port and, when his brother James died, Benjamin, to make amends to him for having run away from Boston, set up his son in the printing business, the son being the James FrankHn, Jr., who afterward became the editor of the Newport Mercury.[1] He was also the partner of James Parker, the publisher of the Gazette in New York City.
Meanwhile, the demand for the printing press and for news journals spread throughout the colonies. Journalism developed in the South more slowly than in the North, a larger proportion of the Southerners living on their own land, especially in Maryland and Virginia; as a result, there was a sense of individual freedom which did not produce that political spirit that knits men together for a common purpose.[2]
Politics develops with the town, but on the other hand the landed proprietor developed a sociability and hospitality not found in the towns—a sociability and hospitality, however, that went to make a ruling class and not to make a democracy or to encourage democratic institutions. Virginia particularly lagged behind the other colonies in this regard. In the early days of the printing press the one attempt in Virginia to keep abreast of the new movement had been promptly quashed. In 1682 John Buckner published the Virginia laws of 1680; he was immediately summoned before the council and forbidden to do any more printing until the consent of the king had been given him, with the result that "for fortyseven years not another type was set in the Old Dominion."[3]
The backwardness of Virginia in this respect was partly due to the attitude that is shown in the statement of
