Early Newspaper Enterprise. 75 with Old age and labor he left this mortal state in the lively hopes of a blessed Immortality. Reader reflect how soon you'll quit this stage The New York Historical Society and Trinity Church, with the municipal authorities of the metropolis, united, in May, 1863, on the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of William Bradford, to do honor to his name and services as the first printer and first editor of New York; and a commemorative address was delivered on that occasion by John William Wallace, the President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The latter society, at its annual meeting in February, 1869, paid similar honors-not on his natal day, however-to Andrew Bradford, as the founder of the Newspaper Press of the Middle States of America, Horatio Gates Jones delivering an excellent and appropriate address. We are not aware that the Massachusetts Historical Society has taken any notice of either Benjamin Harris or John Campbell, the first editors of New England. Newspapers began to increase in the colonies. In 1727, on the 20th of March, the fourth paper appeared in Boston, named the New England Weekly Journal, "Containing the most Remarkable Occurrences Foreign and Domestick." It was published by Samuel Kneeland, who succeeded James Franklin as printer of the Gazette. The famous Whitefield, and the equally celebrated Edwards, exercised great influence over this establishment. Kneeland, in his prospectus, promised a number of new features in journalism; proposed the organization of a corps of correspondents of "the most knowing and ingenious gentlemen in several noted towns" to send news; made arrangements for the regular weekly publication of "the Number of Persons Buried and Baptized in the town of Boston;" the prospectus closing thus: This may serve as a Notification, that a Select number of Gentlemen, who have had the happiness of a liberal Education, and some of them considerably improv'd by their Travels into distant Countries; are now concerting some regular Schemes for the Entertainment of the ingenious Reader, and the Encouragement of Wit and Politeness; and may in a very short time, open upon the Public in a variety of pleasing and profitable Speculations. On the 8th of April, 1728, the publisher held out the following inducements for subscribers: There are Meafures concerting for rendring this Paper yet more univerfally esteemed, and useful, in which "tis hop'd the Publick will be gratifi'd, ana by which thofe Gentlemen who defire to be improv'd in Hiftory, Philofophy, Poetry, &c. will be greatly advantaged. We will take the liberty at this time to infert the following paffage of Hiftory. Then followed a very curious and quaint account of the invention of the stocking-loom. Quite a number of essays were published by Kneeland, after the style of the Tattler, Spectator, and Freeholder. Indeed, the style of the newspaper writers of those days imitated that of Addison, Steele, Swift, and Bolingbroke. Mather Byles, Judge Danforth, Governor Burnet, and the Rev. Thomas Prince, of the Old South Church, were contributors to the Journal. It was, in 1741, united with the Gazette, and published till 1752, when it was discontinued. It seems to have been one of the objects of John Campbell, if we rely upon his appeals to the public, in publishing the NewsLetter, "to prevent the spreading of false reports." Other publishers, no doubt, were governed by the same laudable motive. But this was evidently slow work. Circulating the paper outside of the city limits was then any thing but a speedy or certain process. Mails were mostly monthly and half monthly in going from point to point. Bulk was a matter of importance in the time of post-horses, and stage-coaches, and imperfect roads. Those who live along the banks of the Hudson, or on the line of any railroad running out of Boston, or New York, or Chicago, within one hundred miles of these news centres, and receiving at their own doors their morning city journals as regularly and as early as subscribers living in the upper wards of these cities receive their papers, scarcely realize the advantages they enjoy over their ancestors. Some idea of this may be obtained from the following official notice: By Order of the Post Master General of North-America. These are to give Notice, that on Monday Night the Sixth of this Instant December, The Western Post between Boston and New-York sets out once a Fortnight the Three Winter Months of December, January and February, and to go Alternately from Boston to Saybrook and Hartford, to Exchange the Mayle of Letters with the New-York Ryder, the first Turn for Say-Brook, to meet the NewYork Ryder on Saturday Night the 11th Currant. And the Second Turn he sets out at Boston, on Monday Night the 20th Currant to meet the New-York Ryder at Hartford on Saturday Night the 25th Currant, to Exchange Mayles. And all Persons that sends Letters from Boston to Connecticut, from and after the 13th Instant, are hereby Notified, first to pay the Portage on the same. What a contrast with the numerous railroad trains, with their splendid family cars, and three or four steam-boats, floating palaces in fact, running daily, morning and evening, between New York and Boston, in addition to the fifteen or twenty telegraph wires which now connect these two important cities! All the wonders of Aladdin pale before these realities. There could be no extended circulation of newspapers with such facilities of transportation as Campbell and the Bradfords had. But as the colonies grew in population and wealth, there was an improvement in the mails and in the roads, and an increased desire for more news, and other journals came into existence. Benjamin Franklin as a Journalist. 77 CHAPTER IV. THE REAPPEARANCE OF THE FRANKLINS. THE WAY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN STARTED A PAPER IN PHILADELPHIA.— THE FLEETS IN BOSTON.-THE FASHIONS.-ZENGER'S NEW YORK JOURNAL-THE FIRST LIBEL SUIT.-ANDREW HAMILTON'S GREAT SPEECH.→ THE POPULAR VERDICT. THE DAWN OF LIBERTY.-THE NEW YORK GAZETTE AGAIN. THE POST-Boy.—JAMES FRANKLIN IN NEWPORT.-THE RHODE ISLAND GAZETTE.-NEWPORT THEN AND NOW. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN now reappeared as a journalist. In 1728 another paper was established in Philadelphia—the second in that city. It was entitled the Universal Instructor in all the Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette, a title sufficiently long to satisfy any newspaper subscriber. It was published by Samuel Keimer. There is a story connected with this paper which had better be told in the words of one of the parties most interested. Speaking of his job printing-office, which he had just started, Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, gives these facts: We George Webb, who had found a female friend that lent him wherewith to purchase his time of Keimer, now came to offer himself as a journeyman to us. could not then employ him; but I foolishly let him know as a secret, that I soon intended to begin a newspaper, and might then have work for him. My hopes of success, as I told him, were founded on this; that the then only newspaper, printed by Bradford, was a paltry thing, wretchedly managed, no way entertaining, and yet was profitable to him; I therefore freely thought a good paper would scarcely fail of good encouragement. I requested Webb not to mention it; but he told it to Keimer, who immediately, to be beforehand with me, published proposals for one himself, on which Webb was to be employed. I was vexed at this; and, to counteract them, not being able to commence our paper, I wrote several amusing pieces for Bradford's paper, under the title of Busy Body, which Breintnal continued some months. By this means the attention of the public was fixed on that paper, and Keimer's proposals which we burlesqued and ridiculed, were disregarded. He began his paper, however; and, before carrying it on three quarters of a year, with at most only ninety subscribers, he offered it to me for a trifle; and I, having been ready some time to go on with it, took it in hand directly; and it proved in a few days extremely profitable to me. ****** Our first papers made quite a different appearance from any before in the province; a better type, and better printed; but some remarks of my writing, on the dispute then going on between Governor Burnet, and the Massachusetts Assembly, struck the principal people, occasioned the paper and the manager of it to be much talked of, and in a few weeks brought them all to be our subscribers. Their example was followed by many, and our number went on growing continually. This was one of the first good effects of my having learned a little to scribble; another was, that the leading men, seeing a newspaper now in the hands of those who could handle a pen, thought it convenient to oblige and encourage me. Bradford still printed the votes, and laws, and other public business. He had printed an address of the House to the Governor, in a coarse, blundering manner; we reprinted it elegantly and correctly, and sent one to every member. They were sensible of the difference, it strengthened the hands of our friends in the House, and they voted us their printers for the year ensuing. Among my friends in the House, I must not forget Mr. Hamilton, before mentioned, who was then returned from England, and had a seat in it. He interested himself for me strongly in that instance, as he did in many others afterwards, continuing his patronage till his death. This was Franklin's first really independent attempt at the management of a newspaper on his own responsibility; and it is evident, from his opinion of the Mercury," a paltry thing," as he called it, that he felt equal to the enterprise. One of his first acts was to condense the title of his paper to that of the Pennsylvania Gazette, which he did on the 28th of September, 1729, and under that name it continued under his management till 1765. In spite of what he says in his autobiography, it has been asserted that Franklin wrote. but little for the Gazette. He dabbled in politics and electricity, and set up printing-offices in other places, so that his time was pretty well occupied. Many of the articles published in the Gazette and attributed to Franklin were, in the opinion of Sparks, manifestly written by others. On one occasion, in 1734, Bradford, of the Mercury, rebuked the publication in the Gazette of some vulgar communications. Franklin stated that he inserted them because "by being too nice in the choice of little pieces sent him by correspondents, he had almost discouraged them from writing to him any more." The Franklins appreciated, above all others, what a newspaper should be. "My friends," said Benjamin Franklin to a number of gentlemen who had constituted themselves his censors," any one who can subsist upon sawdust pudding and water, as I can, needs no man's patronage." This was his code. In 1748, David Hall, a Scotchman, became Franklin's partner. Hall carried on the establishment till his death in 1772. After Hall the concern passed into the hands of Andrew Brown, an Irishman, and was called the Philadelphia Gazette. The establishment was destroyed by fire when Mr. Brown owned it, and nearly his whole family perished in the flames. It was afterward continued by a son of Mr. Brown, who came out from Ireland for that purpose, in connection with Samuel Relf. This was in 1802. It ceased to exist for a time in 1804, but was re-established with the same title, and was, for some time, the oldest paper in the United States. Mr. Relf then purchased his partner's interest and conducted the paper alone. He was considered an able writer in his early journalistic days. The paper, under his management, was called Relf's Gazette. In 1824 or '25 Mr. Relf died. Stevenson Smith then became the publisher and editor, and the Gazette was the advocate of the political principles of the Jackson democracy. After this period the es Benjamin Franklin's Gazette. 79 tablishment was sold to Willis Gaylord Clark and James Russell. Mr. Clark had married a niece of Samuel Relf, and the Relf family were again, though indirectly, interested in the paper. It had now become the champion of Whig principles. It was an evening paper. Willis Gaylord Clark, the editor, was twin brother of Lewis Gaylord Clark, the wit, and for many years the genial editor of the Knickerbocker Magazine of New York. Willis was proprietor of the Gazette to the time of his death in 1841. On the 3d of November, 1845, it was merged with the North American. It had been, for some time, a branch, a sort of an evening edition to that journal. Thus closed the career of Franklin's Gazette, after an existence of one hundred and seventeen years. The old paper-mill in which the paper used by Franklin was made was still in existence a few years ago. It was erected on Chester Creek, Delaware County, in 1713. The paper was made then by hand, as it was as late as 1853. There had been no change in one hundred and forty years in that little old mill, notwithstanding the great improvements and changes in paper-making since that period. Newspapers enjoyed one or two privileges in the days of Franklin that would be seriously damaging to the revenue of the Post-office Department if tolerated now. In the Gazette of the 28th of January, 1735, Franklin said: By the indulgence of the Honorable Colonel Spotswood, Post-Master-General, the printer hereof is allowed to send the Gazettes by the post, postage free, to all parts of the postroad, from Virginia to New England. The five or six thousand newspapers of 1872, with their millions of circulation, with a privilege like the above, would utterly ruin the Post-office Department of to-day. Only a small part of the newspapers go through the mails now. They are sent as freight and by newsboys over the numerous railroads, and delivered at the different news centres by express lines and news agents here, there, and every where. Maryland next fell into line with the old name on its title-page. The Maryland Gazette was the first paper published in that state. William Parks, one of the migratory printers of that century, issued the first number in Annapolis in 1727, and the paper was regularly published till 1736, when Parks went to Virginia to establish a newspaper there. Another paper appeared in Boston on the 27th of September, 1731. It was styled the Weekly Rehearsal, and started by Jeremy Gridley, "a young man of fine literary accomplishments," who became Attorney General of the Province, Member of the General Court, Colonel of Militia, President of the Marine Society, and |