Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/99

Rh This was the caucus which was to play such an important part in history, and which advertised in the Boston Evening Post of May 14, 1764, requesting, of the freeholders, power to act against the obnoxious trade regulations.

Even to this time, there was no hostility to the monarchical principle, nor any desire to set up an independent nation; still, while the newspapers that were being printed did not directly encourage anti-monarchical feeling, the mere fact of their being printed more or less against the wishes of the Governor encouraged the idea of a nation, which was slowly germinating.

The national feeling received encouragement—not from colonists alone, who were in frequent clashes with their governors, or from the journalists who were obliged to suffer from the oppression and narrowness of the latter — but from outside sources.

Daniel Coxe had proposed, in 1722, that there should be a "legal, regular and firm establishment," uniting all the colonies, but still loyal to Great Britain, for even up to 1749 the belief of the majority of the colonists was that "our constitution is English, which is another name for free and happy, and is without doubt the perfectest model of civil government that has ever been in the whole world."

Journalism began to give the colonists a sense of their own individuality, "not merely by passionate appeals, but by virtue of its prime office of collection and circulating intelligence by disseminating the facts that enabled the public opinion of one community or political center to act on other communities." To a great extent, the importance of this new agency in giving strength and force