Another of their productions was The Inde
In the thirty-second of Cato's Letters there are some strictures on the libellous character of
a portion of the press, with an argument why those * England under the House of Hanover, by T.
In the thirty-second of Cato's Letters there are some strictures on the libellous character of
a portion of the press, with an argument why those * England under the House of Hanover, by T.
Hunt - Fourth Estate - History of Newspapers and Liberty of Press - v1
, Vol.
VI.
, p.
1092.
188 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
to take the delinquent into custody. On the following day, (April 12,) the House adopted some strong re solutions on the subject, but there was evidently an active party opposed to any direct attempt to " cramp overmuch the liberty of the press," as Swift expresses it;* and, instead of an open and direct law imposing the desired restraints, a more insidious and more fatal plan was carried out. " Some members in the grand committee on ways and means," says the Parliamentary historian, "suggested a more effectual way for sup pressing libels, viz. , the laying a great duty on all
and pamphlets. " This was done. To a
Newspapers
long act which relates to soap, paper, parchment, linens, silks, calicoes, lotteries, and other matters, a few short clauses were added, and the press was crippled at once. These clauses put a stamp duty of a halfpenny on every printed half sheet or less, the tax rising to a penny on a whole sheet ;t and
imposed besides a duty of twelvepence on every adver-
* See Swift's Four Last Tears.
t Pamphlets and Newspapers of half a sheet or less had imposed
on them a tax of a halfpenny, and larger than half a sheet, and not exceeding one sheet a penny ; 10 Anne, c. 19, § 101 ; Pickerings Statutes, Vol. XII. ; 11 George c. 14. And halfpenny, 30 George II. , c. 19, Larger than one sheet, and not exceeding six in octavo, or twelve in quarto, or twenty in folio, pay 2s. for every
sheet in one printed copy 10 Anne, c. 19,
for other regulations. 11 George c.
papers shall not be deemed pamphlets.
every advertisement in the Newspapers was imposed, 10 Anne, c. 19,
101 Vol. XII. , Pickering's Stat. An additional duty, 30 George II. , c. 19, Penalty of £50 on persons advertising reward, with no questions asked, for the return of things stolen or lost, and on the printer, 25 George II. , c. 36; 28 George II. , c. 19; see also 29 George III. , c. 50, §11, 12.
104, 105. See those acts 13, 14, enacts what News
Duty of twelvepence on
§
; 1.
a
a
§
I. ,
I. ,
;
8, A§§§
8,
§ 1.
THE HALFPENNY STAMP. ISO
tisement. These taxes have never been repealed, and under their increased amount, and consequently in creased pressure, the Newspapers suffer at this hour. The duty on paper has affected books as well as journals, and perhaps no one change in the excise duties would
be more generally beneficial to the country than the removal of these taxes upon knowledge. *
The effect of the halfpenny stamp upon the Papers of Queen Anne's day was remarkable. Many were immediately stopped ; whilst several of the survivors were united into one publication. Amongst those that suffered under the pressure of the new tax must be included the Spectator—the price of which was
necessarily increased. This change diminished its sale, and in the following year (1713) it was discon tinued. Swift, writing to Stella, t says " Do you know that all Grub Street is ruined by the Stamp Act. "
* Mr. Ewart, M. P. , in one of his speeches on the paper duty, put the question thus :—He held it to be a most objectionable tax on various grounds. Its levy caused much vexatious interference. An account must be taken of the daily produce of the paper manufacturer. The number of sheets in every ream must be given. Every ream must be labelled. Every label must be written on. If the paper be afterwards destined for exportation, the label must be removed. All this was interference ; and it was a tax of the most intolerable kind in this age, because it was a tax upon time. To tax the time of the trader, was one of the greatest fiscal offences that could be committed. Yet, in all these little matters, the workmen must attend the steps of the
excise officer. A paper manufacturer, with whom he was acquainted, was lately showing his works to an enlightened foreigner, the owner of a paper manufactory in the Roman States. Entering a room of the establishment, they found two men at work. The Italian learnt with
He paid, he said, a direct tax of £7 10s. in his own country and his trade was free.
astonishment that these were officers of the Government. t August 7, 1712.
190 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
The influence of the pen having shown itself be yond denial, the authorities were glad to extend their favour to some of those who wielded this new source of power. Steele, who had commenced life as a soldier, laid down the sword for a quill, and having proved himself an able Journalist, and ready and versatile writer, was rewarded with the situation of Commissioner of the Stamp Office. This appointment held out the hope of something still better in perspective, and, sub sequently a seat in Parliament being within reach, he offered himself as a candidate, and was elected. This step rendered it necessary to resign his post in the Stamp Office, and the wit and author showed his con stitutional negligence in money matters by giving up a substantial reality for the honour of adding M. P. to his name. For power and for income he still wrote in the public Papers ; but having, in the Englishman,
and in the Crisis, ventured upon forbidden ground, the dignity he had made so large a sacrifice for, was snatched from him. The history and the animus of these proceedings are both shown by a few passages in the Parliamentary history. * " Notwithstanding all the care and industry used by the Court managers in the late elections, many of the professed enemies of the present ministers were chosen. But none of these were so obnoxious to the men in power as Mr. Steele, who in several public writings had arraigned the late measures with great boldness, as one who was en couraged, and sure to be supported by the whole Whig party. It was therefore agreed by the ministers (how much soever they differed in other matters) to exert
* Vol. VI. , p. 1265.
THE EXPULSION OF STEELE. 191
their endeavours to remove him from his seat in Par
liament. A petition, which was lodged against his election, happening to be the 17th of that kind, and therefore not like to come on this session, it was resolved to take a shorter way, and attack him about some of his late political writings. Mr. Hungerford, a noted Commons' lawyer, who had been expelled the House for bribery in the reign of king William, moved, on the
1 1th of March, to take into consideration that part of
the Queen's Speech which related to the suppressing seditious libels; and complained, in particular, of several scandalous papers lately published under the name of Richard Steele, Esq. , a member of that House. He was seconded by Mr. Auditor Foley, a near relation to the Lord Treasurer, who suggested, 'that unless means were found to restrain the licentiousness of the press, and to shelter those who had the honour to be in the Administration from malicious and scandalous libels ; they, who by their abilities are best qualified to serve their Queen and country, would decline public
offices and employments. '* This was supported by
* " Dear Prue, —I send this to let you know that Lord Halifax would not let me go to the House, but thought it would be better to have the first attack made in my absence. Mr. Foley was the gentle man who did me that honour ; but they could not bring it to bear so far as to obtain an order for my attending in my place, or anything else to my disadvantage, than that all pamphlets are to come on Satur day. Lord Halifax, in the House of Lords, told the ministry, that he believed, if they would recommend the Crisis to Her Majesty's perusal, she would think quite otherwise of the book than they do. I think they have begun very unhappily and ungracefully against me ; and
I doubt not but God will turn their malice to the advantage of the innocent. " Steele to his Wife, March 11, 1713-14. See his Episto lary Correspondence by Nichols, Vol. p. 318. , London, 1809.
I. ,
192 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
Sir William Wyndham, who added, ' That some of Mr. Steele's writings contained insolent injurious re flections on the Queen herself, and were dictated by the spirit of rebellion. ' The next day, Auditor Harley (the Lord Treasurer's brother) made a formal complaint to the House against certain paragraphs of the three
which had given most offence to the Court ; ' The Englishman of January 1 9, The Crisis and the last Englishman,' all said to be written by Richard Steele,Esq. ; which pamphletsbeing brought up to the table, it was ordered, that Mr. Steele should attend in his place the next morning. This brought
a great concourse of members and spectators to the House ; and Mr. Steele attending, several paragraphs, contained in the pamphlets complained of, were read ; after which, Mr. Foley, Mr. Harley, and some other members, severely animadverted upon the rancour and
seditious spirit conspicuous in those writings. Mr. James Craggs, jun. , standing up to speak in Mr. Steele's behalf, he was prevented by a confused noise of several voices calling to order ; intimating, that, according to the order of the day, Mr. Steele was to be heard him self in his place. Upon this, Mr. Steele said, ' that, being attacked on several heads without any previous notice, he hoped the House would allow him, at least a week's time to prepare for his defence. ' Auditor
Harley having excepted against so long a delay, and moved for adjourning this affair to the Monday follow ing, Mr. Steele, to ridicule his two principal prosecutors, Foley and Harley, who were known to be rigid Presby terians, though they now sided with the High Church, assumed their sanctified countenance, and owned, ' in
printed pamphlets,
Steele's defence. 193
the meekness aud contrition of his heart, that he was a very great sinner ; and hoped the member who spoke last, and who was so justly renowned for his exemplary piety and devotion, would not be accessory to the accu mulating the number of his transgressions, by obliging him to break the sabbath of the Lord by perusing such profane writings as might serve for his justification. '
This speech, spoken in a canting tone, having put the generality of the assembly in good humour, Mr. Steele carried his point ; and the further consideration of the charge against him was deferred for a week, by which time it was expected that Sir Richard Onslow, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Lechmere, and some other leading members of the Whig party who were absent, would be come to town. "
" On the 18th," continues the same authority, "the
for Mr. Steele's trial, the courtiers thought fit to get the House cleared from all strangers ;
which done, and Mr. Steele appearing in his place, Mr. Auditor Foley moved that, before they proceeded
day appointed
farther, Mr. Steele should declare whether he
any
acknowledged
upon Steele owned, ' he wrote and published the said pamphlets, and the several paragraphs there which had been complained of and read to the House, with the same cheerfulness and satisfaction with which he had abjured the Pretender. ' Then, a debate arising upon the method of proceeding, Mr. Auditor Foley proposed that Mr. Steele should withdraw ; but, after several speeches, it was carried, without dividing, that he should stay, in order to make his defence. He
desired that he might be allowed to answer to what VOL. I. N
the writings that bore his name. Here
194 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
might be urged against him, paragraph by paragraph ; but, though he was powerfully supported by Mr. Robert Walpole, General Stanhope, the Lord Finch, eldest son to the Earl of Nottingham, and the Lord Hinchin- broke, son to the Earl of Sandwich, yet Mr. Steele's accusers insisted, and it was carried ' that he should proceed to make his defence, generally, upon the charge given against him. ' Mr. Steele proceeded accordingly to make his defence, being assisted by Mr. Joseph Addison, who sat near him to prompt him upon occasion; and, for near three hours, spake to several heads, extracted out of the three pamphlets above-mentioned, (which had been given in print to all the members,) with such a temper, modesty, uncon
cern, easy and manly eloquence, as gave entire satis faction to all who were not inveterately prepossessed against him. "
In Coxe's Walpole, Steele is declared to have
spoken " with a temper, modesty, and eloquence quite unusual to him. " After this three hour's oration he withdrew.
Hereupon a warm debate ensued. Walpole asked the House "why the author was answerable in Parlia ment for the things which he wrote in his private capacity ? and, if he is punishable by law, why is he not left to the law ? By this mode of proceeding, Parliament, which used to be the scourge only of evil
ministers, is made by ministers the scourge of the subject. The ministers," he added, "are sufficiently armed with authority ; they possess the great sanction of rewards and punishments, the disposal of the privy purse, the grace of pardoning, and the power of con
ANECDOTE OF LORD FINCH. 195
demning to the pillory for seditious writings ; powers consistent with, and naturally arising from their exalted situation, and which they cannot too jealously guard from being perverted to answer indirect or criminal purposes. In former reigns, the audacity of corruption extended itself only to judges and juries ; the attempt so to degrade Parliament was, till the present period, unheard of. The liberty of the press is unrestrained ; how then shall a part of the Legislature dare to punish that as a crime which is not declared to be so by any law framed by the whole ? and why should that House be made the instrument of such a detestable purpose. "
There is an old story told of an M. P. , who de scribed a speech as "Beautiful, beautiful, sir; it ab solutely brought the tears into my ears. " " But your vote, sir, was against the motion of the speaker who so affected you. " " My vote ! Oh, yes, feelings are feelings, sir ; but my vote ! that 's quite another matter. " And so it proved in poor Steele's case. The Tory ministers admired the defence of Steele and the pleading of Walpole, but they used their majority, and Steele was expelled because he was a popular Whig writer for the public press.
There is an interesting anecdote recorded of the debate on this expulsion of an author from the House of Commons. Lord Finch, the Earl of Nottingham's son, spoke in favour of Steele out of gratitude for Steele's defence in the Guardian of Finch's sister, who had been assailed by the Examiner :—
In a paper of his in the Guardian, Steele published a spirited defence of Lady Charlotte Finch, daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, and afterwards Duchess of Somerset, who had
n2
THE FOURTH ESTATE.
been treated with rudeness and ill-manners by an anonymous writer in the Examiner, for alleged misbehaviour in church ; and won by this the heart of her brother, probably predisposed in favour of an amiable man, and, it may be, attached to him by an antecedent friendship. Be this as it may, when the question about Steele's expulsion was agitated in the House of Commons, Lord Finch stepped forward, and made attempts to speak in Steele's behalf; but being embarassed by an ingenuous modesty, and over-deference to an assembly in which he had not yet been accustomed to speak, he sat down in visible con
fusion, saying, so as to be over-heard, " It is strange I can't speak for this man, though I could readily fight for him. " His words being whispered from one to another, operated in an instant like electrical fire, and a sudden burst from all parts of the House of " Hear him ! " " Hear him ! " with ineffable marks of
Lord Finch again on his legs, who, with astonishing recollection, and the utmost propriety, spoke a speech on the occasion, in which, as it was related to this writer, in the language of the theatre, " there was not a word
which did not tell. " The eyes of the whole company were upon him ; and though he appeared to have utterly forgot what he rose up to speak, yet the generous motive, which the whole company knew he acted upon, procured him such an acclamation of voices to hear him, that he expressed himself with a mag nanimity and clearness, proceeding from the integrity of his
heart, that made his very adversaries receive him as a man they wished their friend. Such was the noble motive which first produced this nobleman's natural eloquence; the force of which was charming, and irresistible, when exerted in the protection of the oppressed. *
One of the papers for which Steele was thus per secuted is said not to have been written by him, but by a Mr. Moore, a conveyancer of the Inner Temple.
The temper which prompted this attack on a pub
lic writer in the House of Commons appears to have
* Nicholl's Epistolary Correspondence of Steele, p. 328 —332, in Pari. Hist.
encouragement, brought
AN ASSIZE CHARGE AGAINST NEWSPAPERS. 197
been followed out with a strict hand by the executive officers of the time. At the Rochester Assizes, in 1719, one of the judges, Sir Littleton Powys, having tried a clergyman and other persons for collecting money at a charity sermon, wrote afterwards a letter to Lord Chancellor Parker, on the subject of his proceedings, in the course of which he says : — " clared in all my charges in this circuit, as I did the two last terms at Westminster, that the number of base libels and seditious Papers is intolerable, and that now a quicker course will be taken about them ; for that now the Government will not be so much troubling himself to find out the authors of them, but as often as any such Papers are found on the tables of coffee-houses, or other News-houses, the master of the house shall be answerable for such Papers, and shall be prosecuted as the publisher of them, and let him find out the author, letter-writer, or printer, and take care at his peril what Papers he
takes in. "
In the same year, John Matthews, a youth aged
only nineteen, was tried at the Old Bailey (October 14, 1719) for publishing a Jacobite Paper in favour of hereditary right. * He is described as a conceited
youngster, whose vanity led him to seek notoriety by issuing opinions which the majority of the people had grown out of. He was found guilty, and hanged at Tyburn. t
At this period it was that caricatures began to
find their way into England, and, amongst other early
* The title of this production was, " Ex ore tuo te judico Vox Po- puli, Vox Dei. "
t State Trials, Vol. XV.
I
de
THE FOURTH ESTATE.
channels for circulation, we discover them making an appearance in Newspapers. Read's Weekly Journal of November 1, 17J8 (says Mr. Wright*), "gives a caricature against the Tories, engraved on wood, which is called ' an hieroglyphic,' —so little was the real nature of a caricature then appreciated. The earliest English caricature on the South Sea Company is advertised in the Post Boy of June 21, 1720, under the title of ' The Bubblers Bubbled, or the Devil take the Hindmost. ' In the advertisement of another cari cature, on the 29th of February in this year, called ' The World in Masquerade,' it is set forth as one of its great recommendations, that it was ' represented in nigh eighty figures. "
One of the later Papers produced (1719) by Steele was entitled the Plebeian, and it is painful to re member that in its pages he opposed his former friend Addison. The latter contributed a few articles to a
journal of this period, entitled The Old Whig. Two other writers now (1720-3) obtained a considerable degree of popularity by a series of contributions of democratic tone to the London and the British Jour nals, which were afterwards collected into volumes, under the title of Cato's Letters, and in that form ran through several editions. The authors of these poli tical articles were Thomas Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, and Thomas Trenchard, a man of family and fortune.
Another of their productions was The Inde
In the thirty-second of Cato's Letters there are some strictures on the libellous character of
a portion of the press, with an argument why those * England under the House of Hanover, by T. Wright. 1
pendent Whig.
CATO'S LETTERS. 199
libels should not be made an excuse for a censorship : —" As long as there are such things as printing and writing, there will be libels ; it is an evil arising out
of a much greater good. And as to those who are for locking up the press because it produces monsters, they ought to consider that so do the sun and the Nile ; and that it is something better for the world to bear some particular inconveniences arising from general blessings, than to be wholly deprived of fire
and water. Of all sorts of libels, scurrilous ones are certainly the most harmless and contemptible. Even truth suffers by ill-manners, and ill-manners prevent the effect of lies. The letter in the Saturday's Post of the 27th past does, I think, exceed all the scur rilities which I have either heard or seen from the press or the pulpit. The author of it must surely be mad. He talks as if distraction were in his head, and a firebrand in his hand ; and nothing can be more false than the insinuations which he makes, and the ugly resemblances which he would draw. The Paper is a heap of falsehood and treason, delivered in the
style and spirit of Billingsgate ; and indeed most of the enemies to His Majesty's person, title, and govern ment have got the faculty of writing and talking as if they had their education in that quarter. However, as bad as that letter is (and, I think, there cannot be a worse), occasion will never be taken from scurrilous and traitorous writing to destroy the end of writing. We know that in all times there have been men lying
upon the watch to stifle liberty, under a pretence of
libels ; like the late King James, who, having occasion for an army to suppress Monmouth"s
suppressing
200 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
rebellion, would needs keep it up afterwards ; because, forsooth, other rebellions might happen, for which he was resolved to give cause. I must own that I would rather many libels should escape, than the liberty of the press should be infringed ; yet no man in England thinks worse of libels than I do, especially of such as bid open defiance to the present Protestant Establish ment. "
Trenchard died before Gordon, and the survivor of these partners in political journalism wrote a strong eulogium on his departed friend, — and then married his widow. Trenchard had been educated for the law, but, obtaining one of the Commissionerships of Forfeited Estates in Ireland, he abandoned the bar and never returned to it. By the death of an uncle he became independent in fortune, and he employed the leisure which wealth permitted him to enjoy in the open assertion of the political opinions which he thought likely to promote the public weal. The first object he had " in view in the publication of Cato's Letters, was to call for public justice upon the wicked managers of the fatal South Sea scheme ;" and the series was afterwards continued on various public and important subjects. " Speaking of Trenchard's de cease, Gordon says : — His death is a loss to man
kind. To me it is by far the greatest and most shocking that I ever knew, as he was the best friend
I may say the first friend. I found great credit and advantage in his friendship, and shall value myself upon it as long as I live. From the moment he knew me till the moment he died, every part of his behaviour to me was a proof of his affec-
that I ever had ;
TRENCHARD. "201
tion for me. From a perfect stranger to him, and without any other recommendation than a casual coffee-house acquaintance, and his own good opinion, he took me into his favour and care, and into as high a degree of intimacy as ever was shown by one man to another. This was the more remarkable, and did me the greater honour, for that he was naturally as shy in making friendships as he was eminently con stant to those which he had already made. " In another place, Gordon says of his friend : — " He was not fond of writing ; his fault lay far on the other side. He only did it when he thought it necessary. He was sometimes several months together without writing one ; though, upon the whole, he wrote as many, within about thirty, as I did. He wrote many such as I could not write, and I many such as he would not. To him it was owing, to his conversation and strong way of thinking, and to the protection and instruction which he gave me, that I was capable of writing so many. He was the best tutor that I ever had, and to him I owed more than to the whole
world besides. I will add, with the same truth, that, but for me, he never would have engaged in any weekly performance whatsoever. From any third hand there was no assistance whatever. I wanted none while I had him, and he sought none while he had me. " Trenchard's last days are spoken of : — " He was very merry with those who wrote scurrilously against him, and laughed heartily at what they thought he resented most. Not many days before he died, he diverted himself with a very abuseful book written by a clergyman, and pointed personally at him ; by a
202 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
clergyman highly obliged to his family, and always treated with great friendship by himself. " Gordon lived till 1750, and after his death two collections of his political tracts were published. *
To Bolingbroke was ascribed, without truth, the authorship of some of Cato's Letters. t That lordly writer, after his return from exile in 1725, finding that the Act of Attainder was not reversed as he de sired, did once more assume the pen of a public writer, and began a fierce opposition to the ministry through the press, but not in conjunction with Gordon or Trenchard. He commenced with the Occasional Writer, and afterwards contributed to the Craftsman. In the latter he wrote the series of articles which at tracted much attention, and were afterwards collected
and republished under the title of Letters on the History of England, by Humphrey Oldcastle. Bolingbroke refers to several cotemporary Papers. "I took " some umbrage," he makes one of his characters say, at a Paper which came out some time ago. The design and tendency of it seemed to me to favour the cause of a faction ; and of a faction, however con temptible in its present state, always to be guarded against. The Paper I mean is Fog's Journal of the 6th of June. " Again : " Might it not be designed to furnish the spruce, pert orator who strewed some of his flowers in the Daily Courant of the 11th of June. " Further on he several times speaks slightingly of the London Journal; and talks with great anger and con tempt for " these scribblers" and " these writers" who
* The titles are—A Cordial for Low Spirits, in 3 vols. , and the Pillars of Priestcraft, and Orthodoxy Shaken, 2 vols.
t Bolingbroke mentions Gordon in Oldcastle's Letters, p. 67.
together
SWIFT. 203
differ from the new line of politics his Lordship had chosen to take up, and who, as he states, " speak the language of those who guide their pens and reward their labours. " Swift comes prominently before us again in 1 728, when, in conjunction with Dr. Sheridan, he started The Intelligencer, in which it appears, how ever, that he wrote only nine articles. It is enough just to name his Drapier's Letters, since they enjoyed a reputation only eclipsed by those of Junius. *
During the succeeding fifty years the Newspaper press extended its ramifications through the country, and mustered, from time to time, in its ranks many writers of acknowledged genius. From time to time also the law was resorted to by the authorities when a publication was thought to exert too potent an influ ence against those in power ; or when an additional amount of taxation could be wrung from the readers of the public Journals, or from those who advertised in their columns. A rapid glance at what may be called the Newspaper events, from the days of Steele till 1770, may be sufficient for this portion of our
* Swiff 8 Narrative of the Attempts of the Dissenters was pub lished in the " Correspondent" about 1728. In what form, or at what precise date, his editors did not know. About November, 1735, the Dean appears to have written a statement of the case of the Rev. Mr. Thorp, a clergyman who had suffered from the grasping spirit of his patron in the form of a Newspaper paragraph. Scott says, in a note, " It would be satisfactory to discover the Dean's paragraph. " An ad vertisement, as it seems from the Dean's correspondence, was published, offering a reward of ten guineas for the name of the author.
No. 50 of the Spectator, and No. 96 of the Guardian, are published with Swift's works. Some letters he wrote to the editors of Papers may be mentioned. Those given in the collections are —Two to the Dublin Weekly Journal, Sept. 14 and 21, 1728, and one to the same paper on Aug. 9, 1729. A Letter to the writer of the Occasional Paper in the Craftsman, 1727.
204 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
subject. In the reign of George the First, we find that the number of daily Papers had increased to three, whilst there were ten others issued three times a-week in the evening, besides weekly Journals. In a list of names of Papers flourishing in 1733, we find The Craftsman, Fog's Journal, Mist's Journal, The Daily Courant, The London Journal, Free Briton, Grub Street Journal, Weekly Register, Universal Spectator, Auditor, Weekly Miscellany, London Crier, Read's Journal ; all those being, it is said, under the influence of the booksellers, except the Craftsman. A few years later we find many additional titles. The Lon don Daily Post of 1 726 became the Public Advertiser in 1 752 ; the St. James's Post and St. James's Evening Post of 1715 were amalgamated, and were converted
into the St. James's Chronicle.
Eleven years after George the First had obtained the
throne, his Government passed a law* which rendered more exact the taxes upon Newspapers. The act which makes the alterations recites, that "the authors or printers of several Journals or Mercuries and other
had evaded the previous statute by print ing their News upon paper between the two sizes mentioned by the law," too large for the halfpenny stamp and too small for the penny one — in fact on neither a half sheet, nor a whole sheet — but entered them as pamphlets under another clause of the 10th of Anne, and so escaped by paying only the pamphlet tax of three shillings on each edition. The 8th of George the First stopped this evasion, but without
increasing the impost.
* 11 Geo. u. 13, 14.
subsequently
Newspapers
I. ,
8, §
ILLEGAL PAPERS. 20. 5
Iii George the Second's reign, the demand for Newspapers had so increased, and the pressure of the tax had become so irksome, that numerous unstamped publications appeared. This was noticed so frequently that, in 1743, a clause was inserted in an act* decla ring, that as great numbers of Newspapers, pamphlets, and other papers subject and liable to the stamp duties, but not stamped, were " daily sold, hawked, carried about, uttered and exposed for sale by divers obscure persons, who have no known or settled habitation," it is enacted, that all hawkers of unstamped Newspapers may be seized by any person, and taken before a jus tice of the peace, who may commit them to goal for three months. The law further offers a reward of twenty shillings to the informer who secures a convic tion. This law soon tenanted the gaols with the dealers
in unstamped Journals.
The Papers occasionally gave reports of Parlia
mentary debates, regardless of the privileges of the House of Commons, and that assembly, in 1729, (Feb. 26,) resolved, " that it is an indignity to, and a breach of the privilege of this House, for any person to presume to give, in written or printed Newspapers,
any account or minutes of the debates, or other pro ceedings of this House, or of any committee thereof ; and that, upon discovery of the authors, &c, this House will proceed against the offenders with the utmost severity. "t There are other resolutions to the same effect. The Speaker having himself brought the subject under consideration some years afterwards, in 1 738, the resolution was repeated in nearly the same
* 16th Geo. II. , c. 26, § 5. t Pari. Hist. , Vol. VIII. , p. 683.
206 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
words ; " but after a debate, wherein, though no one undertook to defend the practice, the danger of im pairing the liberty of the press was more insisted upon than would formerly have been usual; and Sir Robert Walpole took credit to himself, for respecting it more than his predecessors. "*
Parliament did not succeed in preventing the people from obtaining in print some account of the proceedings in the Legislature. From about the time of the accession of George the First till 1 737, we have a report, such as it is, of debates in Boyer's Register ; the notices being continued afterwards in the London Magazine and the Gentleman's Magazine. On the
19th November, 1740, Johnson succeeded Guthrie the historian as the writer of the Parliamentary speeches for the Gentleman's Magazine, and continued to sup ply them till March, 1743, at which period Dr. Hawkesworth conducted the work.
When the Rebellion of 1745 broke out, the aid of the press was gladly accepted by the reigning family, and Fielding,t who had published his first novel three years before, came into the ranks of the journalists with a Paper which he called The True Patriot. The first number of this came out on the fifth of November 1 745, and the last on the fifteenth of April 1746. The services he rendered through the columns of this Paper gained him the post of Bow Street magistrate. Field
ing started some other Papers ; one was the Covent Garden Journal, by Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt. , and Censor General of England ; was commenced
* Coxe's Walpole, Vol. 572. , in Hallam. Born 1709, died 1754.
t
I. , p.
DR. JOHNSON. 207
January 11, and continued till August of the same year. It was published Tuesdays and Saturdays. In this he gave police cases. The Jacobite, by John Trott Plaid, Esq. , contained two papers by Fielding. *
In November 1758, Dr. Johnson devoted a number of the Idler to an essay on the Newspaper people of that day. He had, in an earlier portion of the same serial, amused his readers with what he calls a scheme for News-writers, &c, in which he indulges in some ponderous fun, at the expense of the Chronicles and Gazettes, the Journals and Evening Posts. On returning to the subject, he treats it in a more serious vein. He says : — " No species of literary men has lately been so much multiplied as the writers of News. Not many years ago, the nation was content with one Ga zette, but now we have not only in the metropolis Papers for every morning and every evening, but almost every large town has its weekly historian, who
circulates his periodical intelligence, and fills the villagers of his district with conjectures on the events of war, and with debates on the true inte rests of Europe. " After giving this record of a fact, the Doctor brings all his bitterness to bear upon " the unfortunate editors, who incurred his wrath. In Sir Henry Wotton's jocular definition," says he, "an ambassador is said to be a man of virtue, sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country ; a News- writer is a man without virtue, who writes lies at home for his own profit. To these compositions is required neither genius nor knowledge, neither indus try nor sprightliness ; but contempt of shame, and
* March 12, and July 23, 1748.
regularly
20S THE FOURTH ESTATE.
indifference to truth are absolutely necessary. " When
he wrote this morsel of abuse, it must be remembered
that the great dictionary maker was enjoying a pension given by a Tory Government, and that the Newspapers who opposed the Doctor's party had gained an amount of influence very distasteful and very troublesome to those who were paid to " write up" absolutist doctrines. The Idler, in its less wrathful, and therefore more reliable mood, tells a different story :—
One of the principal amusements of the Idler is to read the
works of those minute historians, the writers of News, who,
though contemptuously overlooked by the composers of bulky volumes, are yet necessary in a nation where much wealth produces much leisure, and one part of the people has nothing to do but to observe the lives and fortunes of the other. To us, who are regaled every morning and evening with intelli gence, and are supplied from day to day with materials for con versation, it is difficult to conceive how man can subsist without a Newspaper, or to what entertainment companies can assemble
in those wide regions of the earth that have neither Chronicles nor Magazines, neither Gazettes nor Advertisers, neither Journals nor Evening Posts. All foreigners remark, that the knowledge of the common people of England is greater than that of any other vulgar. This superiority we undoubtedly owe to the rivulets of intelligence, which are continually
trickling among us, which every one may catch, and of which every one partakes.
After these admissions, however, the Doctor qua lifies his approbation by declaring that—
The compilation of Newspapers is often committed to narrow and mercenary minds, not qualified for the task of delighting or instructing ; who are content to fill their Paper with what ever matter is at hand, without industry to gather or dis cernment to select. Thus Journals are daily multiplied without
increase of knowledge. The tale of the Morning Paper is told
SMOLLETT AND WILKES. 209
the evening, and the narratives of the evening are bought again in the morning. These repetitions, indeed, waste time, but they do not shorten it. The most eager peruser of News is tired before he has completed his labour; and many a man,
who enters the coffee-house in his night-gown and slippers, is called away to his shop, or his dinner, before he has well con sidered the state of Europe.
Johnson's genius and industry had elevated him above the literary drudgery of writing Parliamentary debates, and he looked down with contempt upon the less talented or less fortunate scribblers, amongst whom in his earlier days he had been constrained to live.
Bubb Dodington in his Diary says, " Lord Bute called on me, and we had much talk about setting up a Paper. " Here is an admission that ministers, in the beginning of George the Third's reign, well understood the value of Newspaper support ; but, in the case of Lord Bute, the establishment of a Journal was not followed by the anticipated success. Smollett* was selected as the editor of the new paper, and on Sa turday, May 29, 1762, he published the first number
of The Briton only to excite an opposition too power ful to be conquered ; for, on the succeeding Saturday, June the 5th, the North Briton appeared under the editorship of Wilkes, supported by Lord Temple and by Churchill the poet. Smollett and Wilkes had pre viously been friends; they now became opposition journalists, and wrote certainly with greater bitterness
than wit. The palm of success, however, was soon awarded to the democratic M. P. The Briton stopped Feb. 12, 1763; its opponent proceeding for several
* In 1756 he set up the Critical Review, for a libel in which upon Admiral Knowles he was fined and imprisoned.
VOL. I. 0
210 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
weeks with great vigour. The North Briton, however, was "violently extinguished April 23, 1763. " In his celebrated Number Forty-Jive, Wilkes declared that falsehood had been uttered in a Royal speech, upon which a general warrant was issued against the authors of the libel. The officers entrusted with the warrant had received orders to seize the printer of the North Briton, but contrived first to apprehend the wrong man. They were soon put on a more correct scent ; Balfe and Kearsley, the printer and publisher of the offending Paper, were taken into custody, and both de claring Wilkes to be the author of Number 45, he was seized, and, after an examination before the Secre tary of State, was committed prisoner to the Tower. Churchill, the colleague of Wilkes in the North Bri ton, received, it is said, the profits arising from the sale of the Paper. His connection with this celebrated Journal led to the name of Churchill being included in the list of those whom the messengers had verbal directions to apprehend under the general warrant issued for that purpose. * The poet entered the room of Wilkes at the moment the latter was apprehended, and only escaped by the officers' ignorance of his person, and by the presence of mind with "which Wilkes addressed him by another name. Good morning, Mr. Thompson," said the ready-witted pri soner; "how does Mrs. Thompson do? Does she dine in the country ? " Churchill took the hint as readily as it was given. He replied, " Mrs. Thompson is waiting for me, and I only called for a moment to say, How d' ye do ? " In a few minutes the poet took
* Life of Churchill, prefixed to his Works, London, 1804.
THE NORTH BRITON. 211
leave of his captured fellow-editor, hurried home, secured his papers, retired into the country, and escaped all search. A vote of the House of Commons released Wilkes for a while, only to visit him with an adverse vote on a subsequent occasion. The popularity
of the writer was distasteful to the majority in both Houses of Parliament, and his enemies most unscru pulously brought forward the immoralities of Wilkes's private life, to secure more readily a vote against him —
immoralities which several of the leaders of this attack had themselves taken part in. Number 45 of the North Briton was ordered to be burnt by the hangman in Cheapside ; and a resolution was adopted, " That the privilege of Parliament does not extend to the case of writing and publishing seditious libels, nor
ought to be allowed to obstruct the ordinary course of the laws in the speedy and effectual prosecution of so heinous and dangerous an offence. " Wilkes was further ordered to attend at the bar, but having been wounded in a duel — the second he had fought since he started the North Briton—he was unable to attend. His ex pulsion from Parliament, and subsequent proceedings, belong to the history of the period. General warrants, after a long debate, were declared to be illegal, and heavy damages were given in the courts of law against those who had arrested Wilkes, and his printer and publisher, under the insufficient authority of a minis terial order. Out of this political Paper, therefore, arose the establishment of another rule strengthening the political liberty we now enjoy. — "
Walpole in one of his Letters* says : Williams, Vol IV. , p. 49.
o2
212 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
the reprinter of the North Briton, stood in the pillory
14, 1765,) in Palace Yard. He went in a hackney coach, the number of which was 45. The mob erected a gallows opposite him, on which
they hung a boot* with a bonnet of straw. Then a collection was made for Williams which amounted to
nearly £200. " The money was placed in a blue purse trimmed with orange, the colour of the Revolution, in opposition to the Stuarts.
188 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
to take the delinquent into custody. On the following day, (April 12,) the House adopted some strong re solutions on the subject, but there was evidently an active party opposed to any direct attempt to " cramp overmuch the liberty of the press," as Swift expresses it;* and, instead of an open and direct law imposing the desired restraints, a more insidious and more fatal plan was carried out. " Some members in the grand committee on ways and means," says the Parliamentary historian, "suggested a more effectual way for sup pressing libels, viz. , the laying a great duty on all
and pamphlets. " This was done. To a
Newspapers
long act which relates to soap, paper, parchment, linens, silks, calicoes, lotteries, and other matters, a few short clauses were added, and the press was crippled at once. These clauses put a stamp duty of a halfpenny on every printed half sheet or less, the tax rising to a penny on a whole sheet ;t and
imposed besides a duty of twelvepence on every adver-
* See Swift's Four Last Tears.
t Pamphlets and Newspapers of half a sheet or less had imposed
on them a tax of a halfpenny, and larger than half a sheet, and not exceeding one sheet a penny ; 10 Anne, c. 19, § 101 ; Pickerings Statutes, Vol. XII. ; 11 George c. 14. And halfpenny, 30 George II. , c. 19, Larger than one sheet, and not exceeding six in octavo, or twelve in quarto, or twenty in folio, pay 2s. for every
sheet in one printed copy 10 Anne, c. 19,
for other regulations. 11 George c.
papers shall not be deemed pamphlets.
every advertisement in the Newspapers was imposed, 10 Anne, c. 19,
101 Vol. XII. , Pickering's Stat. An additional duty, 30 George II. , c. 19, Penalty of £50 on persons advertising reward, with no questions asked, for the return of things stolen or lost, and on the printer, 25 George II. , c. 36; 28 George II. , c. 19; see also 29 George III. , c. 50, §11, 12.
104, 105. See those acts 13, 14, enacts what News
Duty of twelvepence on
§
; 1.
a
a
§
I. ,
I. ,
;
8, A§§§
8,
§ 1.
THE HALFPENNY STAMP. ISO
tisement. These taxes have never been repealed, and under their increased amount, and consequently in creased pressure, the Newspapers suffer at this hour. The duty on paper has affected books as well as journals, and perhaps no one change in the excise duties would
be more generally beneficial to the country than the removal of these taxes upon knowledge. *
The effect of the halfpenny stamp upon the Papers of Queen Anne's day was remarkable. Many were immediately stopped ; whilst several of the survivors were united into one publication. Amongst those that suffered under the pressure of the new tax must be included the Spectator—the price of which was
necessarily increased. This change diminished its sale, and in the following year (1713) it was discon tinued. Swift, writing to Stella, t says " Do you know that all Grub Street is ruined by the Stamp Act. "
* Mr. Ewart, M. P. , in one of his speeches on the paper duty, put the question thus :—He held it to be a most objectionable tax on various grounds. Its levy caused much vexatious interference. An account must be taken of the daily produce of the paper manufacturer. The number of sheets in every ream must be given. Every ream must be labelled. Every label must be written on. If the paper be afterwards destined for exportation, the label must be removed. All this was interference ; and it was a tax of the most intolerable kind in this age, because it was a tax upon time. To tax the time of the trader, was one of the greatest fiscal offences that could be committed. Yet, in all these little matters, the workmen must attend the steps of the
excise officer. A paper manufacturer, with whom he was acquainted, was lately showing his works to an enlightened foreigner, the owner of a paper manufactory in the Roman States. Entering a room of the establishment, they found two men at work. The Italian learnt with
He paid, he said, a direct tax of £7 10s. in his own country and his trade was free.
astonishment that these were officers of the Government. t August 7, 1712.
190 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
The influence of the pen having shown itself be yond denial, the authorities were glad to extend their favour to some of those who wielded this new source of power. Steele, who had commenced life as a soldier, laid down the sword for a quill, and having proved himself an able Journalist, and ready and versatile writer, was rewarded with the situation of Commissioner of the Stamp Office. This appointment held out the hope of something still better in perspective, and, sub sequently a seat in Parliament being within reach, he offered himself as a candidate, and was elected. This step rendered it necessary to resign his post in the Stamp Office, and the wit and author showed his con stitutional negligence in money matters by giving up a substantial reality for the honour of adding M. P. to his name. For power and for income he still wrote in the public Papers ; but having, in the Englishman,
and in the Crisis, ventured upon forbidden ground, the dignity he had made so large a sacrifice for, was snatched from him. The history and the animus of these proceedings are both shown by a few passages in the Parliamentary history. * " Notwithstanding all the care and industry used by the Court managers in the late elections, many of the professed enemies of the present ministers were chosen. But none of these were so obnoxious to the men in power as Mr. Steele, who in several public writings had arraigned the late measures with great boldness, as one who was en couraged, and sure to be supported by the whole Whig party. It was therefore agreed by the ministers (how much soever they differed in other matters) to exert
* Vol. VI. , p. 1265.
THE EXPULSION OF STEELE. 191
their endeavours to remove him from his seat in Par
liament. A petition, which was lodged against his election, happening to be the 17th of that kind, and therefore not like to come on this session, it was resolved to take a shorter way, and attack him about some of his late political writings. Mr. Hungerford, a noted Commons' lawyer, who had been expelled the House for bribery in the reign of king William, moved, on the
1 1th of March, to take into consideration that part of
the Queen's Speech which related to the suppressing seditious libels; and complained, in particular, of several scandalous papers lately published under the name of Richard Steele, Esq. , a member of that House. He was seconded by Mr. Auditor Foley, a near relation to the Lord Treasurer, who suggested, 'that unless means were found to restrain the licentiousness of the press, and to shelter those who had the honour to be in the Administration from malicious and scandalous libels ; they, who by their abilities are best qualified to serve their Queen and country, would decline public
offices and employments. '* This was supported by
* " Dear Prue, —I send this to let you know that Lord Halifax would not let me go to the House, but thought it would be better to have the first attack made in my absence. Mr. Foley was the gentle man who did me that honour ; but they could not bring it to bear so far as to obtain an order for my attending in my place, or anything else to my disadvantage, than that all pamphlets are to come on Satur day. Lord Halifax, in the House of Lords, told the ministry, that he believed, if they would recommend the Crisis to Her Majesty's perusal, she would think quite otherwise of the book than they do. I think they have begun very unhappily and ungracefully against me ; and
I doubt not but God will turn their malice to the advantage of the innocent. " Steele to his Wife, March 11, 1713-14. See his Episto lary Correspondence by Nichols, Vol. p. 318. , London, 1809.
I. ,
192 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
Sir William Wyndham, who added, ' That some of Mr. Steele's writings contained insolent injurious re flections on the Queen herself, and were dictated by the spirit of rebellion. ' The next day, Auditor Harley (the Lord Treasurer's brother) made a formal complaint to the House against certain paragraphs of the three
which had given most offence to the Court ; ' The Englishman of January 1 9, The Crisis and the last Englishman,' all said to be written by Richard Steele,Esq. ; which pamphletsbeing brought up to the table, it was ordered, that Mr. Steele should attend in his place the next morning. This brought
a great concourse of members and spectators to the House ; and Mr. Steele attending, several paragraphs, contained in the pamphlets complained of, were read ; after which, Mr. Foley, Mr. Harley, and some other members, severely animadverted upon the rancour and
seditious spirit conspicuous in those writings. Mr. James Craggs, jun. , standing up to speak in Mr. Steele's behalf, he was prevented by a confused noise of several voices calling to order ; intimating, that, according to the order of the day, Mr. Steele was to be heard him self in his place. Upon this, Mr. Steele said, ' that, being attacked on several heads without any previous notice, he hoped the House would allow him, at least a week's time to prepare for his defence. ' Auditor
Harley having excepted against so long a delay, and moved for adjourning this affair to the Monday follow ing, Mr. Steele, to ridicule his two principal prosecutors, Foley and Harley, who were known to be rigid Presby terians, though they now sided with the High Church, assumed their sanctified countenance, and owned, ' in
printed pamphlets,
Steele's defence. 193
the meekness aud contrition of his heart, that he was a very great sinner ; and hoped the member who spoke last, and who was so justly renowned for his exemplary piety and devotion, would not be accessory to the accu mulating the number of his transgressions, by obliging him to break the sabbath of the Lord by perusing such profane writings as might serve for his justification. '
This speech, spoken in a canting tone, having put the generality of the assembly in good humour, Mr. Steele carried his point ; and the further consideration of the charge against him was deferred for a week, by which time it was expected that Sir Richard Onslow, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Lechmere, and some other leading members of the Whig party who were absent, would be come to town. "
" On the 18th," continues the same authority, "the
for Mr. Steele's trial, the courtiers thought fit to get the House cleared from all strangers ;
which done, and Mr. Steele appearing in his place, Mr. Auditor Foley moved that, before they proceeded
day appointed
farther, Mr. Steele should declare whether he
any
acknowledged
upon Steele owned, ' he wrote and published the said pamphlets, and the several paragraphs there which had been complained of and read to the House, with the same cheerfulness and satisfaction with which he had abjured the Pretender. ' Then, a debate arising upon the method of proceeding, Mr. Auditor Foley proposed that Mr. Steele should withdraw ; but, after several speeches, it was carried, without dividing, that he should stay, in order to make his defence. He
desired that he might be allowed to answer to what VOL. I. N
the writings that bore his name. Here
194 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
might be urged against him, paragraph by paragraph ; but, though he was powerfully supported by Mr. Robert Walpole, General Stanhope, the Lord Finch, eldest son to the Earl of Nottingham, and the Lord Hinchin- broke, son to the Earl of Sandwich, yet Mr. Steele's accusers insisted, and it was carried ' that he should proceed to make his defence, generally, upon the charge given against him. ' Mr. Steele proceeded accordingly to make his defence, being assisted by Mr. Joseph Addison, who sat near him to prompt him upon occasion; and, for near three hours, spake to several heads, extracted out of the three pamphlets above-mentioned, (which had been given in print to all the members,) with such a temper, modesty, uncon
cern, easy and manly eloquence, as gave entire satis faction to all who were not inveterately prepossessed against him. "
In Coxe's Walpole, Steele is declared to have
spoken " with a temper, modesty, and eloquence quite unusual to him. " After this three hour's oration he withdrew.
Hereupon a warm debate ensued. Walpole asked the House "why the author was answerable in Parlia ment for the things which he wrote in his private capacity ? and, if he is punishable by law, why is he not left to the law ? By this mode of proceeding, Parliament, which used to be the scourge only of evil
ministers, is made by ministers the scourge of the subject. The ministers," he added, "are sufficiently armed with authority ; they possess the great sanction of rewards and punishments, the disposal of the privy purse, the grace of pardoning, and the power of con
ANECDOTE OF LORD FINCH. 195
demning to the pillory for seditious writings ; powers consistent with, and naturally arising from their exalted situation, and which they cannot too jealously guard from being perverted to answer indirect or criminal purposes. In former reigns, the audacity of corruption extended itself only to judges and juries ; the attempt so to degrade Parliament was, till the present period, unheard of. The liberty of the press is unrestrained ; how then shall a part of the Legislature dare to punish that as a crime which is not declared to be so by any law framed by the whole ? and why should that House be made the instrument of such a detestable purpose. "
There is an old story told of an M. P. , who de scribed a speech as "Beautiful, beautiful, sir; it ab solutely brought the tears into my ears. " " But your vote, sir, was against the motion of the speaker who so affected you. " " My vote ! Oh, yes, feelings are feelings, sir ; but my vote ! that 's quite another matter. " And so it proved in poor Steele's case. The Tory ministers admired the defence of Steele and the pleading of Walpole, but they used their majority, and Steele was expelled because he was a popular Whig writer for the public press.
There is an interesting anecdote recorded of the debate on this expulsion of an author from the House of Commons. Lord Finch, the Earl of Nottingham's son, spoke in favour of Steele out of gratitude for Steele's defence in the Guardian of Finch's sister, who had been assailed by the Examiner :—
In a paper of his in the Guardian, Steele published a spirited defence of Lady Charlotte Finch, daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, and afterwards Duchess of Somerset, who had
n2
THE FOURTH ESTATE.
been treated with rudeness and ill-manners by an anonymous writer in the Examiner, for alleged misbehaviour in church ; and won by this the heart of her brother, probably predisposed in favour of an amiable man, and, it may be, attached to him by an antecedent friendship. Be this as it may, when the question about Steele's expulsion was agitated in the House of Commons, Lord Finch stepped forward, and made attempts to speak in Steele's behalf; but being embarassed by an ingenuous modesty, and over-deference to an assembly in which he had not yet been accustomed to speak, he sat down in visible con
fusion, saying, so as to be over-heard, " It is strange I can't speak for this man, though I could readily fight for him. " His words being whispered from one to another, operated in an instant like electrical fire, and a sudden burst from all parts of the House of " Hear him ! " " Hear him ! " with ineffable marks of
Lord Finch again on his legs, who, with astonishing recollection, and the utmost propriety, spoke a speech on the occasion, in which, as it was related to this writer, in the language of the theatre, " there was not a word
which did not tell. " The eyes of the whole company were upon him ; and though he appeared to have utterly forgot what he rose up to speak, yet the generous motive, which the whole company knew he acted upon, procured him such an acclamation of voices to hear him, that he expressed himself with a mag nanimity and clearness, proceeding from the integrity of his
heart, that made his very adversaries receive him as a man they wished their friend. Such was the noble motive which first produced this nobleman's natural eloquence; the force of which was charming, and irresistible, when exerted in the protection of the oppressed. *
One of the papers for which Steele was thus per secuted is said not to have been written by him, but by a Mr. Moore, a conveyancer of the Inner Temple.
The temper which prompted this attack on a pub
lic writer in the House of Commons appears to have
* Nicholl's Epistolary Correspondence of Steele, p. 328 —332, in Pari. Hist.
encouragement, brought
AN ASSIZE CHARGE AGAINST NEWSPAPERS. 197
been followed out with a strict hand by the executive officers of the time. At the Rochester Assizes, in 1719, one of the judges, Sir Littleton Powys, having tried a clergyman and other persons for collecting money at a charity sermon, wrote afterwards a letter to Lord Chancellor Parker, on the subject of his proceedings, in the course of which he says : — " clared in all my charges in this circuit, as I did the two last terms at Westminster, that the number of base libels and seditious Papers is intolerable, and that now a quicker course will be taken about them ; for that now the Government will not be so much troubling himself to find out the authors of them, but as often as any such Papers are found on the tables of coffee-houses, or other News-houses, the master of the house shall be answerable for such Papers, and shall be prosecuted as the publisher of them, and let him find out the author, letter-writer, or printer, and take care at his peril what Papers he
takes in. "
In the same year, John Matthews, a youth aged
only nineteen, was tried at the Old Bailey (October 14, 1719) for publishing a Jacobite Paper in favour of hereditary right. * He is described as a conceited
youngster, whose vanity led him to seek notoriety by issuing opinions which the majority of the people had grown out of. He was found guilty, and hanged at Tyburn. t
At this period it was that caricatures began to
find their way into England, and, amongst other early
* The title of this production was, " Ex ore tuo te judico Vox Po- puli, Vox Dei. "
t State Trials, Vol. XV.
I
de
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channels for circulation, we discover them making an appearance in Newspapers. Read's Weekly Journal of November 1, 17J8 (says Mr. Wright*), "gives a caricature against the Tories, engraved on wood, which is called ' an hieroglyphic,' —so little was the real nature of a caricature then appreciated. The earliest English caricature on the South Sea Company is advertised in the Post Boy of June 21, 1720, under the title of ' The Bubblers Bubbled, or the Devil take the Hindmost. ' In the advertisement of another cari cature, on the 29th of February in this year, called ' The World in Masquerade,' it is set forth as one of its great recommendations, that it was ' represented in nigh eighty figures. "
One of the later Papers produced (1719) by Steele was entitled the Plebeian, and it is painful to re member that in its pages he opposed his former friend Addison. The latter contributed a few articles to a
journal of this period, entitled The Old Whig. Two other writers now (1720-3) obtained a considerable degree of popularity by a series of contributions of democratic tone to the London and the British Jour nals, which were afterwards collected into volumes, under the title of Cato's Letters, and in that form ran through several editions. The authors of these poli tical articles were Thomas Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, and Thomas Trenchard, a man of family and fortune.
Another of their productions was The Inde
In the thirty-second of Cato's Letters there are some strictures on the libellous character of
a portion of the press, with an argument why those * England under the House of Hanover, by T. Wright. 1
pendent Whig.
CATO'S LETTERS. 199
libels should not be made an excuse for a censorship : —" As long as there are such things as printing and writing, there will be libels ; it is an evil arising out
of a much greater good. And as to those who are for locking up the press because it produces monsters, they ought to consider that so do the sun and the Nile ; and that it is something better for the world to bear some particular inconveniences arising from general blessings, than to be wholly deprived of fire
and water. Of all sorts of libels, scurrilous ones are certainly the most harmless and contemptible. Even truth suffers by ill-manners, and ill-manners prevent the effect of lies. The letter in the Saturday's Post of the 27th past does, I think, exceed all the scur rilities which I have either heard or seen from the press or the pulpit. The author of it must surely be mad. He talks as if distraction were in his head, and a firebrand in his hand ; and nothing can be more false than the insinuations which he makes, and the ugly resemblances which he would draw. The Paper is a heap of falsehood and treason, delivered in the
style and spirit of Billingsgate ; and indeed most of the enemies to His Majesty's person, title, and govern ment have got the faculty of writing and talking as if they had their education in that quarter. However, as bad as that letter is (and, I think, there cannot be a worse), occasion will never be taken from scurrilous and traitorous writing to destroy the end of writing. We know that in all times there have been men lying
upon the watch to stifle liberty, under a pretence of
libels ; like the late King James, who, having occasion for an army to suppress Monmouth"s
suppressing
200 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
rebellion, would needs keep it up afterwards ; because, forsooth, other rebellions might happen, for which he was resolved to give cause. I must own that I would rather many libels should escape, than the liberty of the press should be infringed ; yet no man in England thinks worse of libels than I do, especially of such as bid open defiance to the present Protestant Establish ment. "
Trenchard died before Gordon, and the survivor of these partners in political journalism wrote a strong eulogium on his departed friend, — and then married his widow. Trenchard had been educated for the law, but, obtaining one of the Commissionerships of Forfeited Estates in Ireland, he abandoned the bar and never returned to it. By the death of an uncle he became independent in fortune, and he employed the leisure which wealth permitted him to enjoy in the open assertion of the political opinions which he thought likely to promote the public weal. The first object he had " in view in the publication of Cato's Letters, was to call for public justice upon the wicked managers of the fatal South Sea scheme ;" and the series was afterwards continued on various public and important subjects. " Speaking of Trenchard's de cease, Gordon says : — His death is a loss to man
kind. To me it is by far the greatest and most shocking that I ever knew, as he was the best friend
I may say the first friend. I found great credit and advantage in his friendship, and shall value myself upon it as long as I live. From the moment he knew me till the moment he died, every part of his behaviour to me was a proof of his affec-
that I ever had ;
TRENCHARD. "201
tion for me. From a perfect stranger to him, and without any other recommendation than a casual coffee-house acquaintance, and his own good opinion, he took me into his favour and care, and into as high a degree of intimacy as ever was shown by one man to another. This was the more remarkable, and did me the greater honour, for that he was naturally as shy in making friendships as he was eminently con stant to those which he had already made. " In another place, Gordon says of his friend : — " He was not fond of writing ; his fault lay far on the other side. He only did it when he thought it necessary. He was sometimes several months together without writing one ; though, upon the whole, he wrote as many, within about thirty, as I did. He wrote many such as I could not write, and I many such as he would not. To him it was owing, to his conversation and strong way of thinking, and to the protection and instruction which he gave me, that I was capable of writing so many. He was the best tutor that I ever had, and to him I owed more than to the whole
world besides. I will add, with the same truth, that, but for me, he never would have engaged in any weekly performance whatsoever. From any third hand there was no assistance whatever. I wanted none while I had him, and he sought none while he had me. " Trenchard's last days are spoken of : — " He was very merry with those who wrote scurrilously against him, and laughed heartily at what they thought he resented most. Not many days before he died, he diverted himself with a very abuseful book written by a clergyman, and pointed personally at him ; by a
202 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
clergyman highly obliged to his family, and always treated with great friendship by himself. " Gordon lived till 1750, and after his death two collections of his political tracts were published. *
To Bolingbroke was ascribed, without truth, the authorship of some of Cato's Letters. t That lordly writer, after his return from exile in 1725, finding that the Act of Attainder was not reversed as he de sired, did once more assume the pen of a public writer, and began a fierce opposition to the ministry through the press, but not in conjunction with Gordon or Trenchard. He commenced with the Occasional Writer, and afterwards contributed to the Craftsman. In the latter he wrote the series of articles which at tracted much attention, and were afterwards collected
and republished under the title of Letters on the History of England, by Humphrey Oldcastle. Bolingbroke refers to several cotemporary Papers. "I took " some umbrage," he makes one of his characters say, at a Paper which came out some time ago. The design and tendency of it seemed to me to favour the cause of a faction ; and of a faction, however con temptible in its present state, always to be guarded against. The Paper I mean is Fog's Journal of the 6th of June. " Again : " Might it not be designed to furnish the spruce, pert orator who strewed some of his flowers in the Daily Courant of the 11th of June. " Further on he several times speaks slightingly of the London Journal; and talks with great anger and con tempt for " these scribblers" and " these writers" who
* The titles are—A Cordial for Low Spirits, in 3 vols. , and the Pillars of Priestcraft, and Orthodoxy Shaken, 2 vols.
t Bolingbroke mentions Gordon in Oldcastle's Letters, p. 67.
together
SWIFT. 203
differ from the new line of politics his Lordship had chosen to take up, and who, as he states, " speak the language of those who guide their pens and reward their labours. " Swift comes prominently before us again in 1 728, when, in conjunction with Dr. Sheridan, he started The Intelligencer, in which it appears, how ever, that he wrote only nine articles. It is enough just to name his Drapier's Letters, since they enjoyed a reputation only eclipsed by those of Junius. *
During the succeeding fifty years the Newspaper press extended its ramifications through the country, and mustered, from time to time, in its ranks many writers of acknowledged genius. From time to time also the law was resorted to by the authorities when a publication was thought to exert too potent an influ ence against those in power ; or when an additional amount of taxation could be wrung from the readers of the public Journals, or from those who advertised in their columns. A rapid glance at what may be called the Newspaper events, from the days of Steele till 1770, may be sufficient for this portion of our
* Swiff 8 Narrative of the Attempts of the Dissenters was pub lished in the " Correspondent" about 1728. In what form, or at what precise date, his editors did not know. About November, 1735, the Dean appears to have written a statement of the case of the Rev. Mr. Thorp, a clergyman who had suffered from the grasping spirit of his patron in the form of a Newspaper paragraph. Scott says, in a note, " It would be satisfactory to discover the Dean's paragraph. " An ad vertisement, as it seems from the Dean's correspondence, was published, offering a reward of ten guineas for the name of the author.
No. 50 of the Spectator, and No. 96 of the Guardian, are published with Swift's works. Some letters he wrote to the editors of Papers may be mentioned. Those given in the collections are —Two to the Dublin Weekly Journal, Sept. 14 and 21, 1728, and one to the same paper on Aug. 9, 1729. A Letter to the writer of the Occasional Paper in the Craftsman, 1727.
204 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
subject. In the reign of George the First, we find that the number of daily Papers had increased to three, whilst there were ten others issued three times a-week in the evening, besides weekly Journals. In a list of names of Papers flourishing in 1733, we find The Craftsman, Fog's Journal, Mist's Journal, The Daily Courant, The London Journal, Free Briton, Grub Street Journal, Weekly Register, Universal Spectator, Auditor, Weekly Miscellany, London Crier, Read's Journal ; all those being, it is said, under the influence of the booksellers, except the Craftsman. A few years later we find many additional titles. The Lon don Daily Post of 1 726 became the Public Advertiser in 1 752 ; the St. James's Post and St. James's Evening Post of 1715 were amalgamated, and were converted
into the St. James's Chronicle.
Eleven years after George the First had obtained the
throne, his Government passed a law* which rendered more exact the taxes upon Newspapers. The act which makes the alterations recites, that "the authors or printers of several Journals or Mercuries and other
had evaded the previous statute by print ing their News upon paper between the two sizes mentioned by the law," too large for the halfpenny stamp and too small for the penny one — in fact on neither a half sheet, nor a whole sheet — but entered them as pamphlets under another clause of the 10th of Anne, and so escaped by paying only the pamphlet tax of three shillings on each edition. The 8th of George the First stopped this evasion, but without
increasing the impost.
* 11 Geo. u. 13, 14.
subsequently
Newspapers
I. ,
8, §
ILLEGAL PAPERS. 20. 5
Iii George the Second's reign, the demand for Newspapers had so increased, and the pressure of the tax had become so irksome, that numerous unstamped publications appeared. This was noticed so frequently that, in 1743, a clause was inserted in an act* decla ring, that as great numbers of Newspapers, pamphlets, and other papers subject and liable to the stamp duties, but not stamped, were " daily sold, hawked, carried about, uttered and exposed for sale by divers obscure persons, who have no known or settled habitation," it is enacted, that all hawkers of unstamped Newspapers may be seized by any person, and taken before a jus tice of the peace, who may commit them to goal for three months. The law further offers a reward of twenty shillings to the informer who secures a convic tion. This law soon tenanted the gaols with the dealers
in unstamped Journals.
The Papers occasionally gave reports of Parlia
mentary debates, regardless of the privileges of the House of Commons, and that assembly, in 1729, (Feb. 26,) resolved, " that it is an indignity to, and a breach of the privilege of this House, for any person to presume to give, in written or printed Newspapers,
any account or minutes of the debates, or other pro ceedings of this House, or of any committee thereof ; and that, upon discovery of the authors, &c, this House will proceed against the offenders with the utmost severity. "t There are other resolutions to the same effect. The Speaker having himself brought the subject under consideration some years afterwards, in 1 738, the resolution was repeated in nearly the same
* 16th Geo. II. , c. 26, § 5. t Pari. Hist. , Vol. VIII. , p. 683.
206 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
words ; " but after a debate, wherein, though no one undertook to defend the practice, the danger of im pairing the liberty of the press was more insisted upon than would formerly have been usual; and Sir Robert Walpole took credit to himself, for respecting it more than his predecessors. "*
Parliament did not succeed in preventing the people from obtaining in print some account of the proceedings in the Legislature. From about the time of the accession of George the First till 1 737, we have a report, such as it is, of debates in Boyer's Register ; the notices being continued afterwards in the London Magazine and the Gentleman's Magazine. On the
19th November, 1740, Johnson succeeded Guthrie the historian as the writer of the Parliamentary speeches for the Gentleman's Magazine, and continued to sup ply them till March, 1743, at which period Dr. Hawkesworth conducted the work.
When the Rebellion of 1745 broke out, the aid of the press was gladly accepted by the reigning family, and Fielding,t who had published his first novel three years before, came into the ranks of the journalists with a Paper which he called The True Patriot. The first number of this came out on the fifth of November 1 745, and the last on the fifteenth of April 1746. The services he rendered through the columns of this Paper gained him the post of Bow Street magistrate. Field
ing started some other Papers ; one was the Covent Garden Journal, by Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt. , and Censor General of England ; was commenced
* Coxe's Walpole, Vol. 572. , in Hallam. Born 1709, died 1754.
t
I. , p.
DR. JOHNSON. 207
January 11, and continued till August of the same year. It was published Tuesdays and Saturdays. In this he gave police cases. The Jacobite, by John Trott Plaid, Esq. , contained two papers by Fielding. *
In November 1758, Dr. Johnson devoted a number of the Idler to an essay on the Newspaper people of that day. He had, in an earlier portion of the same serial, amused his readers with what he calls a scheme for News-writers, &c, in which he indulges in some ponderous fun, at the expense of the Chronicles and Gazettes, the Journals and Evening Posts. On returning to the subject, he treats it in a more serious vein. He says : — " No species of literary men has lately been so much multiplied as the writers of News. Not many years ago, the nation was content with one Ga zette, but now we have not only in the metropolis Papers for every morning and every evening, but almost every large town has its weekly historian, who
circulates his periodical intelligence, and fills the villagers of his district with conjectures on the events of war, and with debates on the true inte rests of Europe. " After giving this record of a fact, the Doctor brings all his bitterness to bear upon " the unfortunate editors, who incurred his wrath. In Sir Henry Wotton's jocular definition," says he, "an ambassador is said to be a man of virtue, sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country ; a News- writer is a man without virtue, who writes lies at home for his own profit. To these compositions is required neither genius nor knowledge, neither indus try nor sprightliness ; but contempt of shame, and
* March 12, and July 23, 1748.
regularly
20S THE FOURTH ESTATE.
indifference to truth are absolutely necessary. " When
he wrote this morsel of abuse, it must be remembered
that the great dictionary maker was enjoying a pension given by a Tory Government, and that the Newspapers who opposed the Doctor's party had gained an amount of influence very distasteful and very troublesome to those who were paid to " write up" absolutist doctrines. The Idler, in its less wrathful, and therefore more reliable mood, tells a different story :—
One of the principal amusements of the Idler is to read the
works of those minute historians, the writers of News, who,
though contemptuously overlooked by the composers of bulky volumes, are yet necessary in a nation where much wealth produces much leisure, and one part of the people has nothing to do but to observe the lives and fortunes of the other. To us, who are regaled every morning and evening with intelli gence, and are supplied from day to day with materials for con versation, it is difficult to conceive how man can subsist without a Newspaper, or to what entertainment companies can assemble
in those wide regions of the earth that have neither Chronicles nor Magazines, neither Gazettes nor Advertisers, neither Journals nor Evening Posts. All foreigners remark, that the knowledge of the common people of England is greater than that of any other vulgar. This superiority we undoubtedly owe to the rivulets of intelligence, which are continually
trickling among us, which every one may catch, and of which every one partakes.
After these admissions, however, the Doctor qua lifies his approbation by declaring that—
The compilation of Newspapers is often committed to narrow and mercenary minds, not qualified for the task of delighting or instructing ; who are content to fill their Paper with what ever matter is at hand, without industry to gather or dis cernment to select. Thus Journals are daily multiplied without
increase of knowledge. The tale of the Morning Paper is told
SMOLLETT AND WILKES. 209
the evening, and the narratives of the evening are bought again in the morning. These repetitions, indeed, waste time, but they do not shorten it. The most eager peruser of News is tired before he has completed his labour; and many a man,
who enters the coffee-house in his night-gown and slippers, is called away to his shop, or his dinner, before he has well con sidered the state of Europe.
Johnson's genius and industry had elevated him above the literary drudgery of writing Parliamentary debates, and he looked down with contempt upon the less talented or less fortunate scribblers, amongst whom in his earlier days he had been constrained to live.
Bubb Dodington in his Diary says, " Lord Bute called on me, and we had much talk about setting up a Paper. " Here is an admission that ministers, in the beginning of George the Third's reign, well understood the value of Newspaper support ; but, in the case of Lord Bute, the establishment of a Journal was not followed by the anticipated success. Smollett* was selected as the editor of the new paper, and on Sa turday, May 29, 1762, he published the first number
of The Briton only to excite an opposition too power ful to be conquered ; for, on the succeeding Saturday, June the 5th, the North Briton appeared under the editorship of Wilkes, supported by Lord Temple and by Churchill the poet. Smollett and Wilkes had pre viously been friends; they now became opposition journalists, and wrote certainly with greater bitterness
than wit. The palm of success, however, was soon awarded to the democratic M. P. The Briton stopped Feb. 12, 1763; its opponent proceeding for several
* In 1756 he set up the Critical Review, for a libel in which upon Admiral Knowles he was fined and imprisoned.
VOL. I. 0
210 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
weeks with great vigour. The North Briton, however, was "violently extinguished April 23, 1763. " In his celebrated Number Forty-Jive, Wilkes declared that falsehood had been uttered in a Royal speech, upon which a general warrant was issued against the authors of the libel. The officers entrusted with the warrant had received orders to seize the printer of the North Briton, but contrived first to apprehend the wrong man. They were soon put on a more correct scent ; Balfe and Kearsley, the printer and publisher of the offending Paper, were taken into custody, and both de claring Wilkes to be the author of Number 45, he was seized, and, after an examination before the Secre tary of State, was committed prisoner to the Tower. Churchill, the colleague of Wilkes in the North Bri ton, received, it is said, the profits arising from the sale of the Paper. His connection with this celebrated Journal led to the name of Churchill being included in the list of those whom the messengers had verbal directions to apprehend under the general warrant issued for that purpose. * The poet entered the room of Wilkes at the moment the latter was apprehended, and only escaped by the officers' ignorance of his person, and by the presence of mind with "which Wilkes addressed him by another name. Good morning, Mr. Thompson," said the ready-witted pri soner; "how does Mrs. Thompson do? Does she dine in the country ? " Churchill took the hint as readily as it was given. He replied, " Mrs. Thompson is waiting for me, and I only called for a moment to say, How d' ye do ? " In a few minutes the poet took
* Life of Churchill, prefixed to his Works, London, 1804.
THE NORTH BRITON. 211
leave of his captured fellow-editor, hurried home, secured his papers, retired into the country, and escaped all search. A vote of the House of Commons released Wilkes for a while, only to visit him with an adverse vote on a subsequent occasion. The popularity
of the writer was distasteful to the majority in both Houses of Parliament, and his enemies most unscru pulously brought forward the immoralities of Wilkes's private life, to secure more readily a vote against him —
immoralities which several of the leaders of this attack had themselves taken part in. Number 45 of the North Briton was ordered to be burnt by the hangman in Cheapside ; and a resolution was adopted, " That the privilege of Parliament does not extend to the case of writing and publishing seditious libels, nor
ought to be allowed to obstruct the ordinary course of the laws in the speedy and effectual prosecution of so heinous and dangerous an offence. " Wilkes was further ordered to attend at the bar, but having been wounded in a duel — the second he had fought since he started the North Briton—he was unable to attend. His ex pulsion from Parliament, and subsequent proceedings, belong to the history of the period. General warrants, after a long debate, were declared to be illegal, and heavy damages were given in the courts of law against those who had arrested Wilkes, and his printer and publisher, under the insufficient authority of a minis terial order. Out of this political Paper, therefore, arose the establishment of another rule strengthening the political liberty we now enjoy. — "
Walpole in one of his Letters* says : Williams, Vol IV. , p. 49.
o2
212 THE FOURTH ESTATE.
the reprinter of the North Briton, stood in the pillory
14, 1765,) in Palace Yard. He went in a hackney coach, the number of which was 45. The mob erected a gallows opposite him, on which
they hung a boot* with a bonnet of straw. Then a collection was made for Williams which amounted to
nearly £200. " The money was placed in a blue purse trimmed with orange, the colour of the Revolution, in opposition to the Stuarts.
