The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

In 1817, The Literary Gazette was brought out by William Jordan, as an organ of literature and the fine arts, and, until The Athenæum was established, it was without a rival of any consequence. But its circulation declined, and, after Jordan's death, dwindled down to a very small number. In 1862 its name was changed to The Parthenon, or rather, to speak more correctly, The Parthenon arose as a new publication from the ashes of The Literary Gazette. But change of name did not produce change of circumstances, and, before many numbers had appeared, The Parthenon was privately offered for sale at the low sum of £100, but, failing to meet with a purchaser, it gave up the ghost early in 1863. In 1817, Lord Sidmouth made a terrific onslaught upon the press. He issued a circular to the different lord lieutenants of the counties, to the effect that any justice of the peace might issue a warrant for the apprehension of any person charged with printing a libel. One result of this circular and the vigorous prosecutions which ensued was that William Cobbett for a while gave up printing his Political Register, and went away to America, from whence he did not return for two years. He stated his reasons for adopting this course in his paper, as follows:

'I do not retire from a combat with the attorney-general, but from a combat with a dungeon, deprived of pen, ink, and paper. A combat with the attorney-general is quite unequal enough; that, however, I would have encountered. I know too well what a trial by special jury is; yet that or any sort of trial I would have stayed to face. But against the absolute power of imprisonment, without even a hearing, for time unlimited'—an act had been passed which gave the secretary of state power to suspend the habeas corpus act—'in any jail in the kingdom, without the use of pen, ink, and paper, and without communication with any soul but the keepers—against such a power it would have been worse than madness to attempt to strive.'

But the Government met with a notable check in the case of William Howe, the bookseller. Howe was thrice tried for libel, and, despite the exertions of Lord Ellenborough, who descended from the judicial bench to the barrister's table, was thrice acquitted. Persecution after this languished for a while, but in 1819 were passed those stringent measures which are known as the Six Acts. One of these gave the judges the power, upon the conviction of any person a second time of the publication of a seditious libel, to punish him with fine, imprisonment, banishment, or transportation. But such monstrous enactments were not suffered to pass unchallenged, and the result of several animated debates was that the obnoxious words banishment—a novelty in English jurisprudence—and transportation were withdrawn, but the remaining provisions of the Six Acts were carried in all their rigor. But amid much harm, some good was doubtless effected, for certain provisions were introduced into the act which declared certain inferior newspapers, which had hitherto evaded the stamp act, by calling themselves pamphlets and not newspapers, because they only commented upon the news of the day, to be henceforth liable to the stamp duties. This really did good service to the better class of journals, by sweeping away a swarm of newspapers which, by the quibble above mentioned, were enabled to undersell them.

John Bull was started in 1820, with the avowed object of espousing the King's side, and covering the Queen and her friends with obloquy. Theodore Hook was the editor, but very few persons were in the secret. Every man or woman who was conspicuous as a friend of the Queen was duly gibbeted, and any tittle-tattle gossip or scandal that could be ferreted out against them was boldly printed in the most unmistakable terms. Trial for libel failed to discover the real proprietors, editor, and writers, and the men who stood their trial as printer, publisher, proprietor, etc., were manifestly mere shams, men who would swear to anything and undergo any amount of imprisonment for the consideration of the smallest coin of the realm. The scandalous details in John Bull attracted the public at once, and by the time it reached its sixth number, the circulation had risen to ten thousand, while the first five numbers were reprinted over and over again, and the first and second were actually stereotyped. But it began to be whispered about that Hook was the editor, whereupon he printed and signed a letter denying the rumor in the most indignant terms. This letter was supplemented by an editorial, from which the following is an extract:

'The conceit of some people is amusing, and it has not unfrequently been remarked that conceit is in abundance where talent is most scarce. Our readers will see that we have received a letter from Mr. Hook, disowning and disavowing all connection with this paper.... We are free to confess that two things surprise us in this business. The first, that anything which we have thought worthy of giving to the public should have been mistaken for Mr. Hook's; and secondly, that such a person as Mr. Hook should think himself disgraced by a connection with John Bull.'

After the death of the Queen, Hook devoted himself to the demolition of the Whigs and Radicals. Joseph Hume was his especial target, and was dished up week after week with a decidedly original Latin garnish: 'Ex humili potens—From a surgeon to a member of Parliament;' 'Humili modi loqui—To talk Scotch like Hume;' 'Nequis humasse velit—Let no one call Hume an ass,' etc., etc. John Bull sustained a great many convictions for libel, and its dummies were frequently imprisoned, but they never betrayed Hook, who retained the editorship until his death in 1841. Somewhere about this time The Britannia, a Conservative journal, of a few years' standing, was incorporated with it. It had meanwhile considerably moderated its tone, and at the present day enjoys a fair circulation among steady-going people—chiefly country gentlemen, old ladies, and parsons—who obstinately cling to Tory principles.

John Bull was not the only newspaper which was prolific in libels, and perhaps at no time were scandalous attacks upon public and private persons more common. Mr. Freemantle, writing to the Marquis of Buckingham, in 1820, says:

'The press is completely open to treason, sedition, blasphemy, and falsehood, with impunity.... I do not know whether you see Cobbett's Independent Whig, and many other papers now circulating most extensively, and which are dangerous much beyond anything I can describe.'

This is a sweeping censure, but, allowing for a little personal irritation, natural enough under the circumstances—he had been lampooned himself—is true of a great portion of the press. The supply was regulated by the demand, and the character of the wares purveyed depended upon the wants of the market. Editors found that scandal was eagerly devoured by their subscribers, and they did not therefore hesitate or scruple to gratify the prevailing tastes of the day. But the better class of papers were not able to keep clear of the law of libel, even though they did not condescend to pander to the vitiated tastes of the multitude. Many of them had to sustain actions for merely reporting proceedings before the police magistrates and in the law courts, and many a rascal solaced himself for the disagreeables attending a preliminary examination at the police court for a criminal offence, by a verdict in his behalf in a civil action against any newspaper that had been bold enough to print a report of the proceedings. This kind of action originated from a ruling of Lord Ellenborough, that it was 'libellous to publish the preliminary examination before a magistrate previously to committing a man for trial or holding him to bail for any offence with which he is charged, the tendency of such a publication being to prejudice the minds of the jurymen against the accused, and to deprive him of a fair trial.' This monstrous and at the same time absurd doctrine remained in force for many years, but is now happily no longer the law of the land.

The Times had now reached the pinnacle of prosperity, and its claims to be considered the foremost of journals were no longer disputed. The circulation of The Morning Chronicle had dwindled during the latter years of Perry's life, and after his death did not revive very much under Black, his successor. Brougham, Talfourd, and Alderson were among the writers in The Times, and Captain Sterling, whose vigorous, slashing articles first gained for The Times the title of the 'Thunderer,' was regularly engaged upon the staff at a salary of £2,000 a year and a small share in the profits. But the Government still steadily set its face against it, and in 1821 Mr. Hume loudly inveighed against the ministry in the House of Commons for not sending Government advertisements to The Times, instead of to other journals, which did not enjoy a tithe of its circulation. The arrangements of the post office were a great hinderance to the diffusion of newspapers, since the charge for the carriage of a daily journal was £12 14s., and for a weekly £2 4s. a year. The number, therefore, that was sent abroad by this channel, either to the Continent or our own colonies, was very small. In 1810 the whole number thus despatched was but three hundred and eighty-three, and in 1817 it had fallen to two hundred and seventy-one, owing to the increase in the charges demanded by the post-office authorities, who were actually allowed to put the money in their own pockets; and in 1821 it was only two hundred and six. The circulation through the kingdom of Great Britain itself was not entirely free, inasmuch as every newspaper sent through the post office was charged for by weight, at an exorbitant rate, unless it was franked by a member of Parliament. This regulation continued in force until 1825, when an act was passed which provided that newspapers should be sent through the post free, on condition that they were open at both ends, and had no other writing upon the cover than the necessary address. At the same time the ridiculous acts which limited the size of newspapers were done away with, and every printer was henceforth permitted to print his journal upon any sized sheet he pleased. Two important concessions were also made to the press at this date, one in the House of Commons, and the other in the House of Lords. In the former, a portion of the strangers' gallery was set apart for the exclusive use of the reporters; and in the latter, reporters were permitted to be present for the first time. Previously to this, if any one had been rash enough to attempt to take any notes, an official would pounce upon him, and, with an air of offended dignity well befitting that august assembly, strike the offending pencil from his grasp!

In 1825, Joseph Hume attempted to get the stamp duty reduced on newspapers to twopence, and the advertisement duty to one shilling; and in 1827 he tried to gain an exemption from the stamp act for political pamphlets; but he was defeated on each occasion. In 1827, The Standard was started as a Tory organ, under the auspices of a knot of able writers, the chief of whom were Dr. Giffard, the editor, Alaric Attila Watts, and Dr. Maginn. It has always possessed a good connection among the Conservative party, but has never been a very profitable concern. After the abolition of the stamp duty its price was reduced to twopence, and in 1858 to one penny, and it was the first of the daily journals to offer a double sheet at that price. In recent times the Letters of 'Manhattan' have given an impulse to its circulation, from their novelty of style—an impulse which was probably further aided by the ridiculous but widely believed assertion that those letters had never crossed the Atlantic, but were penned beneath the shadow of St. Paul's.

The following statistics of newspapers in the chief countries of Europe in 1827, will probably prove interesting: France, with a population of—in round numbers—thirty-two millions, possessed 490 journals; the Germanic Confederation, with a population of thirteen millions, 305; Prussia, with a population of twelve millions, 288; Bavaria, with a population of four millions, 48; the Netherlands, with a population of six millions, 150; Sweden and Norway, with a population of four millions, 82; and Denmark, with a population of two millions, 80. Great Britain, with a population of twenty-three millions, far outstripped them all, for she boasted 483 newspapers; but was yet compelled to yield the palm to her Transatlantic kinsmen, for the United States, at the same date, with a population of twelve millions, circulated the unequalled number of 800. In looking at these figures, one cannot help being struck with the enormous disproportion between the journals of Roman Catholic and Protestant countries—a disproportion which is so significant that comment upon it is unnecessary. But the difference is still more plainly shown if we take two capitals. Rome, with a population of one hundred and fifty-four thousand, possessed only 3 newspapers, while Copenhagen, with a population of one hundred and nine thousand, enjoyed the advantage of having 53. The London papers were 100, the English provincial papers 225, the Irish papers 85, the Scotch 63, and the Welsh 10. The number of stamps issued was more than twenty-seven millions, of which London alone consumed more than fifteen millions; the number of advertisements was seven hundred and seventy thousand, of which London supplied nearly a half; and the amount of advertisement duty was £56,000, of which London contributed £22,000.

The year 1829 is remarkable for the first appearance of The Times with a double sheet, consisting of eight pages, or forty-eight columns. This great step in advance must have quite answered the expectations of its spirited proprietor, for in 1830 The Times paid to Government for stamps and advertisement duty no less than £70,000. The day of perfect freedom was beginning to dawn upon the press, although it took a quarter of a century to remove the last fetter, the stamp, and still longer, if we take into consideration the paper duty, which was removed in 1862. First came the abolition of the most oppressive portion of Lord Castlereagh's Six Acts, next the advertisement duties, and finally the stamp. The high price of the stamp, fourpence, kept the better journals at sevenpence, but a numerous class of unstamped journals at twopence sprang up in defiance of the law, and were allowed for a time to go on unchecked. They had a large circulation, one of them, The London Dispatch, attaining to twenty-five thousand a week. Growing bolder with their impunity, they indulged in the most abominable trash and the most frantic sedition and treason. They were of course prosecuted and punished, but they were never finally destroyed until the reduction of the stamp duty. They did good indirectly, for they formed one of the strongest arguments in favor of the abolition of that obnoxious impost.

In 1833 a battle royal raged between Daniel O'Connell and the press; but, as might have been expected, Dan was no match for the hydra-headed antagonist he had been rash enough to provoke. The quarrel originated in a complaint made by the Liberator of a misrepresentation of a speech of his, and he did this in so intemperate a manner that the reporters published a letter in The Times, in which they expressed their determination never again to report a speech of O'Connell's until he had apologized for the insults he had levelled at them. O'Connell vainly attempted to put the machinery of the House of Commons in motion against them, but, after repeated efforts, was obliged to give in. His attacks were principally levelled at The Times—which then counted among its contributors the brilliant names of Macaulay, Thackeray, and Disraeli—for he and John Walter were bitter foes. But he evoked several powerful defenders of the press, first and foremost among whom was Sir Robert Peel.

In 1834 the system of condensing the speeches in Parliament, and placing the summary before the leading articles, was first introduced into The Times by Horace Twiss. At this date there occurred a great schism between the proprietors and writers of The Sun, some of whom seceded, and brought out The True Sun, in opposition to that eccentric planet which always rises in the evening despite the general conviction of mankind that the sun is the luminary of the day. Douglas Jerrold, Laman Blanchard, and, greatest of all, Charles Dickens, commenced their apprenticeship to literature in this journal, which enjoyed, however, but a fleeting existence. Jerrold afterward started a paper of his own, which failed, and then became editor of Lloyd's Weekly London Newspaper, a post which he retained until his death, and which has since been ably filled by his son Blanchard Jerrold. Laman Blanchard became the editor of The Courier, but resigned it when it became a Tory organ, and was one of the original writers in and proprietors of Punch. Dickens transferred his services to The Morning Chronicle, in the columns of which the Sketches by Boz first appeared. Several acts of Parliament relating to newspapers were passed at this period. In 1833 the advertisement duty was reduced from three shillings and sixpence to one shilling and sixpence in England, and one shilling in Ireland. In 1834 an act was passed by which the newspapers of those foreign countries in which English journals were admitted free of postage, were allowed to enter Great Britain on the same terms. In 1835 a bill was passed to relieve the press from the action of common informers, and placed them under the jurisdiction of the attorney-general alone; and another, which forbade newspapers to publish lectures delivered at literary and scientific institutions, without the permission of the lecturer.

The time was now fast approaching for the reduction of the stamp duty. Government was getting wearied of the war with the hydra-headed unstamped monster, and at last adopted the only expedient likely to be successful in putting it down, which was to place the higher-class journals in a position to rival them. From 1831 to 1835 there had been no less than seven hundred and twenty-eight prosecutions, of which the year 1835 alone had produced two hundred and nineteen. This fact, joined to the influential agitation which was now being made for the repeal, caused the Government to decide upon bringing in a measure of relief. It took six months and an immense deal of speechifying to bring this measure to maturity; but at last, in 1836, the stamp duty was reduced from fourpence to one penny, being one halfpenny less than it had been originally fixed at in 1760. The Tories were the great friends of this reduction, and Lord Lyndhurst, who had been instrumental in abolishing many of the most oppressive enactments with which the measure had been clogged, wished to do away with the duty altogether. There was of course a loss to the revenue at first. In the first half year of the new duty, the number of stamps issued was 21,362,148, realizing £88,502. In the corresponding previous half year, under the old scale, the number of stamps had been 14,874,652, and the amount paid, £196,909, so that in six months the number of stamped newspapers had increased by about one half.

In 1837, The Economist was started by John Wilson, and attracted great attention by its statistical and politico-economical articles, Wilson afterward became secretary of the treasury, and, having been sent to India, died there, to add one more to the many illustrious victims that our Indian empire has exacted. In 1838 a most amusing hoax was perpetrated upon The Morning Post and Morning Chronicle, which announced the death of Lord Brougham, and published a most elaborate biography of him. But the next day there came a letter from Lord Brougham, declaring that he was still alive and hearty. The joke, however, did not end here—for people were ill natured enough to assert that he had been the author of the rumor himself, in order to learn what the world would say about him; and so widespread had this second rumor become, that Lord Brougham was compelled to write another letter contradicting it.

The next great event in the history of journalism is the commercial libel case, Boyle versus Lawson, the printer of The Times. Barnes had died, and had been succeeded by John T. Delane, a nephew of Mr. Walter, as editor, who still continues to occupy that responsible post. The matter originated thus: In May, 1841, The Times published a letter from the Paris correspondent, containing the particulars of an organized system of forgery on a gigantic scale, which had been agreed on by certain persons, whose names were published in full. The plan was to present simultaneously at the chief Continental cities letters of credit purporting to emanate from Glynn & Co., the London bankers. The confederates had fixed the sum they meant to realize at one million, and had actually secured more than £10,000 before the plot was discovered. One of them was Boyle, a banker, of good position, at Florence, and he brought an action for libel and defamation. He pressed on the trial, but The Times maintained its ground, and at an enormous expense despatched agents all over the Continent to collect evidence. The Times triumphantly succeeded in proving the truth of what it—The Times is always spoken and written of as an individual—had printed; but as the old law—the greater the truth the greater the libel—still existed, the jury were compelled to find a verdict for the plaintiff, which they did, with one farthing damages, and the judge clinched the matter by refusing the plaintiff his costs. Universal joy was expressed at the result of the trial, and public meetings were called together in London and the chief Continental cities for the purpose of making a subscription to defray the expenses of The Times in defending the action. The proprietors, however, declined this, but said that, at the same time, they should feel much gratified if a sum of money were raised for some public object in commemoration of the event. Accordingly it was decided to found two scholarships in perpetuity for Christ's Hospital and the City of London School at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, to be called the Times' Scholarships, and the nomination to them to be placed in the hands of the proprietors of The Times in perpetuity. Two marble tablets were also voted, at the cost of a hundred and fifty guineas each, with commemorative inscriptions, one to be placed in The Times office and the other in the Royal Exchange. Two somewhat similar tablets were also placed in Christ's Hospital and the City of London School. For these purposes the sum of £2,700 was very quickly subscribed, the lord mayor leading off with ten guineas. If anything had been wanting to place The Times upon the pinnacle of preëminence among journals, this famous trial firmly established it there, and ever since it has been looked up to as an oracle of the commercial world. But The Times was not contented to rest quietly on its oars. It was ambitious, and looked farther afield. In 1845, its vigor, enterprise, and disregard of expense were exemplified in a remarkable manner. The Times had been in the habit of sending a special courier to Marseilles, to bring its Indian despatches, and thus anticipate the regular course of the mail. The French Government threw every possible obstacle in the courier's way, and The Times took Lieutenant Waghorn, the originator of the Overland Route, into its pay. In October, 1845, a special messenger met the mail on its arrival at Suez on the 19th. Mounted on a dromedary, he made his way, without stopping, to Alexandria, where Waghorn awaited him with a steamer. Waghorn came viâ Trieste—special post horses and steamers and trains being ready for him at the various points of the route—and he reached London on the morning of the 31st, in time for his despatches to appear in the morning's issue of the paper. The result of this was that The Times reached Paris with the Indian news from London before the regular mail had reached that city from Marseilles. The next noticeable enterprise of The Times was the sending out commissioners to investigate the condition of the poor and laboring population of London in 1847, an enterprise which was crowned with the moat satisfactory results. The Times has always been the firm friend of the poor, and its columns are always open to the tale of distress. No case is advocated until it has been thoroughly investigated; but when once it has been mentioned in The Times, subscriptions pour in on all sides. At the commencement of each year especially, The Times publishes gratuitously appeals from public charities, and during last January the sums received through those appeals reached the large amount of £12,000. The last great exploit of The Times was the sending forth a special correspondent with the English army to the Crimea, a precedent which it has followed up since in China, India, Italy, America, and Schleswig-Holstein. But this was not the first occasion that reporters had accompanied our armies, for Canning despatched reporters with the troops sent to Portugal in 1826. The tactics of The Times are very generally misunderstood and misrepresented. Whatever objections cavillers and opponents may urge, and with truth too—for the course taken by The Times is not to be praised on all occasions—it cannot be denied that The Times is the first journal in the world, a position which it has reached by its enterprise, vigor, and ability. It has frequently proved its disinterestedness, and during the great railway mania of 1845, while it was receiving no less a sum than £6,000 weekly for advertisements, constantly cautioned its readers against the prevailing madness, and persistently predicted the crash that was certain to follow. The Times, while it appears to lead, in reality waits upon public opinion, and hence the accusations of inconsistency and tergiversation so freely lavished upon it. The Times is the printed breath of public opinion. It throws out a feeler, perhaps, though not quite at first, accompanied by some decided expression of opinion, and carefully watches the effect upon the public mind. Should that effect be different to what was expected, The Times knows how to veer round with the popularis aura. This is not always, however, done so skilfully but that the act is apparent. It is not the most dignified course that a journal which aspires to be—and which is—the leading journal of Europe ought to pursue; but The Times knows human nature, and knows, too, that were it to adopt any other course, it would fall from its high estate, and become a mere party organ. Moreover, The Times possesses an enormous prestige—deservedly won, as this article has endeavored to show—and that, in a conservative country like England, is considerably more than half the battle.