December 12, 1867
NEWSPAPER TAX
The Postal Bill has passed the Senate and is being walked down the hall to the Commons for approval by that chamber.
The Bill contains a controversial “newspaper tax” that would see postage due on newspapers sent to subscribers through the mails.
The measure, which faced opposition in the Senate but was kept in as Postmaster General Hon. Alexander Campbell refused to allow the Bill to be referred back to committee for amendment, will the government collect an additional $130,000 per year.
The newspapers are up in arms, protesting that the tax is but a recent invention from the former Province of Canada and entirely unknown in the Maritimes.
The Ottawa Times, in an open letter to members of Parliament, warns that if the newspaper tax remains the citizens of the Maritimes will remember this as the first act of Confederation — the imposition of a new tax by the central government to the tune of $40,000 from those two provinces alone.
The Times writes that matters covered by the press are public subjects about which there is a public interest.
In free government— a government in harmony with public opinion—the Press is, in reality, one of the most effective agencies of the Government. It is the Press mainly which brings home to the subject the required knowledge of the law; and of the reasons for changes or alterations in the law; it is the Press which prepares the public mind for a ready obedience to new and untried laws; which supplies in our times the moral sanction, without which our laws could only depend on brute force for their execution.
By maintaining this tax, the Times suggests, the members of the Government harm their own self-interest by throttling the free dissemination of newspapers.
EXECUTION OF ETHAN ALLAN
Ethan Allan, convicted of murder, was executed yesterday shortly after 11 o’clock in the morning. According to the report in the Globe, the weather was cold and clear and some fifteen hundred people witnessed Allan’s death. The Globe writes of the scene:
(Allan) walked to the gallows with a firm step, and refused to have the black cap drawn over his head. The drop which was about five feet broke his neck, and he died, as he had often previously asserted he would, with a smile on his face.