Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/443

Rh ENGLAND.] NEWSPAPERS 413 The development of the modern newspaper is clue to a union of causes that may well be termed marvellous. A machine that from a web of paper 3 or 4 miles long can, in one hour, print, fold, cut, and deliver 24,000 or 25,000 perfected broadsheets is after all not so great a marvel as is the organizing skill which centralizes in a London office telegraphic communications from every important town in Europe, Asia, America, and Australia, and which then (whilst re-transmitting thither the news of London) dis tributes those communications directly or indirectly to thousands of recipients simultaneously, by day and by night, throughout all Britain. And but for unusual mental gifts, conjoined with high culture and with great &quot; staying-power,&quot; in the editorial rooms, all these marvels of ingenuity which now combine to develop public opinion on great public interests, and to guide it would be nothing better than a vast mechanism for making money out of man s natural aptitude to spend his time either in telling or in hearing some new thing. Julius Reuter s enterprise grew immediately out of the thoughts of an observant Prussian Government-messenger on the extraordinary excitement of this natural aptitude which he witnessed as caused by the revolutionary move ments of 1848. In 1849 he established a news-trans mitting agency in Paris, with all the appliances that were then available. Between Brussels and Aix-la-Chapelle he formed a pigeon-service, connecting it with Paris and with Berlin by telegraph. As the wires extended, he quickly followed them with agency-offices in many parts of the Continent. When he came to London, his progress was for a moment held in check. The editor of The Times listened very courteously to his proposals, but (on that first occasion) ended their interview by saying, &quot; We gene rally find that we can do our own business better than anybody else can.&quot; He went to the office of The Homing Advertiser, which had then the next largest circulation to that of The Times, and had better siiccess. 1 He entered into an agreement with that and afterwards with other London journals, including The Times, and also with many commercial corporations and firms. The newspapers, of course, continued to employ their own wires and to extend them, but they found great advantage in the use of Reuter s telegrams as supplemen tary. His enterprise grew apace. Within a few years it is said to have yielded the founder some 25,000 a year. In 1865 it was transferred to a limited company. In 1868 the London Press Association was formed. It contracted with Reuter s company to supply their telegrams exclusively throughout the United Kingdom, London only excepted. The cost yearly to those newspaper proprietors who are members of the association is 294, to non- members 323. In connexion with the intelligence depart ment of the post-office, the Press Association supplies parliamentary, juridical, and market news. The office of the Association is kept open during twenty-one hours of the twenty-four. The enterprise was organized by Mr John Lovell, now editor of The Liverpool Mercury. London has now at least nine other press and telegraphic associa tions ; Paris probably has almost as many. THE NEWSPAPERS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. English The first English journalists were the writers of &quot; news- news- letters,&quot; originally the dependants of great men, each em ployed in keeping his own master or patron well-informed, during his absence from court, of all that transpired there. The duty grew at length into a calling. The writer had his periodical subscription list, and instead of writing a 1 Mr James Grant has put on record, word for word, the curious conversation that occurred (Hist, of Newspaper Press, ii. 323 sq.). single letter wrote as many letters as he had customers. Then one more enterprising than the rest established an &quot;intelligence office,&quot; with a staff of clerks, such as Ben Jonson s Cymbal depicts from the life in The Staple of Neivs, acted in 1625 : &quot;This is the outer room where my clerks sit, And keep their sides, the register in the midst ; The examiner, he sits private there within; And here I have my several rolls and files Of news by the alphabet, and all put up Under their heads.&quot; Of the earlier news-letters good examples may be seen Early news in Sir John Fenn s collection of Paston Letters, and in letters. Arthur Collins s Letters and Memorials of State (better known, perhaps, as the Sydney Papers). Of those of later date specimens will be found in Knowler s Letters and Despatches of Stra/ord, and in other well-known books. Still later examples, and such as have a very high historical interest, may be seen in abundance amongst the papers collected by the historian Thomas Carte, now pre served in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Of these, several series were addressed to the first duke of Ormond, partly by correspondents in England and Ireland, partly by correspondents in Paris ; others were addressed to suc cessive earls of Huntingdon ; others, again, to various members of the family of Wharton. And like valuable collections are to be seen in the library of the British Museum, and in the English Public Record Office. In Edinburgh, the Advocates Library possesses a series of the 16th century, written by Richard Scudamore to Sir Philip Hoby during his embassy to Vienna. The MS. news-letters some of them proceeding from writers of marked ability who had access to official infor mation, and were able to write with greater freedom and independence of tone than the compilers of the printed news held their ground, although within narrowing limits, until nearly the middle of the last century. Some of the collections of these &quot; gazettes a-la-main &quot; have for the historian a greater value than any existing printed series of a contemporary gazetteer. By the pains and critical acumen of the late Mr Thomas Watts, of the British Museum, the obstinate fiction that &quot; for the first printed newspaper mankind are indebted to the wisdom of Elizabeth and the prudence of Burghley &quot; is at length gradually disappearing from current literature, although the old story of the English Mercurie of the Armada year has been many times repeated (even in the latest works on English journalism) since the first publica tion of his able pamphlet. 2 In a later publication, 3 the same learned bibliographer traced, not less conclusively, this curious fabrication to its author, the second earl of Hardwicke. Although no genuine newspaper of the 1 6 th century can News pan be produced, English pamphlets, as well as French, Italian, phlets. and German, occur with such titles as Newes from Spaine, and the like. In the early years of the 17th century they became very numerous. In 1614 we find Burton (the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy) pointing a sarcasm against the non-reading habits of &quot;the major part&quot; by adding, &quot; if they read a book at any time. . . tis an English chronicle, Sir Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c., a play-book, or some pamphlet of news.&quot; The most eminent purveyors of reading of this sort were Nathaniel Butter, Nicholas Bourne, and Thomas Archer; and by them was issued, in May 1622, the first authentic English First peri periodical newspaper now known to exist. When these news-pamphlets began to be periodicals their periods were 2 Letter to Antonio Panizzi, on the Reputed Earliest Printed Xcu-s- paper, &quot; The English Mercurie&quot; of 1588, London, 1839, 8vo. 3 &quot;Authorship of the fabricated Earliest English Newspaper, &quot; Gent. Mag., n.s., xxxiii. 485-491, 1850.