Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/102



At practically the same time that there began to spread throughout the colonies the idea of a nation—before there was yet a well developed idea of independence—the Fourth Estate began to show conscious power. The new institution was no longer a thing of threads and patches. Although there were at the date of the Albany conference hardly more than a dozen journals in the colonies, and none at all in at least six of them, the liberty of the press was already one of the most firmly rooted ideas in the colonies. The boldness of the men who, but a few decades before had been almost outlaws, established for themselves and their calling a respect and a following that made them a primary factor in the struggle into which the colonies were about to enter. The new institution took its place among the active factors in the organization of human society, adapting itself progressively to the "wants which it itself created and fostered." The tasks to which this institution—scarcely out of infancy—addressed itself were no less tasks than the freeing of a people and the foundation of a nation.

The people were beginning to be sovereign. The press,