Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/34

The Story of the House of Cassell

a larger leisure and was better able to indulge his pet tastes. Thenceforward he spent much of his time in the pleasant work of editing and publishing periodical papers. His first venture grew out of the temperance crusade—a little magazine called the Teetotal Times. It was printed for Cassell by William Cathrell at 335 Strand, and begun in 1846. The next year the Teetotal Essayist appeared to supplement and fortify the Times. They swallowed each other up in 1849, and subsequently made one appearance a month for some years as the Teetotal Times and Essayist.

But before this amalgamation took place, Cassell had boldly stepped into another and a wider field. In July, 1848, he made his first attempt towards a popular weekly newspaper, and brought out the Standard of Freedom. The paper was " of the utmost dimensions allowed by law, and larger than the double sheet of the Times; price 4½d. per number, or 4s. 9d. per quarter paid in advance." His statement of its principles and policy throws a bright light on Cassell 's philosophy and upon his conception of an ideal society.

"Every man is bound, in the Editorial judgment," said he, "to acquire what he needs by the exertions of which he is capable, and every man is entitled to possess whatever others are willing to give in return for his services as the produce of his labours. All attempts to substitute a conventional arbitrary scale of remuneration for industry of head or hand in lieu of the natural market price are unjust to the individual as depriving him of the property God and nature have decreed his, and to society as diminishing the inducements which God and nature hold out to every man to exert his faculties to the uttermost."

To free trade in labour was added free trade in commerce. Protective duties, bounties, or restrictions on importation or exportation, bank monopolies, official sinecures and pensions, and, still worse, superfluous public offices to which salaries and illusive duties are attached, were all indefensible. Going a step farther, the Standard

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