In 1819, after the Peterloo Massacre, Parliament passed a series of statutes known as 'The Six Acts' in order to clarify the law on public meetings and prevent further popular disturbances, which ministers at the time considered presaged revolution. They prohibited meetings for military training, authorised the issue of warrants for the seizure of arms, limited meetings to draw up public petitions to not more than 50 people living in the parish where the meeting was to be held, allowed magistrates to seize seditious and blasphemous literature, dealt with procedure for bringing cases to trial, and imposed stamp duty on certain periodical pamphlets.

These Acts included a measure requiring publishers to deposit a bond (£300 in London; £200 elsewhere) with the government as surety against any future conviction for seditious or blasphemous libel. Another measure extended the operation of the Stamp Act to all periodicals that appeared more frequently than every 26 days, sold for less than 6d. and that contained “...any Public News, Intelligence or Occurrences, or any Remarks or Observations thereon, or upon any Matters in Church and State”.

Many radical publishers refused to pay the newspaper tax which they called: 'taxes on knowledge". In place of what would have been an official stamp showing that the necessary tax had been paid 'The Poor Man's Guardian' used its own logo (you can find an adapted version of it beneath the Yahoo advertising banner at the top right of this page) and along with other papers became known as 'the unstamped press'. In defiance of the law, they continued to publish papers priced at one penny to bring them within the purchasing power of working people. This defiance was known as 'the war of the unstamped'. Hundreds of publishers and vendors were imprisoned and in 1836, the tax was reduced from four pence to one penny. In 1855 the final penny was removed.

It felt only natural that with 21st century technology and everywo/man a blogger with an opinion, there should be an unstamped blog. And this is trying to be it, if only in name.

Sources:
Working Class Movement Library
A web of English History
History Bookshop