But on the public the great burthen of the agitation must necessarily fall. Never would the legislature have abolished the taxes on bread from the mere complaints of the corn importers; nor will the taxes on knowledge be removed till the tax-payers show something like earnestness in pressing their demands. The modern practice of statesmanship is, to have no mind of its own: it has substituted agitation for intelligence, and only responds to clamour. The public surely can have no difficulty in making a noise! Let it do battle in this cause--cry out lustily--and we shall cheerfully help it. If it wont, why, then, we rather believe the matter must be let alone. Who will dare to avow that the prize is not worthy of the contest? We do not apprehend that, by any process of cheapening, the newspaper press of Great Britain would ever sink to that pitch of foulness that seems to prevail in America. The tastes and habits of the people are against it; the law, strongly administered, is against it. The only change we would expect by the removal of the stamp-duty, and the substitution of, say, a penny postage, would be the rise of news-sheets in every town in the kingdom. And why not? Why, in these days of electric telegraph, should not every place have its own paper, unburthened with a stamp? Or why should the people of London, who do not post their newspapers, be obliged to pay for stamps which they never use? As to the advertisement-duty--an exaction of 1s. 6d. on every business announcement--its continuance is a scandal to common sense; and the removal of that alone would give an immense impetus to all branches of trade. The taxes which press on our own peculiar sheet we say nothing about, having already in many ways pointed out their effect in lessening the power of the printing-machine, and limiting the sphere of its public usefulness. DR ARNOTT ON VENTILATION AS A PREVENTIVE OF DISEASE.