Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/34

8 phlets were printed in a comparatively few years, it is seen that they were no mean workers.

The Licensing Act, which had been passed shortly after the accession of Charles II, expired in 1679, and for a short while several newspapers—the Protestant Intelligence, the True News, etc.—were published by the Whigs, but the twelve justices, under Chief Justice Scroggs, declared that it was a criminal act at common law to publish any political news without the King's license.

As this allowance was given only to the London Gazette and to L'Estrange's new paper. The Observator, life for the journalists was just as unbearable as when the license act was in force. James II, however, was not satisfied with this common-law protection, which was ample enough, as the printers and writers, who had served in jail under it, could testify, and in 1685, immediately after his accession, censorship of the press was revived.

Those were sad years for our Protestant Pilgrims on the edge of the wilderness in New England, but not dull ones. There was no need of any license law to keep them from printing seditious pamphlets or newspapers, for Indian wars, smallpox and the severe New England winters kept them engrossed without the aid of political discussion, while their material troubles divided their attention with the struggle against heresy and sin. Though they were all of the same sect and religious belief, it was no easy matter to maintain harmony in matters spiritual.

Persecutions in the mother country had helped largely to increase emigration to the colonies, although the newcomers soon found that on this side of the ocean government was far from humane,—Radcliffe's ears had been