'Their papers, filled with different party spirit, divide the people into different sentiments, who generally consider rather the principles than the truth of the news writers.'
At no time, probably, in the history of journalism did party feeling run higher than at this period. New organs sprang up every day, but were, for the most part, very short lived. Among the papers of most note were The Weekly Journal, Mist's Weekly Journal, the London Journal, The Free Briton, and the Weekly Gazetteer. Mist was especially a stout opponent of the Government, and was consequently always in trouble. In 1724 there were printed nineteen first-class journals, of which three were daily, ten tri-weekly—three of them 'half-penny Posts'—and six weekly. News was abundant, and the old plan of leaving blank spaces or filling up with passages of Scripture—an editor actually reproduced from week to week the first two books of the Pentateuch—was now abandoned. In 1726 appeared the Public Advertiser, afterward called the London Daily Advertiser, which deserves to be remembered as having been the medium through which the letters of Junius were originally given to the world. In the same year, too, was started The Craftsman, one of the ablest political papers which London had yet seen, and of which Bolingbroke was joint editor. It was immediately successful, and its circulation soon reached ten or twelve thousand. In 1731 a great novelty came out, the Gentleman's Magazine, or Monthly Intelligencer, under the proprietorship of Edward Cave, the printer. The title page contained a woodcut of St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, which had been in olden times the entrance gateway to the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, but was then the abiding place of Cave's printing press, and upon either side of the engraving was a list of the titles of metropolitan and provincial newspapers. The contents, as announced on the same title page, were: 1. Essays, controversial, humorous and satirical, religious, moral, and political, collected chiefly from the public papers; 2. Select pieces of poetry; 3. A succinct account of the most remarkable transactions and events, foreign and domestic; 4. Marriages and deaths, promotions and bankruptcies; 5. The prices of goods and stocks, and bills of mortality; 6. A register of barks; 7. Observations on gardening. The prospectus states:
'Our present undertaking, in the first place, is to give monthly a view of all the pieces of wit, humor, or intelligence daily offered to the public in the newspapers, which of late are so multiplied as to render it impossible, unless a man makes it his business, to consult them all; and in the next place, we shall join therewith some other matters of use or amusement that will be communicated to us. Upon calculating the number of newspapers, 'tis found that (besides divers written accounts) no less than two hundred half sheets per mensem are thrown from the press only in London, and about as many printed elsewhere in the three kingdoms, a considerable part of which constantly exhibit essays on various subjects for entertainment, and all the rest occasionally oblige their readers with matter of public concern, communicated to the world by persons of capacity, through their means, so that they are become the chief channels of amusement and intelligence. But then, being only loose papers, uncertainly scattered about, it often happens that many things deserving attention contained in them are only seen by accident, and others not sufficiently published or preserved for universal benefit or information.'
The Magazine sets to work upon its self-imposed task by giving a summary of the most important articles during the preceding month in the principal London journals, of the ability, scope, and spirit of which we thus obtain a very fair notion. The Craftsman has the precedence, and among articles quoted from it are a historical essay upon Queen Bess, and 'her wisdom in maintaining her prerogative;' a violent political article full of personalities, a complaint of the treatment of the Craftsman by rival journals, and an essay upon the liberty of the press. The summary of the London Journal seems to show that it was continually occupied in controverting the views and arguments of the Craftsman. Fog's Journal is employed in making war upon the London Journal and the Free Briton. The following specimen does not say much for Mr. Fog's satirical powers:
'One Caleb D'Anvers' (Nicholas Amherst, of the Craftsman), 'and, if I mistake not, one Fog, are accused of seditiously asserting that a crow is black; but the writers on the other side have, with infinite wit, proved a black crow to be the whitest bird of all the feathered tribe.'
These old newspapers give us curious glimpses of the manners of the time. The Grub-Street Journal has an article upon 'an operation designed to be performed upon one Ray, a condemned malefactor, by Mr. Cheselden, so as to discover whether or no not only the drum but even the whole organ be of any use at all in hearing.' The writer must have been an ardent vivisector, for he concludes by a suggestion that 'all malefactors should be kept for experiments instead of being hanged.' In another number this periodical indulges in a criticism upon the new ode of the poet laureate (Colley Cibber), in the course of which the writer expresses an opinion that 'when a song is good sense, it must be made nonsense before it is made music; so when a song is nonsense, there is no other way but by singing it to make it seem tolerable sense'—a criticism which, whether it were true of that period or no, may be fairly said to apply with great force to the times in which we live. The Weekly Register makes war upon the Grub-Street Journal, and, in a satirical article upon the title of that newspaper, likens the writers to caterpillars and grubs, etc., 'deriving their origin from Egyptian locusts;' and, in another article, accuses them of 'having undertaken the drudgery of invective under pretence of being champions of politeness.' The other papers summarized are the Free Briton, a violent opponent of the Craftsman, the British Journal, and the Universal Spectator, the forte of the last two lying in essays and criticisms.
But the grand feature of the Gentleman's Magazine was, that it was the first to systematize parliamentary reporting. This was originally managed by Cave and two or three others obtaining admission to the strangers' gallery, and taking notes furtively of the speeches. These notes were afterward compared, and from them and memory the speeches were reproduced in print. Cave's reports continued for two years unmolested, when the House of Commons endeavored to put an end to them. A debate took place, in which all the speakers were agreed except Sir William Wyndham, who expressed a timid dissent, as follows: 'I don't know but what the people have a right to know what their representatives are doing.' 'I don't know,' forsooth—the Government and the people must have been a long way off then from a proper appreciation of the duties of the one and the rights of the other! Sir Robert Walpole, the former friend of the press—who, by the way, is said to have spent more than £50,000 in bribes to venal scribblers in the course of ten years—had completely changed his views, and had nothing then to say in its favor. A resolution was passed which declared it breach of privilege to print any of the debates, and announced the intention of the House to punish with the utmost severity any offenders. Cave, however, was not easily daunted, and, instead of publishing the speeches with the first and last letters of the names of the speakers, he adopted this expedient: he anagrammatized the names, and published the debates in what purported to be 'An Appendix to Captain Lemuel Gulliver's Account of the Famous Empire of Lilliput, giving the Debates in the Senate of Great Lilliput.' This system was continued for nine years, but, after an interval, Cave reverted to the old plan. He had always employed some writer or other of known ability to write the speeches from his notes, and generally even without any notes at all, so that the speeches were often purely imaginary. In 1740 Dr. Johnson was employed for this purpose, and he, according to his own confession, had been but once inside the walls of the Parliament. Murphy tells the story and gives the names of the persons who were present when he made the avowal. It occurred thus: A certain speech of Pitt's, which had appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, was being highly praised by the company, when Johnson startled every one by saying: 'That speech I wrote in a garret in Exeter street.' He then proceeded to give an account of the manner in which the whole affair used to be managed—this happened many years after his connection with the matter had ceased—and the assembly 'lavished encomiums' upon him, especially for his impartiality, inasmuch as he 'dealt out reason and eloquence with an equal hand to both parties.' Johnson replied: 'That is not quite true: I saved appearances tolerably well, but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.' These speeches were long received by the world as verbatim reports, and Voltaire is said to have exclaimed, on reading some of them: 'The eloquence of Greece and Rome is revived in the British Senate.' Johnson, finding they were so received, felt some prickings of conscience, and discontinued their manufacture. When upon his deathbed, he said that 'the only part of his writings that gave him any compunction was his account of the debates in the Gentleman's Magazine, but that at the time he wrote them he did not think he was imposing upon the world.' Several attempts had been made to checkmate Cave, and in 1747 he was summoned before the House of Lords, reprimanded, and fined, but finally discharged upon begging pardon of the House, and promising never to offend again. However, in 1752, he resumed the publication of the debates, with this prefatory statement, a statement which must be taken cum grano:
'The following heads of speeches in the H—— of C—— were given me by a gentleman, who is of opinion that members of Parliament are accountable to their constituents for what they say as well as what they do in their legislative capacity; that no honest man, who is entrusted with the liberties and purses of the people, will ever be unwilling to have his whole conduct laid before those who so entrusted him, without disguise; that if every gentleman acted upon this just, this honorable, this constitutional principle, the electors themselves only would be to blame if they reflected a person guilty of a breach of so important a trust.'
Cave continued his reports in a very condensed form until he died, in 1754, and left his system as a legacy to his successors and imitators. He was the father of parliamentary reporting, and it is for this reason more especially that his name deserves to be remembered with gratitude by all well wishers to the freedom of the press, which is the liberty of mankind.