Louis-Philippe will be best appreciated from the fact that, while in 1828 the number of stamps issued was 28 millions, in 1836, 1843, 1845 and 1846 the figures were 42, 61, 65 and 79 millions respectively. At the last-mentioned date the papers with a circulation of upwards of 10,000 were (besides the Moniteur, of which the circulation was chiefly official and gratuitous) as follows: Le Siècle, 31,000; La Presse and Le Constitutionnel, between 20,000 and 25,000; Journal des Débats and L’Époque, between 10,000 and 15,000.
If we cast a retrospective glance at the general characteristics (1) of the newspaper press of France, and (2) of the legislation concerning it, between the respective periods of the devastating revolution of 1793–1794 and the scarcely less destructive revolution of 1848, it will be found that the years 1819, 1828, 1830 (July) and 1835 (September) mark epochs full of pregnant teaching upon our subject. We pass over, as already sufficiently indicated, the newspaper licence of the first-named years (1793–1794), carried to a pitch which became a disgrace to civilization, and the stern Napoleonic censorship which followed it—also carried to an excess, disgraceful, not, indeed, to civilization, but to the splendid intellect which had once given utterance to the words, “Physical discovery is a grand faculty of the human mind, but literature is the mind itself.”
The year 1819 is marked by a virtual cessation of the arbitrary power of suppression lodged till then in the government, and by the substitution of a graduated system of preliminary bonds and suretyships (“cautionnements”) on the one hand, and of strict penalties for convicted press-offences on the other. This initiatory amelioration of 1819 became, in 1828, a measure of substantial yet regulated freedom, which for two years worked, in the main, alike with equity towards the just claims of journalism as a profession and with steady development towards the public of its capabilities as a great factor in the growth of civilization. Those two years were followed by a widely contrasted period of five years. That was a term of entire liberty often grossly abused, and fitly ending with the just and necessary restrictions of September 1835. But that period of 1830–1835 was also signalized by some noble attempts to use the powers of the newspaper press for promoting the highest and the enduring interests of France. Not least memorable amongst these was the joint enterprise of Montalembert and Lamennais—soon to be aided by Lacordaire—when, by the establishment (October 1830) of the newspaper L’Avenir, they claimed for the church of France “her just part in the liberties acquired by the country,” and asserted for the sacred symbols of Christianity their lawful place, alike above the tricolor and above the lilies. “Dieu et la liberté” was the motto which Montalembert chose for his newspaper, as he had chosen it long before for the guiding star of his youthful aspirations. L’Avenir existed only for one year and one month. It came to its early end from no lack of energy and patience in its writers, but in part from that mission of the editors to Rome (November 1831) which, at least for a time, necessitated the discontinuance of their newspaper. Human regrets had higher than human consolations. “Our labours” on L’Avenir, wrote Montalembert, with simple truth, “decided the attitude of Catholics in France and elsewhere, from the time of the July revolution to the time of the second empire.”
There were many other papers, at this time and afterwards, which, like L’Avenir, were, in their degree, organs of ideas, not speculations of trade. But they cannot be even enumerated here. No very notable specially religious paper succeeded L’Avenir until the foundation in 1843—under widely different auspices, although twice at the outset the editorship was offered to Lacordaire—of L’Univers Religieux. That journal was edited, at first, by De Coux, then by Louis Veuillot; it underwent innumerable lawsuits, “warnings,” suppressions and interdicts, for causes very diverse. Several prelates suppressed L’Univers Religieux in their respective dioceses, amongst them the great bishop Dupanloup in that of Orleans (1853). Napoleon III. suppressed it in 1861, permitted it to reappear as Le Monde, and suspended it many times afterwards; but it survived all its misfortunes for a good many years. Le Monde had the curious fate, at one time, of being conducted jointly by the first editor of L’Avenir, Lamennais, and by George Sand, who had previously figured in the newspaper annals of France as co-foundress of L’Éclaireur de l’Indre, a journal published at Orleans. The account given by that brilliant writer of her adventures in what was then to her a new department of activity is an instructive one. With that breadth of sympathy which was so characteristic of her, she strove to interest all her friends (however varied in character, as in rank) in the enterprise. There is, perhaps, scarcely anything more amusing in French journalistic annals than is her (contemporary) account of the first meeting of the shareholders—at which, she tells us, about five hundred resolutions were moved for the guidance of the editor at his desk.
The impulse given to the growth of advertisements in the days which followed July 1830, became, as the years rolled on, sufficiently developed to induce the formation of a company—in which one of the Laffittes took part—to farm them,[1] at a yearly rent of £12,000 sterling (300,000 francs), so far (at first) as regarded the four leading journals (Débats, Constitutionnel, Siècle, Presse), to which were afterwards added two others (Le Pays and La Patrie). The combination greatly embarrassed advertisers, first, since its great aim was to force them either to advertise in all, whether addressing the classes intended to be canvassed or not, or else to pay for each advertisement in a selected newspaper the price of many proffered advertisements in all the papers collectively, and, secondly, because by many repetitions in certain newspapers no additional publicity was really gained, two or three of the favoured journals circulating for the main amongst the same class of buyers. La France was then the newspaper of the Conservative aristocracy of the nation; Le Monde and the Union more especially addressed the clergy; the Débats and the Temps were the journals of the upper mercantile class, the Siècle and L’Opinion of the lower or shopkeeping class. A man who asked to advertise briefly, in the Siècle, for example, alone, was charged 2 francs for each several insertion. If he went the round of the six, his advertisement cost him only 75 centimes per journal, for ten successive insertions in each of them, all round.
To a great extent, the inundation of newspapers which followed the revolution of February 1848 was but a parody on the revolutionary press of 1793. Most of them, of course, had very short lives. When Cavaignac took the helm he suppressed eleven journals, including La Presse and L’Assemblée Nationale. The former had at this period a circulation of nearly Loi Tinguy. 70,000, and its proprietor, in a petition to the National Assembly, declared that it gave subsistence to more than one thousand persons, and was worth in the market at least 1,500,000 francs. In August the system of sureties was restored. On the 13th June 1849 the president of the republic suspended Le Peuple, La Révolution Démocratique et Sociale, La Vraie République, La Démocratie Pacifique, La Réforme and La Tribune des Peuples. On July 16, 1850, the assembly passed what is called the “Loi Tinguy” (from the name of the otherwise obscure deputy who proposed it), by which the author of every newspaper article on any subject, political, philosophical or religious, was bound to affix his name to it, on penalty of a fine of 500 francs for the first offence, and of 1000 francs for its repetition. Every false or feigned signature was to be punished by a fine of 1000 francs, “together with six months’ imprisonment, both for the author and the editor.” The practical working of this law lay in the creation of a new functionary in the more important newspaper offices, who was called “secrétaire de la rédaction,” and was, in fact, the scapegoat ex officio. The “Loi Tinguy,” though now long repealed, has had a permanent influence on French journalism in the continued prevalence of signed articles, and the consequent prominence of individual writers as compared with the same class of work in other countries. In February 1852 all the press laws were incorporated, with increased stringency, into a “Décret organique sur la presse.” The stamp duty for each sheet was fixed at 6 centimes, within certain dimensions, and a proportional increase in case of excess.
In 1858 the order of the six leading Parisian papers in point of circulation was—(1) Siècle (2) Presse, (3) Constitutionnel, (4) Patrie, (5) Débats, (6) Assemblée Nationale. The number of provincial papers exceeded five hundred. “Newspapers, nowadays,” wrote a keenly observant publicist in that year, “are almanacs, bulletins, advertising mediums, rather than the guides and the centres of opinion.” In 1866 the change had become more marked still. The monetary success of Girardin’s many commercial speculations in this branch of commerce greatly increased the number of Parisian journals, whilst lowering the status of those of established rank. The aggregate daily issue of the Parisian “dailies” had increased to about 350,000 copies, but the evening paper, Le Petit Moniteur, alone issued nearly 130,000 of these. The average circulation of Le Siècle had fallen from 55,000 to 45,000 copies; that of La Patrie was reduced by one-half (32,000 to 16,000); that of Le Constitutionnel from 24,000 to 13,000; of L’Opinion Nationale from 18,000 to 15,000; whilst the chief journal of all—with grand antecedents and with a brilliant history of public service rendered—had for a time descended, it is said, from 12,000 copies to 9000. And yet almost over the whole of this very period the brilliant “Lundis” of Sainte-Beuve were making their punctual appearance in Le Constitutionnel, to be presently continued in Le Moniteur and in Le Temps; and writers like St Marc Girardin, Cuvillier-Fleury, and Prévost-Paradol were constantly writing in the Journal des Débats. Meanwhile, Villemessant and his colleagues were making their fortunes out of Le Figaro (begun 1854, but a daily from 1866), and helping to make frivolous petty “paragraphs” on matters of literature almost everywhere take the place of able and well-elaborated articles. Well might Albert Sorel, say,[2] “Our trumpery newspapers are the newspapers that pay.” In 1872 the circulation of Le Petit Journal (founded 1863), the pioneer of the French halfpenny press, was 212,500, and it went on rapidly increasing.
No incident in the newspaper history of this period made more temporary noise than did the strange charges brought in 1867 against the Débats, the Siècle and L’Opinion Nationale, by M. Kerveguen,
member for Toulon, in the French assembly. He charged them
