Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/86

60 of kings nor battles, but largely of that power and of those wielding it.

From now on the history of journalism is not of its own struggles, but of the struggles of the ideas for which it stands. The thing itself is established. Henceforth it is a story of development; development in close connection with the idea of democracy, from which it sprang, to whose influence it owed its quick growth, and to which in turn it contributed as no other single factor in civilization, except Christianity, has contributed.

Politically and economically the colonies were preparing for a change. They were no longer the separate settlements in which the advent of the first printer was an historic advance, nor yet were they groping imitators of conditions at home, where the publication of a newspaper was a revolutionary breaking away from the foundations of government. In the time that a bare half-dozen papers had been established, the colonists had accomplished a complete volte face. Instead of looking to England for complete guidance, there was, as Andrew Hamilton expressed, a resentment at the continuous citation of English authority. In Hamilton's speech we find the idea put forth—for the first time, I believe—that, if the law of the mother country is wrong, the duty of the colonists is to correct it.

With such a start in so brief a time, it was but a step to a declaration of complete independence. But as a stepping-stone to such a declaration, there was necessary a feeling of nationality. While the printing press and the new institution did much to develop that feeling, the main cause was the necessity for protecting the lives of the colonists—first from the common foe on the outside, and in the final development, from the encroachments of the mother country that had failed to