The editor called the contributors together, and told them that there was nothing to pay them with--nothing in fact remained but the office furniture. 'Take that, my boys,' said he, 'and divide it among you.' This was accordingly done, and one man marched off with a table, another with a chair, a third with a desk, a fourth with an inkstand, and so on! When the stamp duty was abolished as a tax, it remained optional with the publishers to have any number of their issue stamped they pleased for transmission through the poet. The number of stamps thus issued in the first six months after the repeal was 21,646,688, whereas the number in the corresponding period of 1854, when the tax still existed, was 55,732,499. The number of stamps issued in the year 1854 to the principal newspapers was as follows: _Times_, 15,975,739; _Morning Advertiser_, 2,392,780; _Daily News_, 1,485,099; _Morning Herald_, 1,158,000; _Morning Chronicle_, 873,500; _The Globe_, 850,000; and _The Morning Post_, 832,500. Of the weeklies, _The Illustrated London News_ was then the second, 5,627,866; _The News of the World_, a Liberal, unillustrated journal, started in 1843, standing first, with 5,673,525 (the price of this paper is now reduced to twopence, and it is an admirably conducted journal); Lloyd's _Weekly Newspaper_, 5,572,897; _The Weekly Times_, price one penny, 3,902,169; Reynolds's _Weekly Newspaper_, also a penny journal, which is best described by the epithet 'rabid,' 2,496,256; _The Weekly Dispatch_, price fivepence, an advanced Liberal journal, which is emphatically the workingman's newspaper, and originally started in 1801, 1,982,933; Bell's _Life in London_, 1,161,000. Of the provincial newspapers, _The Manchester Guardian_ heads the list with 1,066,575, followed by _The Liverpool Mercury_, with 912,000, and _The Leeds Mercury_, with 735,000. Foremost among the Scotch newspapers stands _The North British Advertiser_, with 808,002; and the Irish paper with the largest circulation was _The Telegraph_, with 959,000. Of the London literary papers the chief was _The Examiner_, with 248,560. With one or two exceptions, the circulation of these journals may be considered to have increased enormously. There are now published in Great Britain 1,350 different newspapers, of which 240 are London papers, 20 being dailies, 776 English provincial papers, 143 Irish, 140 Scotch, 37 Welsh, and 14 are published in the British Isles. Many of these enjoy but a limited circulation, as naturally follows from the narrow limit they assign to themselves. Thus several trades have their special organs, as for instance, the grocers, the bakers, and even the hairdressers among others.