Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/442

Rh 412 N E W S P A P E B S npHE authenticated history of newspapers begins in I Germany. The earliest plainly periodical collection of the &quot; news of the day,&quot; as distinguished from the isolated news-pamphlets (of which there is at least one example of as early a date as 1498, and in Germany alone about eight hundred examples, all dating before 1610, still to be found in existing libraries), is the Frankfurter Journal, a weekly publication started by Egenolph Emmel in 1615. Antwerp follows, with its Nieuwe Tijdinghen of 1616. Six years later came the establishment in London, by Nathaniel Butter and his partners, of a like paper, under the title of The Weekly News. All of these were the enter prises of &quot; stationers,&quot; undertaken in the ordinary way of their trade, and hawked about the streets by itinerating &quot;mercuries.&quot; The foundation in Paris, in 1631, of a journal which eventually attained fame as the Gazette de France, and which still exists, had a very different origin and different aims. The scheme of The&quot;ophraste Renaudot, a busy projector, unconnected with trade, who in certain points of his character and talent may be described as a born publicist, it appeared under the patronage of Richelieu, in the shape and with the limitations which it pleased the chief statesman of the day to mark out for it. The history of the &quot; leading article,&quot; as a great factor in the shaping of public opinion, begins with Swift, Defoe, Bolingbroke, and Pulteney, in the many newspapers, from The Review and The Examiner to The Craftsman, by which was waged the keen political strife of the years 1704-40. There is no counterpart to it in France until the Revolution of 1789, nor in Germany until 1796 or 1798. It was a Frenchman who wrote &quot; Suffer yourself to be blamed, im prisoned, condemned; suffer yourself even to be hanged; but publish your opinions. It is not a right; it is a duty.&quot; It was in England that the course so pithily de scribed was actually taken, in the face of fine, imprisonment, and pillory, at a time when in France the public had to depend upon foreign journals illicitly circulated, when its own chief writers resorted to clandestine presses, to paltry disguises, and to very poor subterfuges to escape the responsibilities of avowed authorship, and when in Ger many there was no political publicity worthy to be named. When the Mercure de France, after a long period of mediocrity, came into the hands of men of large intellectual faculty, they had the most cogent reasons for exerting their powers upon topics of literature rather than upon themes of politics. True political journalism dates only from the Revolution, and it then had a very brief exist ence. It occupied a cluster of writers, some of whom have left an enduring mark upon French literature. A term of high aspiration was followed quickly by a much longer term of frantic licence and of literary infamy. Then came the long rule of a despotic censorship ; and cycles of licence followed by cycles of repression have revolved, with varying periodicity, from that day to this. Germany has to some extent its parallelisms ; but German journal ism, if it never soared so high, never sank so low. Journalism in Germany has made steady advances onward ; and in one grand feature that of far-gathered informa tion from foreign countries, not merely of incidents, but of the growth of opinion and the state of social life the leading newspapers of Germany keep much ahead of their best French contemporaries. In France, too often, the journals that gain the largest circulation are precisely those of most conspicuous frivolity. Sometimes they are much worse than frivolous. In 1871 newspapers issued from Parisian presses which were as base and as brutal as those of 1794. In 1870 the democratic Government at Bordeaux issued against journals of high aims and of unspotted integrity, but opposed to its pretensions, edicts as arbitrary as the worst acts in that kind of Napoleon I., and unparalleled in the whole course of the government of Napoleon III. In all the other countries of Europe political journalism, in any characteristic sense, is a thing of the present century, somewhat earlier in the century in northern Europe, somewhat later in southern. The Ordinarie Post-Tidendc of Stockholm dates indeed from 1643, but until very recent times it was a mere news-letter. Denmark had no sort of journal worth remark until the foundation, in 1749, of the Berlingske Tidende, and that too attained to no political rank. The Gazette of St Petersburg the patriarch of Russian newspapers dates from 16th December 1702, is a Govern ment organ, and nearly synchronizes with the first success ful attempt at a newspaper in the British colonies in America. But the Boston Gazette was, in its degree, a better journal in the last century than the Wiedomosti now. Journalism in Italy begins with the Diario di Roma in 1716, but in politics the press remained a nullity for all practical purposes until nearly the middle of the present century, when the newspapers of Sardinia, at the impulse of Cavour, began to foreshadow the approach of the influential Italian press of the present day. In Spain no rudiments of a newspaper press can be found until the last century. As late as in 1826 an inquisitive American traveller records his inability to lay his hands, during his Peninsular, tour, upon more than two Spanish __ news papers. It may be useful to bring these chronological notes of the origin of journalism into view, at a. glance, conjointly with the dates of some of the chief existing journals of Europe, by tabulating them thus : Year. Place. Name. Remarks. 1615 Frankfort-on- Main Frankfurter Journal Existing in 1883. 1616 1622 Antwerp Nieuwe Tijdinghen 1631 1C43 16GO 1C65 Paris (1) Stockholm Edinbuiph (1) Gazette [de Fiance] Post [och lnrikes] fidunde Mercurius Caletionius Existing in 1883. Do. &quot; do. Ten numbers only published. Existing in 1883. 1672 1690 1695 Paris (2) Worcester [Temporarily at Oxford] Mercure [de France] Burrow s Worcester Jour. The Postboy.... Continued till 1853 Existing in 1883. First London daily papei 1699 1702 1702 1704 Edinburgh (2) London (4) St Petersburg London (5) Edinburgh Gazette Daily Courant St Petersburg Wiedomosti Defoe s Review of the Affairs of State Existing in 18.83. First successful London daily. Existing in 1883. Continued till June 1713. 1704 1705 1711 Boston, Mas sachusetts... Edinburgh (3). Dublin (1). .. Boston News-Letter Edinburgh Courant Dublin Gazette Continued until loss of Bos ton by the British. Existing in 1S83. Do. do. 1712 1716 1726? 1763 1772 Hamburg Home Madrid (1) Dublin (2) Hamburg Correspondent.. Diario di Roma Gaceta de Madrid Freeman s Journal Do. do. Continued f ornearly 90 years. Continued until about 1850. Earliest Irish daily paper. Existing in 1883. 1782 Glasgow Herald Do. do 1785 The Times Known until 1788 as Uni 1789 1789 1792 Paris (3) Paris (4) London (8) Moniteur Universe! Journal des Ddbats The Observer versal Daily Register Existing in 1883. Do. do. Do. do. (weekly). 1792 1798 1817 London (9) Leipsic Edinburgh (4) The Courier , AUgemeine Zcittmg Long the leading London newspaper. Existing in 1883. Daily from 1855. 1827 1842 1846 London (10)... Madrid (2) The Standard Heraldo Morning paper from 1857. Chief Spanish journal for many years. Existing in 1883. 1847 1847 Turin 11 Risorgimento Edited by Cavour. Existing in 1883. 1847 1849 1855 Glasgow (2) ... lierlin London (12)... North British Daily Mail.. Volkszeitung The Daily Telegraph Do. do. Reputed to have the largest circulation in Germany. Existing in 1883.