vernment to deal with the larger
question, intimated that Russell, as home secretary, was considering the
means of separating juvenile offenders from hardened criminals by
establishing places of detention in the nature of what have since been
known as reformatories.

[Pageheading: _DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS LOWERED._]

A still more notable contribution to social improvement was made by
Spring Rice, the chancellor of the exchequer, in consolidating the paper
duties on a reduced scale, and lowering the stamp duty on newspapers
from fourpence to one penny. These were the only controversial elements
in a budget otherwise modest and acceptable. The battle over paper
duties and "taxes upon knowledge" raised in the debates of 1836 was
destined to rage many years longer, but the relief granted by Spring
Rice gave a powerful impulse to journalism and periodical literature. It
was opposed by all the familiar arguments against a cheap press, but
that which most endangered its success was a rival proposal to apply any
surplus revenue to cheapening soap. Soap, it was plausibly contended,
was a necessary, reading newspapers or periodicals was only a luxury,
and a luxury, too, far move capable of being abused than expenditure on
soap. When the penny stamp on newspapers was at last preferred to
reduced soap duties it was said that, "so far as financial arrangements
were concerned, everything went to supply the essential elements of low
political clubs, _viz._, cheap gin, cheap newspapers, filthy hands, and
unwashed faces".[135]

The legislative record of 1836 was creditable to the government, nor was
the action of the upper house in amending certain of their bills so
purely mischievous as it has been described. For instance, a strange
clause had found its way into the newspaper stamp bill, requiring all
the proprietors of newspapers, however numerous, to be registered at the
stamp office. This clause was struck out in the house of lords, at the
instance of Lyndhurst, though Melbourne declared it to be a vital part
of the measure, which, however, passed without it, and was the better
for the loss of it. But the same cannot be said of Lyndhurst's conduct
at the "open conference" between the two houses on a supplementary bill
for remedying defects in the operation of the municipal corporations
act. There no question of principle was involved, and the only motive
for resisting every attempt to improve the new machinery already
established by l