'back recoiled...
Even at the sound himself had made;'
and accordingly got out of the difficulty by adjourning over the day for which the redoubtable Wilkes had been summoned. On the 27th of April, however, the lord mayor was sent to the Tower. The whole country rang with indignation; but, nevertheless, the city magistrates remained incarcerated until the 23d of July, when the Parliament was prorogued, and, its power of imprisonment being at an end, they were set free. Such was the issue of the last battle between the Parliament and the press, on the question of publishing the debates. It was fought in 1771, and had been a tougher conflict than any of its predecessors, but it was decisive. There is no danger of the subject being reopened; the reporting of the debates is now one of the most important of the functions of our newspapers; and the members themselves are too sensible of the services rendered them by the reporters' gallery to be suicidal enough to inaugurate a new crusade against it. What those services are, any one who has been patriotic or curious enough to sit out a debate in the strangers' gallery over night, and then to read the speeches, to which he has listened, in the newspapers next morning, can readily appreciate. Hazy ideas have become clear, mutilated and unintelligible sentences have been neatly and properly arranged, needless repetitions and tautological verbiage have disappeared; there is no sign of hesitation; hums and haws, and other inexpressible ejaculations, grunts, and interpolations find no place; the thread of an argument is shown where none was visible before, and all is fluent, concise, and more or less to the point.
Meanwhile the tone of the press had again greatly improved, partly owing to purification through the trials which it had undergone, and partly owing to the better taste of the public. Its circulation had rapidly increased. In 1753 the number of stamps on newspapers in the United Kingdom was 7,411,757; in 1760, 9,464,790; in 1774, 12,300,608; in 1775, 12,680,906; and in 1776, 12,836,000, a halt in its progress being caused by Lord North's new stamp act, raising the stamp from one to one and a half pence. The ordinary price of a news sheet was two or two and a half pence, but this was more than doubled by its cost of transmission through the post office, which, for a daily paper, was £5 a year. The Morning Post, the full title of which was originally the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, first came out in 1772. In 1775 it appeared regularly every morning, under the editorship of the Rev. Henry Bate, afterward the Rev. Sir Henry Bate Dudley, Bart. The Gentleman's Magazine—that prolific mine to whose stores of wealth the present series of articles is beholden times out of number—gives a curious account of a duel into which this clerical editor was forced in his clerical capacity. Editorial duels were not unknown in those days. Wilkes had fought one or two, as well as other editors; but these were the circumstances of Mr. Bate's encounter:
'The cause of quarrel arose from some offensive paragraphs that had appeared in the Morning Post, highly reflecting on the character of a lady, for whom Captain Stoney had a particular regard. Mr. Bate had taken every possible method, consistent with honor, to convince Captain Stoney that the insertion of the paragraphs was wholly without his knowledge, to which Mr. Stoney gave no credit, and insisted on the satisfaction of a gentleman, or the discovery of the author. This happened some days before, but meeting, as it were by accident, on the day before mentioned (January 13, 1777), they adjourned to the Adelphi, called for a room, shut the door, and, being furnished with pistols, discharged them at each other without effect. They then drew swords, and Mr. Stoney received a wound in the breast and arm, and Mr. Bate one in the thigh. Mr. Bate's sword bent and slanted against the captain's breastbone, which Mr. Bate apprising him of, Captain Stoney called to him to straighten it, and in the interim, while the sword was under his foot for that purpose, the door was broken open, or the death of one of the parties would most certainly have been the issue.'
Another eminent writer in the Public Advertiser was John Horne, afterward John Horne Tooke, the author of the 'Diversions of Purley,' a man to be always remembered with gratitude in America, for the part which he took in the struggle between the colonies and the mother country. His connection with the press was one long series of trials for libel, in which he always got the worst of the fray. In fact, he rather appeared to like being in hot water, for he more than once wrote an article with the full intention of standing the trial which he knew would be sure to follow its publication. One of his reasons may have been that this was the only way in which he could indulge his penchant for forensic disputation. He had been bred a clergyman, but, disliking the retirement of a quiet country parsonage, he threw up his preferment, abandoned his clerical functions altogether, and came to London to keep his terms at the Temple. The benchers, however, holding the force of the maxim, 'Once in orders always in orders,' refused to admit him to the degree of barrister at law. In 1771 he founded the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights, one of the objects of which was to uphold the newspapers in their conflicts with their great foe, the law of libel, and to defray the expenses which were thus incurred. But, owing to some quarrel with Wilkes, he withdrew from his connection with this society, and started a new one—the Constitutional Society—which was founded in the interests of the American colonies. His publication of the doings of this society procured for him the distinction of another trial, the upshot of which was that he was fined £200, imprisoned for a year, and ordered to find bail for his good behavior for three years more. After two unsuccessful attempts he got into Parliament, and proved a very troublesome and formidable antagonist to ministers, as might be expected from a prominent member of the London Corresponding Society, which, consisting chiefly of working men, had for its main objects the establishment of universal suffrage and annual Parliaments. This society owed its origin to the French Revolution, and it kept up a regular correspondence with the National Convention and the French Jacobins. It numbered about fifty thousand members, in different parts of the kingdom, and disseminated its opinions by means of newspapers, pamphlets, and handbills, which were published at a low price, or given away in the streets. One of the most influential of these pamphlets was Tom Paine's 'Rights of Man,' for writing which he was tried and convicted. Erskine was his counsel, and in the course of his speech said:
'Other liberties are held under Governments, but the liberty of opinion keeps Governments themselves in due subjection to their duties. This has produced the martyrdom of truth in every age, and the world has been only purged from ignorance with the innocent blood of those who have enlightened it.'
The effect of these writings was that Government became alarmed, and a proclamation was issued against seditious speaking and writing. The habeas corpus act was suspended, and political trials became the order of the day. Horne Tooke's was one of the latest of these trials, in 1794. Erskine was his counsel, and was more successful than when defending Paine. The public excitement had by this time very much toned down, and Tooke was acquitted. One result of this trial was to secure the fortunes of Erskine; but another and much more important one was to establish on a firmer basis the right of free discussion and liberty of speech, and to check the ministry in the career of terrorism and oppression upon which they had entered. Looking back upon these trials, at this distance of time, one cannot but feel a conviction that the fears of the Government and the nation were absurdly exaggerated. The foundations of English society and British institutions were too firmly fixed to be easily shaken, even when the whole continent of Europe was convulsed from one end to the other. But the London Corresponding Society still continued its efforts, till its secretary was tried and convicted, and the society itself was suppressed, along with many other similar associations, by an act of Parliament, called the Corresponding Societies Bill, in 1799. Tooke's connection with it had ceased some time before; in fact, it is more than doubtful if he had ever been a thorough-going supporter of it in heart, or had any other object than that of making political capital out of it, and of indulging his belligerent proclivities. He died in 1812, at the age of seventy-six.
In 1777 there were seventeen regular newspapers published in London, of which seven were daily, eight tri-weekly, one bi-weekly, and one weekly. In 1778 appeared the first Sunday newspaper, under the title of Johnson's Sunday Monitor.
We have now arrived at the threshold of a very important event—too important, in fact, to be introduced at the end of an article, and which we therefore reserve for our next number. That event is the birth of the Times.