£4 4 0 £26 18 6 2,000 Stamps at 2d., deducting discount 16 0 0 20 4 0 ------- Profits £6 14 6 =======
‘This is the whole Profit on the sale of two thousand Newspapers, out of which is to be deducted the charges of printing a Newspaper (which, on account of the Rise in Printers’ Wages last year, is £100 a year more than it ever was before), the charges of Rent, Taxes, Coals, Candles (which are very high in every Printing-office), Clerks, general Superintendance, Editing, Parliamentary and Law Reports, and, above all, the Expenses of FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE, which, under the present difficulties of obtaining it, and the different Channels which must be employed to secure a regular and uninterrupted Communication, is immense. If this Paper is in high estimation, surely the Proprietors ought to receive the advantage of their success, and not the Revenue, which already monopolises such an immense income from this property, no less than to the amount of £14,000 sterling during last year only. We trust that these reasons will have sufficient weight with the Public to excuse us when we announce, though with very great regret, that on Monday next the price of this Paper will be _Fourpence Halfpenny_.’
Occasionally, the proprietor fell foul of his neighbours; vide the _Times_, November 16, 1795:
‘All the abuse so lavishly bestowed on this Paper by other Public Prints, seems as if designed to betray, that in proportion as our sale is _good_, it is _bad_ TIMES with them.’
In the early part of 1797, Pitt proposed, among other methods of augmenting the revenue, an additional stamp of three halfpence on every newspaper. The _Times_, April 28, 1797, groaned over it thus:
‘The present daily sale of the TIMES is known to be between four and five thousand Newspapers. For the sake of perspicuity, we will make our calculation on four thousand only, and it will hold good in proportion to every other Paper.
‘The Newsvendors are now allowed by the Proprietors of every Newspaper two sheets in every quire, viz., twenty-six for every twenty-four Papers sold. The stamp duty on two Papers in every quire in four thousand Papers daily at the old Duty of 2d., amounts to £780 a year, besides the value of the Paper. An additional Duty of 1½d. will occasion a further loss of £585 in this one instance only, for which there is not, according to Mr. PITT’S view of the subject, to be the smallest remuneration to the Proprietors. Is it possible that anything can be so unjust? If the Minister persists in his proposed plan, it will be impossible for Newspapers to be sold at a lower rate than sixpence halfpenny per Paper.’