in the lobby and at the coffee-houses. This repeated infraction of the privilege of secret legislation led to the memorable proceedings of the House of Commons in 1771, with their fierce debates, angry resolutions and arbitrary imprisonments—all resulting, at length, in that tacit concession of publicity of discussion which in the main, with brief occasional exceptions, has ever since prevailed.
Evening journalism in England started originally with supplemental editions of the morning papers, giving the latest foreign war news. In July 1695, when William III. was fighting France in the Netherlands, a “Postscript to the Pacquet-boat from Holland to Flanders” was published with special advices from the seat of war; London evening press. and from that time there were frequent afternoon issues of morning journals, giving war news. In August 1706 a “Six at Night” evening paper was started in London. The first London evening paper of any importance, however, was the Courier (1792), which during the latter part of the Napoleonic War, with Mackintosh, Coleridge and Wordsworth among its contributors, became one of the chief papers of the day. It was edited successively by Daniel Stuart, William Mudford, Eugenius Roche, John Galt, James Stuart and Laman Blanchard. In 1827 a twenty-fourth share in the paper sold for 5000 guineas, but it gradually declined and came to an end in 1842, when it was incorporated by the Globe (still existing).
The principal metropolitan newspapers at different periods of George III.’s reign were the Public Advertiser, the Morning Post, the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Herald and finally The Times. Of these the Morning Post and The Times, still existing, are dealt with later. Of the three which eventually ceased to exist, the first London press in George III.’s reign. was known in 1726 as the London Daily Post and General Advertiser. In 1738 the first part of this title was dropped, and in 1752 General Advertiser was altered into Public Advertiser, a name which the letters of Junius made so famous. Many of these had appeared before the smallest perceptible effect was produced on the circulation of the paper; but when the “Letter to the King” came out (19th December 1769, almost a year from the beginning of the series) it caused an addition of 1750 copies to the ordinary impression. The effect of subsequent letters was variable; but when Junius ceased to write the monthly sale of the paper had risen to 83,950. This was in December 1771. Seven years earlier the monthly sale had been but 47,515. It now became so valuable a property that shares in it were sold, according to John Nichols, “as regularly as those of the New River Company.” But the fortunes of the Advertiser declined almost as rapidly as they had risen. It continued to appear until 1798, and then expired, being amalgamated with the commercial paper called the Public Ledger (dating from 1759). Actions for libel were brought against the paper by Edmund Burke in 1784, and by William Pitt in 1785, and in both suits damages were given.
The Morning Chronicle was begun in 1769. William Woodfall was its printer, reporter and editor, and continued to conduct it until 1789. James Perry succeeded him as editor, and so continued, with an interval during which the editorship was in the hands of Mr Sergeant Spankie, until his death in 1821. Perry’s editorial functions were occasionally discharged in Newgate in consequence of repeated prosecutions for political libel. In 1819 the daily sale reached nearly 4000. It was sold in 1823 to Mr Clement, the purchase-money amounting to £42,000. Mr Clement held it for about eleven years, and then sold it to Sir John Easthope for £16,000. It was then, and until 1843, edited by John Black, who numbered amongst his staff Albany Fonblanque, Charles Dickens and John Payne Collier, the circulation being about 6000. The paper continued to be distinguished by much literary ability, but not by commercial prosperity. In 1849 (the circulation having fallen to 3000) it became the joint property of the duke of Newcastle, Mr W. E. Gladstone and some of their political friends; and by them, in 1854, it was sold to Mr Sergeant Glover. From 1848 to 1854 Douglas Cook (afterwards of the Saturday Review) was editor. At length the Morning Chronicle ended in the Bankruptcy Court, after an existence of more than ninety years. The Morning Herald was founded and first edited by Henry Bate (Sir Henry Bate Dudley) in 1781, and came to an end at the close of 1869; for some time it was a popular Tory paper, and from 1835 to 1845 had a circulation of about 6000.
The development of the Press was enormously assisted by the gradual abolition of the “taxes on knowledge,” and also by the introduction of a cheap postal system. In 1756 an additional halfpenny was added to the tax of 1712. In 1765 and in 1773 various restrictive regulations were imposed. In 1789 the three-halfpence ledge Abolition of taxes on knowledge. was increased to twopence, in 1798 to twopence-halfpenny, in 1804 to threepence-halfpenny, and in 1815 to fourpence, less a discount of 20%. Penalties of all kinds were also increased, and obstructive regulations were multiplied. In the course of the struggle between this constantly enhanced taxation and the irrepressible desire for cheap newspapers, more than seven hundred prosecutions for publishing unstamped journals were instituted, and more than five hundred were imprisoned, sometimes for considerable periods. As the prosecutions multiplied, and the penalties became more serious, Poor Man’s Guardians, Democrats, Destructives and their congeners multiplied also, and their revolutionary tendencies increased in a still greater ratio. Blasphemy was added to sedition. Penny and halfpenny journals were established which dealt exclusively with narratives of gross vice and crime, and which vied with each other in every kind of artifice to make vice and crime attractive. Between the years 1831 and 1835 many scores of unstamped newspapers made their appearance. The political tone of most of them was fiercely revolutionary. Prosecution followed prosecution; but all failed to suppress the obnoxious publications.
To Bulwer Lytton, the novelist and politician (Baron Lytton), and subsequently to Milner Gibson and Richard Cobden, is chiefly due the credit of grappling with this question in the House of Commons in a manner which secured first the reduction of the tax to a penny on the 15th of September 1836, and then its total abolition at last in 1855. The measure for the final abolition of the stamp tax was substantially prepared by W. E. Gladstone during his chancellorship of the exchequer in 1854, but was carried by his successor in 1855. The number of newspapers established from the early part of 1855, when the repeal of the duty had become a certainty, and continuing in existence at the beginning of 1857, amounted to 107; 26 were metropolitan and 81 provincial. Of the latter, the majority belonged to towns which possessed no newspaper whatever under the Stamp Acts, and the price of nearly one-third of them was but a penny. In some cases, however, a portion of these new cheap papers of 1857 was printed in London, usually with pictorial illustrations, and to this was added a local supplement containing the news of the district.
Amongst the earliest results of the change in newspaper law made in 1855 was the establishment in quick succession of a series of penny metropolitan local papers, chiefly suburban, of a kind very different from their unstamped forerunners. They spread rapidly, and attained considerable success, chiefly as advertising sheets, and as sometimes the organs, more often the critics, of the local vestries and other administrations. One of them, the Clerkenwell News and Daily Chronicle, so prospered in the commercial sense, being crowded with advertisements, that it sold for £30,000, and was then transformed into the London Daily Chronicle (28th May 1877). Another conspicuous result of the legislation of 1855 was an enormous increase in the number and influence of what are known as “class papers” and professional and trade papers. The duties on paper itself were finally abolished in 1861.
“Taxes on knowledge” having thus been abolished, the later developments in newspaper history are mainly connected with the increase in number, due largely to the spread of education, the improvements in machinery and distribution and in collection of news, the constant adaptation to the new demands
