The Rhode Island Republican

From the Village Record.

NEWSPAPERS.

Some will pretend to say, perhaps, that the times are hard, that they can't afford to take a newspaper. Now this the nine-tenths who make the excuse will be without foundation. Can't afford it? Why what a trifle it is. A small glass of gin, or a pint of beer, which as Corporal Trim said, is "gone in a moment," will cost more by 60 per cent than a newspaper, which after being read by the father of the family, will impart pleasure and instruction to the wife, the children, the servants; and then remember it is worth half its cost as wrapping paper, if it is not thought best to preserve it.

A newspaper is a school in a family of children WORTH TEN DOLLARS A YEAR.

Even the most barren paper brings something new. Children read or hear the contents, become intelligent of the affairs of the world, and acquire a store of useful knowledge of more importance to them in life than a present of fifty acres of land. Parents are not aware of the vast--we say with confidence, the vast importance of a newspaper in a family of children. We have made the remark before and we repeat it--that take two families of children equally smart, and both going to the same school; let one of them have the free use of the newspaper and let the other be deprived the use of it, and, it would excite astonishment to mark the difference between them. Full one half, and an important half of education, as it respects the business of the world, and the ability to rise and make one's self respectable in it--is derived from newspapers. What parent would not wish his children to be respectable?-Who would be willing to have his neighbour's children more intelligent than his own?-- And yet how trifling is the sum a paper costs! It is even in these hard times absolutely contemptible in amount, and no man ever felt it, except in its beneficial consequences, who paid the subscription regularly once a year.

Truly we should suppose that if a young man goes a courting, and his sweetheart finds out that he reads no newspaper, she would, if she thought much of herself, send him away, as one uninformed of his political rights --ignorant of a thousand things which every young American ought to know, and therefore unfit to be the husband of an intelligent girl.

"But the price of newspapers has not fallen as every thing else has done-let us see how the printer will get along with that." I am glad you mention it reader, it is true. But recollect that the price of newspapers was fixed thirty five years ago when every thing was as low as at this time except wheat and corn, and these from particular circumstances are below their proper value, and will certainly rise.