Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/47

Rh ing to be more or less of a malignant fever, not unlike the influenza with which this generation is acquainted—is growing into a common thing, and the report states that three hundred and twenty people had died by the last visitation of smallpox.

Two fires are reported, and with much feeling it is noted that in one of them a PRINTING PRESS (the capitals are Harris') had been destroyed.

It was in his account of the battle with the French and Indians that Harris printed news which was to be his undoing. Read even to-day his report of the expedition against the French and the use of the friendly Maquas by Governor Winthrop is not bad reporting when one considers that reporting had yet to be developed or even inaugurated. It was a report, however, that contained matters that the authorities were not desirous of having printed, for it told how the Indian allies of the colonists had treated the French prisoners with great barbarity. Harris protested against trying to subdue Canada with the assistance of "these miserable savages."

Stout old Benjamin Harris, fine old Whig—even in the wilderness he was on the side of humanity and progress, to the very great displeasure of the authorities. Two days after publication. Judge Sewall noted in his diary that the paper had appeared and that it had given "much distaste "because it was not licensed and because of the "passages referring to the French King and the Maquas." Four days later the legislative authorities took the matter up officially, sagely ruling that it contained "reflections of a very high nature," and strictly forbade "anything in print without license first obtained from those appointed by the government to grant the same."

We learn from Sewall, under date of the following