Postage dues for Newspapers - general introduction

What are they? Just a tax. Nothing more, nothing less .A tax on newspapers and on magazines especially the ones of political content. Coming from out of State and, later on, also from the interior, to discourage the diffusion of not welcomed ideas (and, as we will see, Lombardy-Venetia was not the only State to follow a similar path).
To that aim these "revenue stamps" were printed that were placed on newspapers and paid by the purchaser at the arrival.
Wee find then in the following types:

2 Kr. green
Since 1853
1 Kr. black
Since 1858
2 Kr. vermilion
Since 1859
4 Kr. red
Since 1858

They were all printed in Vienna in the State Printing House in the usual big sheets of 400 pieces formed by two horizontal couples of 100 stamps printed in mirroring way and separated by an inter-spacing of about 60 mm. The paper was, as usually, machine made.
To a strict logic, we cannot define them postage stamps (in fact they are not!) but they are historically considered as such and therefore collected and classified by all the catalogues. It is not so rare to find them side by side in a very nice group with other postage stamps from other States (with relative leaving cancellation) that were applied to pay the relative postage fee. I give here the example of a Sardinian newspaper (in fact at that date it would be correct to say Italian...) that explains the concept better than 100 words...

Newspaper
Fig. 1: detail of the newspaper "L'Armonia" of 08/27/1862
Carrying both the fee for the shipment of the newspaper (5c. of the 4th of Sardinia)
as well as the Veneto tax paid with 2Kr. Vermilion.
By the way the newspaper white + the Sardinia green + the Veneto red form an almost disrespectful Italian tricolor
Who knows if at that time they noticed the fact!!!! (Just a nice political tax!)

For further details on these revenue stamps. I invite you to go to the single cards of each piece with a clarification:I have created separated cards for these values even if several catalogues are used to quote together the values of 1, 2 (red) and 4 Kreuzer, almost as they were a single issue. Instead just because their appearing was due to different reasons, I preferred to keep them separated.