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 modern sense. We are told about this time that William Dodd, the popular preacher who was hanged for forgery in 1777, had 'descended so low as to become editor of a newspaper'—a degrading position which would account for a clergyman reaching the gallows. Still the genuine editor has not as yet become a distinct personage. Between this time and the revolutionary period several of the papers were started which were to be the main organs of public opinion down to our own day. On November 13th, 1776, Horace Walpole looked out of his window and saw a body of men marching down Piccadilly—volunteers, he guessed, for service in the American troubles. He was more astonished than we should be on discovering that they were simply 'sandwich men,' or at least men with papers in their caps or bills in their hands, advertising a newspaper. Henry Bate Dudley, the 'fighting parson,' who lived to become a baronet and a canon of Ely, was at this time chaplain to Lord Lyttelton and employing his leisure in writing plays, fighting duels, or carrying on The Morning Post. It had begun four years earlier, and Bate was now appealing for