the organ of the Liberal party, has played a leading part in Canadian
history. In Australia the Sydney Bulletin, the Sydney Morning
Herald (1831—daily since 1840), Sydney Daily Telegraph, Melbourne
Argus (1846) and Melbourne Age (1854), with the evening Melbourne
Herald, have been the most important. In South Africa the Cape
Times (1876) has been the principal paper, but some of the Transvaal
English papers have exercised great influence in the disturbed
political conditions since about 1895.
India.—For a considerable period under the rule of the East India Company the Indian press was very unimportant both in character and influence. It was permitted to shape its course and to gain a position as it could, under the potent checks of the deportation power and the libel law, without any direct censorship. Nor was it found difficult to inflict exemplary punishment on the writers of “offensive paragraphs.”
Prior to Lord Wellesley’s administration the most considerable newspapers published at Calcutta were the World, the Bengal Journal, the Hurkaru, the Calcutta Gazette (the organ of the Bengal government), the Telegraph, the Calcutta Courier, the Asiatic Mirror and the Indian Gazette. Mr Duane, the editor of the World, was sent to Europe in 1794 for “an inflammatory address to the army,” as was Mr Charles Maclean, four years afterwards for animadverting in the Telegraph on the official conduct of a local magistrate.
The Calcutta Englishman dates from 1821. Lord Wellesley was the first governor-general who created a censorship (April 1799). His press-code was abolished by the marquis of Hastings in 1818. The power of transporting obnoxious editors to Europe of course remained. Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of its exercise was the removal of the editor of the Calcutta Journal (Silk Buckingham), which occurred immediately after Lord Hastings’s departure from India and during the government of his temporary successor, Mr John Adan. Buckingham’s departure was followed closely (14th March 1823) by a new licensing act, far exceeding in stringency that, of Lord Wellesley, and (5th April 1823) by an elaborate “Regulation for preventing the Establishment of Printing-Presses without Licence, and for restraining under certain circumstances the Circulation of Printed Books and Papers.” The first application of it was to suppress the Calcutta Journal.
In the course of the elaborate inquiry into the administration of India which occupied both Houses of Parliament in 1832, prior to the renewal of the Company’s charter, it was stated that there were, besides 5 native journals, 6 European newspapers: three daily, the Bengal Hurkaru, John Bull and the Indian Gazette; one published twice a week, the Government Gazette; and two weekly the Bengal Herald and the Oriental Observer. At this period every paper was published under a licence, revocable at pleasure, with or without previous inquiry or notice. At Madras, on the other hand, the press remained under rigid restriction. The Madras censorship was removed whilst the parliamentary inquiry of 1832 was still pending.
One question only, and that but for a brief interval, disturbed Lord William Bentinck’s love of free discussion. The too famous “Half-Batta” measure led him to think that a resolute persistence in an unwise policy by the home government against the known convictions of the men actually at the helm in India and an unfettered press were two things that could scarcely co-exist. It was on this occasion that Sir Charles Metcalfe recorded his minute of September 1830, the reasoning of which fully justifies the assertion—“I have, for my own part, always advocated the liberty of the press, believing its benefits to outweigh its mischiefs; and I continue of the same opinion.” This opinion was amply carried out in the memorable law (drafted by Macaulay and enacted by Metcalfe as governor-general in 1835), which totally abrogated the licensing system. It left all men at liberty to express their sentiments on public affairs, under the legal and moral responsibilities of ordinary life, and remained in force until the outbreak of the mutiny of 1857.
In 1853 Garcin de Tassy, when opening at Paris his annual course of lectures on the Hindustani language, enumerated and gave some interesting details concerning twenty-seven journals (of all sorts) in Hindustani. In 1860 he made mention of seventeen additional ones. Of course the circulation and the literary merits of all of them were relatively small. One, however, he said, had reached a sale of 4000 copies.[1]
In 1857 Lord Canning’s law, like that of 1823, on which it was closely modelled, absolutely prohibited the keeping or using of printing-presses, types or other materials for printing, in any part of the territories in the possession and under the government of the East Indian Company, except with the previous sanction and licence of government, and also gave full powers for the seizure and prohibition from circulation of all books and papers, whether printed within the Indian territories or elsewhere.
In 1878 an act was passed, which long remained in force, regulating the vernacular press of India: “Printers or publishers of journals in Oriental languages must, upon demand by the due officer, give bond not to print or publish in such newspapers anything likely to excite feelings of disaffection to the government or antipathy between persons of different castes or religions, or for purposes of extortion. Notification of warning is to be made in the official gazette if these regulations be infringed (whether there be bond or not); on repetition, a warrant is to issue for seizure of plant, &c.; if a deposit have been made, forfeiture is to ensue. Provision is made not to exact a deposit if there be an agreement to submit to a government officer proofs before publication.” After the disturbances of 1908–1909 further and more stringent regulations were made.
The Indian Daily Mirror (1863) was the first Indian daily in English edited by natives. The total number of journals of all kinds published within all the territories of British India was reported by the American consular staff in 1882 as 373, with an estimated average aggregate circulation per issue of 288,300 copies. Of these, 43, with an aggregate circulation of 56,650 copies, were published in Calcutta; 60, with an aggregate circulation of 51,776 copies, at Bombay. In 1900 it appeared from the official tables that there were about 600 newspapers, so called, published in the Indian empire, of which about one-third, mostly dailies, were in the Indian vernaculars. Calcutta had 15 dailies (Calcutta Englishman, &c.); Bombay 2 (Bombay Gazette); Madras 4 (Madras Mail); Rangoon 3 (Rangoon Times); Allahabad 2 (Pioneer); Lahore 2 (Civil and Military Gazette).
Authorities.—For late developments, see Mitchell’s, Sell’s and Willing’s Press Directories. For historical information: J. B. W. Williams, Hist. of British Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette (1908); H. R. Fox-Bourne, English Newspapers (1877); “The Newspaper Press,” Quarterly Review, cl. 498-537 (October, 1880); Hatton, Journalistic London (1882); Pebody’s English Journalism (1882); Progress of British Newspapers in the 19th Century (1901; published by Simpkin, Marshall & Co.); Andrews, History of British Journalism (2 vols., 1860); Hunt, The Fourth Estate; Grant, The Newspaper Press (3 vols., 1871–1873); Plummer, “The British Newspaper Press,” Companion to the Almanac (1876); Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, iv. 33-97. (H. Ch.)
3. Newspapers of the United States[2]
Massachusetts.—Boston was the first city of America that possessed a local newspaper; but the earliest attempt in that direction, made in 1689, and a second attempt, under the title Publick Occurrences, which followed in September 1690, were both suppressed by the government of Massachusetts. Nearly fourteen years afterwards (April 24, 1704), the first number of the Boston News-Letter was “printed by B. Green, and sold by Nicholas Boone.” Its proprietor and editor—so far as it can be said to have had an editor, for extracts from the London papers were its staple contents—was John Campbell, postmaster of the town. In 1719 he enlarged his paper, in order, as he told his readers, “to make the news newer and more acceptable; . . . whereby that which seem’d old in the former half-sheets becomes new now by the sheet. . . . This time twelvemonth we were thirteen months behind with the foreign news beyond Great Britain,[3] and now less than five months; so that . . . we have retrieved about eight months since January last”; and he encourages his subscribers with the assurance that if they will continue steady “until January next, life permitted, they will be accommodated with all the news of Europe . . . that are needful to be known in these parts.” But Campbell’s new plans were soon disturbed by the loss of his office, and the commencement of a new journal by his successor in the postmastership, William Brooker, entitled the Boston Gazette “published by authority” (No. 1, 21st December 1719). The old journalist had a bitter controversy with his rival, but at the end of the year 1722 relinquished his concern in the paper to Benjamin Green, who carried it on, with higher aims and greater success, until his death, at the close of 1733, being then succeeded by his son-in-law, John Draper, who published it until December 1762. By Richard Draper, who followed his father, the title was altered to Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter; and the maintenance of the British rule against the rising spirit of independence uniformly characterized his editorship and that of his widow (to whom, at a subsequent period, a pension was
- ↑ The Hurkaru and the Indian Gazette were long afterwards combined under the new leading title, Indian Daily News (with the old name appended).
- ↑ For the general conditions producing the modern type of American newspaper, see the first section of this article. In the following account of American and foreign newspapers, the historical material in the 9th and 10th editions of the Ency. Brit. has been utilized and in parts repeated.
- ↑ In other words, the attention of the Bostonian politicians was engrossed on the siege of Belgrade, when their contemporaries in the mother country were intent on the destruction of the Spanish fleet on the coast of Sicily.
