If you take up a bundle of old newspapers you will find that every one of them has got a red stamp upon it. This was the tax upon newspapers. It was a penny a copy in 1760; in 1815 it was actually fourpence a copy; in 1836 it was reduced to a penny; in 1855 it was totally abolished. There was, in addition, a tax on paper, which was repealed in 1861. It is wonderful how newspapers continued to exist at all with an impost so crushing: it is still more wonderful how working-men’s papers could hold their own. In fact, their circulation was very small; they were weekly, not daily; they were taken in at taverns where the men could see them, not by the men themselves. It is not one of the least reforms of this reign which has placed in the hands of everybody a cheap newspaper, full, large, with copious intelligence, and educated commentary. [Illustration: QUEEN’S STATE COACH] The outcome of the national discontent was the organisation called Chartism. Look at the working-man of the present day. He has received an education sound and thorough, up to a certain point, at the Board School; he has had the chance of continuing his education after leaving school at evening classes. He has also had the chance of joining a Polytechnic, which is a kind of technical University, teaching everything; and a kind of public school, in which athletics of all kinds are practised and encouraged. There are a great many thousand lads in the Polytechnics, and they are as fine young fellows as one can desire to see. They are skilled in technical work; they are taught by the best men in their own subjects; they do not drink or frequent taverns; they do not loaf about the streets. I do not pretend that these lads are representatives of their own class; I admit that they are the flower of the flock. The working-man has now free libraries and reading-rooms, where he can sit and read or borrow books to take away. There is no longer any revolutionary talk among those who converse; there is Socialism, of course, but that is very different. It would be difficult indeed for a young man to escape some of the Socialist ideas which are in the air, and are producing unexpected and far-reaching results. Here, however, except among a few foreigners, we have no Anarchists. The wages are better, the hours are shorter; there is a Saturday half-holiday; there are four Bank holidays in the year, besides Christmas Day and Good Friday. Everything is cheaper--food and clothes of all kinds. Lectures, concerts, dramatic recitals, debates, dances, are got up everywhere by the working-men for themselves.