uffolk life, are quite unequal to that--once a week. The plan is to
have some sheets already printed in London, at some great establishment,
whence perhaps a hundred little towns are supplied, and then the local
news and advertisements are added on, and Little Pedlington has its
_Observer_, and Eatanswill its _Gazette_. When I was a boy, such a thing
was out of the question, as to each paper a fourpenny-halfpenny stamp was
attached. As the stamps had to be paid for in advance, and as, besides,
there was an eighteen-penny duty on every advertisement, it was not quite
such an easy matter to run a paper then as it has since become. I fancy
the old-established journals suffered much by the change, which
completely revolutionized the newspaper trade; at any rate, so far as the
country was concerned. In this connection, let me add that it was to an
Ipswich journalist we owe the establishment of penny readings on anything
like a large and successful scale. They were originated by Mr. Sully, at
that time the proprietor and editor of the _Ipswich __Express_, a paper
intended to steer between the ferocious Toryism of the _Ipswich Journal_,
and the equally ferocious Radicalism of the _Suffolk Chronicle_. As was
to be expected, the attempt did not succeed. As in love and in war, so
in politics and theology, moderation is a thing hateful to gods and men.
The electioneering annals of Ipswich can testify to that fact. I have a
dim recollection of an election petition which ended in Sir Fitzroy
Kelly's admitting that he had stated what was not true, but he did it as
a lawyer, not as a gentleman, and in sending one of the finest old
gentlemen I ever knew to gaol, because he would not tell what he knew of
the matter. There was not much half-and-half work in the Ipswich
politics of my young days.

When people fight fiercely in politics, it is natural to expect an equal
earnestness in religious matters. It was so emphatically with respect to
the Ipswich of the past. 'The Reformed religion, after those fiery days
of persecution,' writes John Quick, 'was now revived, and flourished
again in the country, under the auspicious name of our English Deborah,
Queen Elizabeth; and Ipswich, the capital town of Suffolk, was not more
famous for its spacious sheds, large and beautiful buildings, rich and
great trade, and honourable merchants, both at home and abroad, than it
was for its learned and godly ministers and its religious intolerants