in France, that they raise the
proportion of English readers to about twenty-five to one, and our
papers contain about three times as much letter-press as a French paper.
The result of all this is that an Englishman reads about seventy-five
times as much of the newspapers of his country in a given time, as a
Frenchman does of his. But in the towns of England, most of the papers
are distributed by means of porters, not by post; on the other hand, on
account of the number of coffee-houses, public gardens, and other modes
of communication, less usual in England, it is possible that each French
paper may be read, or listened to, by a greater number of persons, and
thus the English mode of distribution may be compensated. To be quite
within bounds, however, the final result is, that every Englishman reads
daily fifty times as much as the Frenchman does, of the newspapers of
his country."

From this it might be inferred that the craving for news is peculiarly
English. But the above comparison is chiefly affected by the
restrictions put upon the French press, which, in 1819, were very great.
In this country, the only restrictions were of a fiscal character; for
opinion and news there was, as now, perfect liberty. It is proved, at
the present day, that Frenchmen love new