Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/447

Rh ENGLAND.] NEWSPAPEBS 417 Public Adver tiser. able proceedings of the House of Commons in 1771, with their fierce debates, angry resolutions, and arbitrary im prisonments, all resulting, at length, in that tacit con cession of publicity of discussion which in the main, with brief occasional exceptions, has ever since prevailed. The three metropolitan newspapers which at different periods of this reign stood pre-eminent amongst their com petitors were The Public Advertiser, The Morning Post, and The Morning Chronicle. The first-named paper owed much of its popularity to the letters of Junius. The Post and the Chronicle were mainly indebted for their success to the personal qualities of individual editors, combined, in both cases, although in very different degree, with a staff of writers endowed with exceptional literary power and marked versatility of talents. The Public Advertiser was first published in 1726, under the title London Daily Post and General Advertiser. In 1738 the first part of the title was dropped, and in 1752 General Advertiser was altered into the name which the letters of Junius made so famous. Many of these had appeared before the smallest perceptible effect was produced on the circu lation of the paper ; but when the &quot; Letter to the King &quot; came out (19th December 1769, almost a year from the beginning of the series) it caused an addition of 1750 copies to the ordinary impression. The effect of subsequent letters was variable ; but when Junius ceased to write the monthly sale of the paper had risen to 83,950. This was in December 1771. Seven years earlier the monthly sale had been but 47,515. 1 It now became so valuable a property that shares in it were sold, according to John Nichols, &quot;as regularly as those of the New Kiver Company.&quot; 2 But the fortunes of the Advertiser declined almost as rapidly as they had risen. It continued to appear until 1798, and then seems to have been amalga mated with the commercial paper called The Public Ledger (dating from 1759), which still exists as a London daily journal. Actions for libel were brought against the paper by Edmund Burke in 1784, and by William Pitt in 1785, Morning and in both suits damages were given. The Morning Chronicle was begun in 1769. William Woodfall was its printer, reporter, and editor, and continued to conduct it until 1789. James Perry succeeded him as editor, and so continued, with an interval during which the editorship was in the hands of the late Mr Sergeant Spankie, until his death in 1821. Perry s editorial functions were occasionally discharged in Newgate in consequence of repeated prosecutions for political libel. In 1819 the daily sale reached nearly 4000. It was sold in 1823 to Mr Clement, the purchase-money amounting to 42,000. Mr Clement held it for about eleven years, and then sold it to Sir John Easthope for 16,000. It was then, and until 1843, edited by John Black, who numbered amongst his staff Albany Fonblanque, Charles Dickens, and John Payne Collier. The paper continued to be distinguished by much literary ability, but not by commercial prosperity. In 1849 it became the joint property of the duke of New castle, Mr Gladstone, and some of their political friends ; and by them, in 1854, it was sold, conditionally, to Mr Serjeant Glover, under whose management it became event ually the subject of a memorable public scandal in the law courts of France. At length the affairs of the Chronicle were wound up in the Bankruptcy Court of London, after an existence of more than ninety years. Mowing The Morning Post dates from 1772. For some years it ost - was in the hands of Henry Bate (afterwards known as Sir Henry Bate Dudley), and it attained some degree of temporary popularity, though of no very enviable sort. In I m* xl ** copyright, with house and printing Chron icle. 1795 the entire These are the figures of Mr W. S. Woodfall, the editor. Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. materials, was sold for 600 to Peter and Daniel Stuart, who quickly raised the position of the Post by enlisting Mackintosh and Coleridge in its service, and also by giving unremitting attention to advertisements and to the copious supply of incidental news and amusing paragraphs. There has been much controversy about the share which Coleridge had in elevating the Post from obscurity to eminence. That he greatly promoted this result there can be no doubt. His famous &quot; Character of Pitt,&quot; published in 1800, was especially successful, and created a demand for the particular number in which it appeared that lasted for weeks, a thing almost without precedent. Coleridge wrote for this paper from 1795 until 1802, and during that period its circulation in ordinary rose from 350 copies, on the average, to 4500. Whatever the amount of rhetorical hyperbole in Fox s saying, recorded as spoken in the House of Commons, &quot; Mr Coleridge s essays in The Morning Post led to the rupture of the treaty of Amiens,&quot; it is none the less a striking testimony, not only to Coleridge s powers as a publicist, but to the position which the newspaper press had won, in spite of innumerable obstacles, eighty years ago. The list of his fellow-workers in the Post is a most brilliant and varied one. Besides Mackintosh, Southey, and Arthur Young, it included a galaxy of poets. Many of the lyrics of Moore, many of the social verses of Mackworth Praed, some of the noblest sonnets of Wordsworth, were first published in the columns of the Post. And the story of the paper, in its early days, had tragic as well as poetic episodes. In consequence of offence taken at some of its articles, the editor and pro prietor, Nicholas Byrne (who succeeded Daniel Stuart), was assaulted and murdered whilst sitting in his office. In later days, but long prior to those of the submarine cable, the Post for a time eclipsed most of its rivals by means of the skilful organization which Lieutenant Waghorn the pioneer of the overland route to India gave to its agencies for foreign intelligence. The Times is usually dated from the 1st of January The 1788, but was really commenced on the 18th January Times. 1785, under the title of The London Daily Universal Register, printed logographically. This &quot;word-printing&quot; process had been inrented by a printer named Henry Johnson several years before, and found a warm advocate in John Walter, who expounded its peculiarities at great length in No. 510 of his Daily Universal Register. In a later number he stated, very amusingly, his reasons for adopting that altered title which the enterprise and the ability of his successors have made world-famous. Within two years Walter had his share in the Georgian persecutions of the press, by successive sentences to three fines and to three several imprisonments in Newgate, chiefly for having stated that the prince of Wales and the dukes of York and Clarence had so misconducted them selves &quot; as to incur the just disapprobation of his Majesty.&quot; In 1803 he transferred the management (together with the joint proprietorship) of the journal to his son, by whom it was carried on with remarkable energy and consummate tact. To Lord Sidmouth s Government he gave a general but independent support. That of Pitt he opposed, espe cially on the questions of the Catamaran expedition and the malversations of Lord Melville. This opposition was resented by depriving the elder Walter of the printing for the customs department, by the withdrawal of Govern ment advertisements from The Times, and also, it is said, by the systematic detention at the outports of the foreign intelligence addressed to its editor. Walter, however, was strong and resolute enough to brave the Government. He organized a better system of news transmission than had ever before existed. He introduced steam-printing, and re peatedly improved its mechanism ; and, although machines XVII. - 53