Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/89

Rh tracts that Europeans who settled in America would have a share in the making of the laws under which they lived. The "moral discoveries," as they were called later, of Habeas Corpus and trial by jury, of popular representation and a free press, were their inherent rights, though the last named was but now to come into their light. Against these ideas and this spirit the various governors, constituting themselves defenders of the royal prerogative, were almost continuously in clash. The reports sent by these governors tended to irritate the British ministry, resulting in instructions which further stiffened the resistance of the colonists.

It is well to remember that, despite all the love for the mother country, from the passage of the Navigation Act up to the final break there was never a time when there was not in every colony more or less feeling on the part of the colonists against some act of the royal government, feeling that led to developing the controversy between the colonists and the crown—" the natural rights of man on the one hand and the authority of artificial institutions on the other;"—and it was this exercise of absolute power on the part of the once beloved mother country that eventually brought the colonies together in a spirit of opposition.

This in very brief was the political condition in the colonies when the press of North America—six papers—began to play a part in the politics and development of the nation that was to be. To these six—the Boston News-Letter, the Boston Gazette, the American Weekly Mercury of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Gazette of Philadelphia, the New York Gazette, and the Maryland Gazette of Annapolis—were added the following:

South Carolina Gazette, Charleston, Jan. 8, 1732;