'Ah! do you not know we are all dreaming? My sleep is torpid, stubborn, accursed, but the dawn is here, and I must soon awake!'
So saying he moves out upon the gallery, where suddenly a new thought appears to strike him; he leans over the marble balustrade, looks to the right and left, then exclaims:
'Guests, we will go out to seek the young betrothed; it is strange they should have gone out to walk so early!'
He descends the vaulted stairway by which his nephew had ascended but a short time before. He stoops at the foot of the hill, picks some roses, murmuring:
'For my good child. Move silently, friends, she loved this bower of jessamines; we will surprise her here, and be the first to say good morning to the bride.'
With drooping heads his guests follow his steps as he glides along under the sad firs and stately pines. Pathways stretch before them, leading into forest depths and over mossy banks, or climbing hillsides laden with vines. The old man often calls his daughter loudly by her name; the laughing echoes answer mockingly; the followers burst into tears. Striking his forehead suddenly and violently with his hands, he cries:
'The dream! the nightmare! Why should it look to me so like truth? When will thetruesun rise upon me?' Then he rushes to a sturdy pine, embraces its rough trunk with both hisarms, strikes his head against it: 'Awake me, thou hard bark—awake me from this dreadful dream!' Turning back, he seizes one of the nearest of his followers by the throat, crying: 'Wrestle with thy lord, thou phantom of a servant, and wake him from his dream accursed!'
The frightened servant slips away and flees. The old man sighs, raises his eyes to heaven, an expression of submission to a divinely appointed torment shines for a moment upon his quivering features, as if he humbly offered to God the tortures of this cruel dream in penance for his sins. He walks on calmly for a while, then says:
'The bride is certainly on the lake; we will find her there.'
The sun is fully up now, drinking the dews from the leaves, and lighting up the waves of the lake with splendor. Large beaked boats with heraldic banners are rocking in the coves. Fastening the roses he had gathered for his child in his bosom, he walks to the shore, with fever burning more and more vividly in his face. No one ventures to suggest a return to the castle. Accustomed to obey the unbending will of their lord, they still pay homage to it, though it is no longer a thing of this world. Dark as midnight seems the day dawn to them; their own brains seem seething into madness.
'Perhaps she sails in one of her own light boats round the lake with her husband; she may be behind the fringe of willows, or among the little islands. Hallo! six of you take the oars; we will soon find her.'
They obey, he seats himself within, they push from shore.
'Why do you breathe so hard and look so weary to-day; is the water heavier than of old?'
They answer not, but row more rapidly. The larger boats are filled with guests and retainers; many follow the old lord, many remain on shore from lack of room. One after another the islets fly behind and hide themselves from view, with their circling wreaths of reeds and sedges. Rocks and bowlders are scattered over many of them, once sacrificial altars of old and cruel gods, now draped with hanging weeds and trailing mosses. Flocks of wild birds are startled up as the boats draw near them, frightened by the noise and plashing of the oars. Black clouds of them hang over the boat of the old man at every turn among the labyrinth of islands. He claps his hands:
'Here! we will surely find her here!' And when nothing is there to be seen, he asks the winds: 'Where is my child—my good and beautiful child?'
Having sailed round and round the whole group of islands, he orders them to row out into the middle of the lake, and then make for the other shore. He sinks into silence now; he leaves the helm, throwing himself suddenly down into the boat, while a ghastly pallor settles on his venerable face. He stretches his hand into the water, dives into it with his arm, listens to the rippling of the waves, then bursts into a loud scream of wild laughter. The oarsmen stop, in hopes he will order the boat to return to shore. He does not speak, but rises up and looks, first back at the boats following after, then at the mountains, the plains, the forests, the gardens, the ancestral castle. Constantly striking his palms together or rubbing his head with his hand, he exclaims:
'Who will waken me? I dream! I dream! I must, I will awake!'
The oarsmen shudder. Then, collecting his whole remaining force, he flings himself violently into the depths. Three of the men instantly plunge in after him; those in the boats hasten to the rescue. Having seen what had happened, they gaze upon the spot where the whirling, whistling waves were closing over the old lord and his faithful servants. The bold divers reappear, bearing in their arms the castle's lord. Under the heraldic banner they lay the last heir of the haughty House. In vain they try to resuscitate the venerable form; the dream is over now, but the mortal life remains under the blue waves of the ancestral lake.
The foreign prince inherits the ancient castle with all its treasures, the glories of the honored name, the entire Past of a noble race. He buries the bodies of his virgin wife and haughty father-in-law with funereal pomp and honor; but orders the corpse of the exile to be roughly thrown into unhallowed ground. In the very hall in which he had spent the first night of his bridal, surrounded by gay revellers, pledging full cups of ruby wine, with light jests flying from reckless lip to lip—he spreads, with the same comrades, the solemn Feast of the Dead. When the next dawn breaks upon them, mounting their vigorous steeds, they all ride back to the court of the King of the South. The king rejoices in his heart, giving thanks to the Fates that his leal subject has inherited vast wealth, and that the alien family, powerful through so many centuries, is extinct forever.
In the clefts of the mountains they remember and honor the young chieftain, whose body had been thrown into unhallowed ground. They know that his dishonored grave lies on that side of the castle through which will pass their path to victory; and they will plant the cross of glorious memories upon it as they march to the assault to drive the foreigner from the Home of his loyal ancestors. Eagles and vultures, led by some mystic instinct, are often seen to fly from the mountains to the towers and turrets of the castle. It is certain that in some not distant day the comrades of the chieftain will pour with resistless strength into its doomed walls.... Let another chant to you the Hymn of victory; I have sung the Dirge of agony!
Unhappy maiden! thou vanishest like a thought which cannot shape itself in any language known on earth, a dream of early love! Thou wouldst not lose thy snowy wings, and they bear thee on the whirlwind's track, where the mists fly, the clouds sail, the sound of harps dies, the leaves of autumn drift, the breath of sighs vanishes! Martyr to thine own dream of plighted faith, they bury thy fair form in ancestral earth; perchance the sculptured marble presses on thy faultless brow, for on its snow they grave the hated foreign name borne by thy alien husband! But the grass and wild flowers will soon grow unheeded around it, and in the green and flourishing world of the ever vanishing, thy name is never spoken.
On the very morning of thy death, the seven old men to whom obedience was commanded by the chieftain, curse thee because thou borest away with thee the soul of their hero. In their addresses to the people, with scorn and scoff upon their lips, they sneer and call thee 'WOMAN;' but the people weep, and pray: Lord Christ, Son of the Virgin, give to the maidenETERNAL PEACE!
We have seen that the tone of the newspapers had of late years greatly improved. Men of eminence and great intellectual attainments were to be found among the contributors to the various journals, and what is much more important—for this was pre-eminently the age of bribery and corruption—men of honesty and integrity. Still there was a large class of venal hirelings in the pay of the Government. These were described by Mr. Pulteney as 'a herd of wretches whom neither information can enlighten nor affluence elevate.' He further expresses his conviction that 'if their patrons would read their writings, their salaries would be quickly withdrawn, for a few pages would convince them that they can neither attack nor defend, neither raise any man's reputation by their panegyrics, nor destroy it by their defamation.' Sir Robert Walpole, who, as has been already stated, expended enormous sums in bribes to public writers, however expedient he may have thought it to retain their services, does not appear to have attached much importance personally to the writers either for or against him, at least if we may put faith in his own words. On one occasion he said: 'I have never discovered any reason to exalt the authors who write against the Administration to a higher degree of reputation than their opponents;' and on another, 'Nor do I often read the papers of either party, except when I am informed by some, who have more inclination to such studies than myself, that they have risen by some accident above their common level.'
Among the first rank of newspaper writers at this period must be placed the undying name of Henry Fielding, whose connection with journalism originated in his becoming, in 1739, editor and part owner of theChampion, a tri-weekly periodical of theSpectatorstamp, with a compendium of the chief news of the day in addition. The rebellion of 1745, like every other topic of absorbing interest, became the parent of a great many news sheets, the chief of which was probably theNational Journal, or County Gazette, inasmuch as it called forth a Government prosecution, and procured six months' imprisonment for its printer. In opposition to the Jacobite journals, several newspapers were started in the interest of the Government. Fielding brought out theTrue Patriot, in 1745, and proved no mean antagonist for the sympathizers with the banished Stuarts. In the prospectus issued with his first number, he has some rather unpleasant things to say of his literary brethren:
'The first little imperfection in these writings is that there is scarce a syllable of truth in any of them. If this be admitted to be a fault, it requires no other evidence than themselves and the perpetual contradictions which occur, not only on comparing one with the other, but the same author with himself on different days. Secondly, there is no sense in them. To prove this likewise, I appeal to their works. Thirdly, there is in reality nothing in them at all. And this also must be allowed by their readers, if paragraphs, which contain neither wit, nor humor, nor sense, nor the least importance, may be properly said to contain nothing.... Nor will this appear strange if we consider who are the authors of such tracts—namely, the journeymen of booksellers, of whom, I believe, much the same may be truly predicated as of thesetheir productions. But the encouragement with which these lucubrations are read may seem most strange and more difficult to be accounted for. And here I cannot agree with my bookseller that their eminent badness recommends them. The true reason is, I believe, the same which I once heard an economist assign for the content and satisfaction with which his family drank water-cider—viz., because they could procure no better liquor. Indeed, I make no doubt but that the understanding as well as the palate, though it may out of necessity swallow the worse, will, in general, prefer the better.'
These sarcasms are probably not much overcolored, for, with one or two exceptions, newspapers had sunk to a very low state indeed, and this may be looked upon as one of the most degraded periods in the history of journalism with which we have had to deal, or shall hereafter have to encounter. TheChampion, of course, was intended to be 'the better.' It did not, however, meet with any very great success, but still with enough to encourage Fielding in his attacks. In 1747 he dealt another heavy blow at the Jacobites, by commencing theJacobite Journal, in which they were most mercilessly ridiculed and satirized. His opponents replied as best they could, but they were not masters of the keen and polished weapons which the great novelist wielded, and they were therefore obliged to content themselves with venomous spite and abuse. The ablest of these antagonists was a newspaper entitledOld England, or the Constitutional Journal, an infamous and scurrilous publication, to which, however, the elegant Lord Chesterfield did not think it derogatory to contribute. Among other celebrities who were associated with the press at this time, we find Lord Lyttelton, Bonnell Thornton—the author of theConnoisseur, an essay paper, which, though inferior to theSpectatorandTatler, may be read with great pleasure and profit, even at the present time—the famous Beckford, Edward Moore, and Arthur Murphy. This last started theTest, a journal devoted to the demolition of Pitt, but which called forth an opponent of no mean pretensions, under the name of theCon-Test, for then, as now, as it always has been, and always will be, a good and taking title produced a host of imitations and piracies. In spite, however, of Murphy's great talents and its first blush of success, theTestsoon began to languish, and died of atrophy, after a brief existence of some eight or nine months. One of the most formidable anti-ministerialist papers which, had hitherto appeared, was theMonitor. It came out upon the accession of George III., and was especially occupied in attacking Lord Bute, the young monarch's chief minister and favorite. Its editor was John Entick, who is best known as the author of a dictionary, which was largely used in the schooldays of the last generation, and is still occasionally to be met with in old-fashioned families and out-of-the-way corners of the world. ThisMonitorwas as terrible to the marquis as another more modern Monitor was to the Merrimac, and the Scotch minion was compelled to bestir himself. He called in to his aid Bubb Doddington, who, during the lifetime of the preceding king, had done good service for the party of the Prince of Wales, in a journal styled theRemembrancer, and they, in conjunction with Smollett as editor, brought out theBritonin 1762. It was but a weakly specimen of a Briton from the very first. There were many causes which contributed to its downfall. Scotchmen were regarded throughout the nation with feelings of thorough detestation, and Smollett had made for himself many bitter enemies, of men who had formerly been his friends, by his acceptance of this employment. It was the hand of a quondam friend that dealt his paper thecoup-de-grace, none other in fact than John Wilkes, who had started theNorth Britonin opposition to Smollett.TheBritonexpired on the 12th of February, 1763, and upon the 23d of April, in the same year, appeared the never-to-be-forgotten No. 45 of theNorth Briton. The circumstances connected with this famousbrochure, and the consequences which followed upon its appearance, are so well known, that it will not be necessary to proceed to any great length in describing its incidents. This said No. 45 initiated a great fight, in which both sides committed several mistakes, won several victories, and sustained several defeats. Wilkes undoubtedly got the worst of it at first, but his discomfiture was set off by many compensations in different ways, which his long struggle procured for him. The obnoxious article, boldly assuming the responsibility of ministers for the king's speech—for Wilkes always asserted that he had the highest respect for the king himself—practically charged them with falsehood. Upon this they issued a general warrant for the apprehension of all the authors, printers, and publishers of theNorth Briton. Wilkes was seized and thrown into the Tower, where he was kept for four days, all access of friends and legal advisers being denied to him. At the end of that period he was brought before the Court of Common Pleas upon a writ ofhabeas corpus. Three points were raised in his favor, namely, whether the warrant was legal, whether the particular passage in the libel complained of ought not to have been specified, and whether his privileges as a member of Parliament did not protect him from arrest. The celebrated Lord Camden, then Chief Justice Pratt, presided, and ruled against Wilkes on the first two points, but discharged him from custody on the third. Wilkes hereupon reprinted the article. Both Houses of Parliament now took up the cudgels in behalf of the Government, and resolved that privilege of Parliament did not extend to arrest for libel. The House of Commons also resolved 'that theNorth Briton, No. 45, is a false, scandalous, and seditious libel, containing expressions of the most unexampled insolence and contumely toward his Majesty, the grossest expressions against both Houses of Parliament, and the most audacious defiance of the authority of the whole legislature, and most manifestly tending to alienate the affections of the people from his Majesty, to withdraw them from their obedience to the laws of the realm, and to excite them to traitorous insurrection against his Majesty's Government.' They also ordered the libel to be publicly burned by the common hangman, in front of the Royal Exchange. The authorities attempted to carry out this order, but an enormous mob assembled, drove off the officers, rescued the journal from the flames, and, in revenge, built a huge bonfire at Temple Bar, into which they threw the jackboot, the favorite emblem for expressing the public dislike of Lord Bute. It was now Wilkes's turn, and he brought an action in the following year against the under secretary of state, for the illegal seizure of his papers. Judge Pratt summed up in his favor, directing the jury that general warrants were 'unconstitutional, illegal, and altogether void.' As being the instrument in eliciting this memorable exposition of the laws, Wilkes deserves the gratitude of every Englishman who cares one jot for his constitutional rights, and of every lover of freedom throughout the world. He was not without immediate and substantial rewards, for the jury found a verdict for him, with £1,000 damages. The corporation of the city of London, who had taken his part throughout, eventually chose him sheriff, lord mayor, and chamberlain, and presented the lord chief justice with the freedom of the city, in token of their admiration for his conduct. On the other hand, Wilkes was expelled the House of Commons, on account of the libel, and on the very same day which witnessed his triumph in the Court of Common Pleas, he was tried in the Court of the King'sBench, for its republication, and found guilty. He refused to surrender to judgment, and was accordingly outlawed. He then proceeded to the Continent, from whence, some three or four years later, he addressed a petition to the king for a pardon. As no notice was taken of this, he returned to England, and paid a fine of £500, his outlawry being reversed. He next petitioned the House of Commons for readmission; but his petition was rejected, and a new writ issued, when he was returned by an overwhelming majority. The House expelled him again, and this farce of expulsion and reëlection was enacted four distinct times, until at last his election was declared null and void. He subsequently brought an action against Lord Halifax for illegal imprisonment and the seizure of his papers, and obtained £4,000 damages. He lived several years after this, but took no prominent part in political affairs, confining his energies to the sphere of the city. While he was in exile at Paris he published an account of his trial, etc., but, as he was unfortunate in his defenders, so was he in his adversaries. The writings of his friend and coadjutor, Charles Churchill, the clever writer, but disreputable divine, are wellnigh, if not entirely, forgotten, but the undying pencil of the immortal Hogarth will forever hold him up to the gaze of remote posterity. Whatever may be the feeling as to his political opinions, and however great may be our gratitude to him in one particular instance, his authorship of the abominable and filthy 'Essay upon Women'—which, by the way, formed one count in the indictment against him at his trial in the King's Bench—will always earn for him the execration of mankind. The success of Wilkes in his action against the secretary of state, was the signal for a host of other authors, printers, and publishers, who had been similarly attacked, to bring similar actions. They generally obtained heavy damages, and ministers learned a lesson of caution which they did not soon forget.
But while they persecuted the opposition scribes, ministers did not forget to reward those writers who advocated the cause of the Government. Men who had failed in all kinds of professions and employments, turned their attention to political literature, and, as far as emolument was concerned, met with great success, for although the talent was all on one side, the profit was all on the other. Among the chief of these fortunate scribblers was Dr. Francis, the father of the celebrated Sir Philip, Dr. Shebbrart, Hugh Kelly, and Arthur Murphy.
We now arrive at another most memorable period in newspaper history—the appearance of the Letters of Junius. The interest in the discovery of the source of these withering diatribes has been almost as great as in that of the Nile, but, unlike that 'frightened and fugitive' river, their origin will probably never be discovered with any certainty. A neat little library might be formed of the books and pamphlets that have been written upon this 'vexed question,' and the name of every man that was at all eminent at the time of their publication—and of a great many too that were by no means eminent—has been at some time or other suggested as the author. This controversy may be looked upon as a sort of literary volcano, which every now and then becoming suddenly active, after a period of quiescence of longer or shorter duration, sends forth great clouds of smoke—but nothing else; and then all things remain once more instatu quo. Our space will not permit us to make any remark upon the matter, further than to express an opinion that the preponderance of evidence appears to be in favor of Sir Philip Francis—the untiring, unscrupulous bloodhound who hunted down Warren Hastings—having been the author. The first of these famous letters appeared in thePublic Advertiser, of April 28, 1767; the lastof a stalwart family of sixty-nine, on January 21, 1772. Let Burke testify to their tremendous power. To the House of Commons he said: 'He made you his quarry, and you still bleed from the wounds of his talons. You crouched, and still crouch beneath his rage.' To the speaker he said: 'Nor has he dreaded the terrors of your brow, sir; he has attacked even you—he has—and I believe you have no reason to triumph in the encounter.' And again: 'Kings, lords, and commons are but the sport of his fury.' Speaking of the 'Letter to the king,' Burke said: 'It was the rancor and venom with which I was struck. In these respects theNorth Britonis as much inferior to him as in strength, wit, and judgment.' The Government tried every means in their power to discover the author, but in vain. Woodfall, the proprietor of thePublic Advertiser, knew or professed to know nothing about it, asserting that the letters were found in his box from time to time, but how they came there he could not tell. Let it suffice us to know that they admirably served the purpose for which they were written, viz., to defeat tyranny, and to defend freedom; that they are still allowed to rank as the greatest political essays that were ever written; and that Junius, whoever he was, will always be gratefully remembered among us, so long as we continue to display that watchful jealousy in the preservation of our liberties which has hitherto ever characterized us as a nation.
The Government prosecuted several newspaper proprietors and printers for publishing these letters, and more especially that addressed to the king. Among others who were brought to trial were Woodfall himself; John Almon, of theLondon Museum; Miller, of theLondon Evening Post; Baldwin, of theSt. James's Chronicle; Say, of theGazetteer, and Robinson, of theIndependent Chronicle. Almon was, however, the only one who was punished. The jury consisted of Government employés, carefully selected, and of course brought in a verdict adverse to him. Almon was fined and ordered to find substantial bail for his future good behavior.
ThePublic Advertiserwas a joint-stock concern, chiefly in the hands of the booksellers, among whom we find names which are still famous in Paternoster Row, such as Longman, Cadell, Rivington, and Strahan. Woodfall's ledger supplies us with the following information as to the expenses of getting it up, some of the items being sufficiently curious:
£s.d.Paid translating foreign news, etc.,10000Foreign newspapers,1400Foy, at 2s. a day,3140Lloyd's coffee house for post news1200Home news, as per receipts and incidents,282411½List of sheriffs,106Plantation, Irish, and Scotch news,5000Portsmouth letter,850Stocks,330Porterage to the stamp office,1080Recorder's clerk,110Sir John Fielding,5000Delivering papers fifty-two weeks, at £1 4s. per week,6280Clerk, and to collect debts,3000Setting up extra advertisements,31100A person to go daily to fetch in advertisements, getting evening papers, etc.,15150Morning and evening papers,2689½Price of hay and straw, Whitechapel,160Mr. Green for port entries,31100Law charges, Mr. Holloway,675Bad debts,1836—————£796152
The sale was about three thousand a day, and the shareholders received £80per share clear profit. The newspapers of those days paid the managers of theatres for accounts of their plays, as witness the following entries:
£s.d.Playhouses,10000Drury Lane advertisements,6486Covent Garden66110——————£230196
Theatrical advertising had not reached the pitch of development which it has since attained; the competition was not so severe, and managers did not find it necessary to have recourse to ingenious methods of propitiating dramatic critics, such as producing their plays at the commencement of a new season, or paying £300 a year for the supervision of the playbills—expedients which have been now and then employed in our own times.
Among the writers in thePublic Advertiserwere Caleb Whitefoord,dilettanteand wine merchant, Charles d'Este, who, like the popular London preacher of the present day, Bellew, first tried the stage, but not succeeding in that line, entered the pulpit; John Taylor, afterward editor of theMorning Post; Tom Syers, author of the 'Dialogues of the Dead,' and Woodfall's brother William. This last started theMorning Chronicle, in 1769, a paper whose fate it was, after lasting nearly a century, to pass into the venal hands of Sergeant Glover (who sold it to Louis Napoleon, in order that it might becomesub rosâa French organ in London), and to die in consequence in well-merited dishonor.
ThePublic Ledgerwas brought out by Newberry, the bookseller, in 1760, and is chiefly remarkable as being the vehicle through which Goldsmith's 'Citizen of the World' was first given to the public.
'Poet Goldsmith, for shortness called 'Noll,'Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll,'
'Poet Goldsmith, for shortness called 'Noll,'Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll,'
received two guineas for his first article, and afterward became a regular contributor at a guinea an article. William Radcliffe, the husband of the authoress of 'The Mysteries of Udolfo,' edited theEnglishman, a paper to which Edmund Burke contributed, and subsequently theEnglish Chronicleand theMorning Herald. Of all these he was proprietor, either altogether or in part, and it seems to have been customary for the editor to be the proprietor, or, more strictly speaking, for the proprietor to be the editor.
The prosecutions in connection with the letters of Junius were not the only attacks made upon the press at this time. Parliament again entered the lists against it. There was a certain Lord Marchmont, whose especial mission appears to have been to persecute the newspapers. Shakspeare says,
'The evil that men do lives after them,The good is oft interred with their bones;'
'The evil that men do lives after them,The good is oft interred with their bones;'
and whether or no my Lord Marchmont ever did any good cannot now be ascertained. All that is known of him is that he was very pertinacious and very successful in his onslaughts upon his victims, for, whenever he saw the name of any member of the House of Peers in a journal, he used to make a motion against the printer for breach of privilege, summon him before the bar of the House, and have him heavily fined. The House of Commons followed suit. The old bone of contention, the reporting of the debates, was raked up again. There were then two giants of reporting, William Woodfall, who, from his wonderful retentive powers, was called by thesobriquetof Memory Woodfall, and William Radcliffe. It was in 1771 that the House proceeded to active measures by a majority of ninety votes to fifty-five. Orders were given to arrest the printers, publishers, and authors of theGazetteer and New Daily Advertiserand theMiddlesex Journal, or Chronicle of Liberty. The printers went into hiding, and a reward of £50 was offered for their apprehension. Shortly afterward, this raid was extended to the printers of theMorning Chronicle,St. James's Chronicle,General Post,London Evening Post,Whitehall Evening Post, andLondon Packet. Some of these appeared at the bar of the House, and actuallymade their submission on their knees. Miller, of theLondon Evening Post, declined to surrender, and was, after some difficulty, arrested under a warrant from the speaker. He was taken before the lord mayor, who was a member of the House of Commons. The city's chief magistrate—let his name, Brass Crosby, be remembered with honor—declared the warrant illegal, discharged Miller, and committed the speaker's messenger for assault. The same thing was done in the case of Wheble, of theMiddlesex Journal, who was taken before John Wilkes, then sitting as alderman at Guildhall; and in that of Thompson, of theGazetteer, who was taken before Alderman Oliver. The ground for their discharge was that the speaker's warrant had no force within the boundaries of the city, without being countersigned by a magistrate of the corporation. The House of Commons became furious, and ordered the attendance of Crosby and Oliver, but, taught by old experience, did not in the first instance think it desirable to meddle with Wilkes. The civic magistrates stood their ground manfully, and produced their charters. The House retorted by looking up the resolutions passed on various occasions against the publication of the debates. Meanwhile a mob assembled outside, and abused and hustled the members on their way to the House. After a fierce debate, Oliver was committed to the Tower. The attendance of Wilkes was then ordered for the 8th of April, but, in the mean time, the House, like Fear as represented by Collins in his Ode to the Passions,
'back recoiled...Even at the sound himself had made;'
'back recoiled...Even at the sound himself had made;'
and accordingly got out of the difficulty by adjourning over the day for which the redoubtable Wilkes had been summoned. On the 27th of April, however, the lord mayor was sent to the Tower. The whole country rang with indignation; but, nevertheless, the city magistrates remained incarcerated until the 23d of July, when the Parliament was prorogued, and, its power of imprisonment being at an end, they were set free. Such was the issue of the last battle between the Parliament and the press, on the question of publishing the debates. It was fought in 1771, and had been a tougher conflict than any of its predecessors, but it was decisive. There is no danger of the subject being reopened; the reporting of the debates is now one of the most important of the functions of our newspapers; and the members themselves are too sensible of the services rendered them by the reporters' gallery to be suicidal enough to inaugurate a new crusade against it. What those services are, any one who has been patriotic or curious enough to sit out a debate in the strangers' gallery over night, and then to read the speeches, to which he has listened, in the newspapers next morning, can readily appreciate. Hazy ideas have become clear, mutilated and unintelligible sentences have been neatly and properly arranged, needless repetitions and tautological verbiage have disappeared; there is no sign of hesitation; hums and haws, and other inexpressible ejaculations, grunts, and interpolations find no place; the thread of an argument is shown where none was visible before, and all is fluent, concise, and more or less to the point.
Meanwhile the tone of the press had again greatly improved, partly owing to purification through the trials which it had undergone, and partly owing to the better taste of the public. Its circulation had rapidly increased. In 1753 the number of stamps on newspapers in the United Kingdom was 7,411,757; in 1760, 9,464,790; in 1774, 12,300,608; in 1775, 12,680,906; and in 1776, 12,836,000, a halt in its progress being caused by Lord North's new stamp act,raising the stamp from one to one and a half pence. The ordinary price of a news sheet was two or two and a half pence, but this was more than doubled by its cost of transmission through the post office, which, for a daily paper, was £5 a year. TheMorning Post, the full title of which was originally theMorning Post and Daily Advertiser, first came out in 1772. In 1775 it appeared regularly every morning, under the editorship of the Rev. Henry Bate, afterward the Rev. Sir Henry Bate Dudley, Bart. TheGentleman's Magazine—that prolific mine to whose stores of wealth the present series of articles is beholden times out of number—gives a curious account of a duel into which this clerical editor was forced in his clerical capacity. Editorial duels were not unknown in those days. Wilkes had fought one or two, as well as other editors; but these were the circumstances of Mr. Bate's encounter:
'The cause of quarrel arose from some offensive paragraphs that had appeared in theMorning Post, highly reflecting on the character of a lady, for whom Captain Stoney had a particular regard. Mr. Bate had taken every possible method, consistent with honor, to convince Captain Stoney that the insertion of the paragraphs was wholly without his knowledge, to which Mr. Stoney gave no credit, and insisted on the satisfaction of a gentleman, or the discovery of the author. This happened some days before, but meeting, as it were by accident, on the day before mentioned (January 13, 1777), they adjourned to the Adelphi, called for a room, shut the door, and, being furnished with pistols, discharged them at each other without effect. They then drew swords, and Mr. Stoney received a wound in the breast and arm, and Mr. Bate one in the thigh. Mr. Bate's sword bent and slanted against the captain's breastbone, which Mr. Bate apprising him of, Captain Stoney called to him to straighten it, and in the interim, while the sword was under his foot for that purpose, the door was broken open, or the death of one of the parties would most certainly have been the issue.'
Another eminent writer in thePublic Advertiserwas John Horne, afterward John Horne Tooke, the author of the 'Diversions of Purley,' a man to be always remembered with gratitude in America, for the part which he took in the struggle between the colonies and the mother country. His connection with the press was one long series of trials for libel, in which he always got the worst of the fray. In fact, he rather appeared to like being in hot water, for he more than once wrote an article with the full intention of standing the trial which he knew would be sure to follow its publication. One of his reasons may have been that this was the only way in which he could indulge his penchant for forensic disputation. He had been bred a clergyman, but, disliking the retirement of a quiet country parsonage, he threw up his preferment, abandoned his clerical functions altogether, and came to London to keep his terms at the Temple. The benchers, however, holding the force of the maxim, 'Once in orders always in orders,' refused to admit him to the degree of barrister at law. In 1771 he founded the Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights, one of the objects of which was to uphold the newspapers in their conflicts with their great foe, the law of libel, and to defray the expenses which were thus incurred. But, owing to some quarrel with Wilkes, he withdrew from his connection with this society, and started a new one—the Constitutional Society—which was founded in the interests of the American colonies. His publication of the doings of this society procured for him the distinction of another trial, the upshot of which was that he was fined £200, imprisoned for a year, and ordered to find bail for his good behavior for three years more. After two unsuccessful attempts he got into Parliament, and proved a very troublesomeand formidable antagonist to ministers, as might be expected from a prominent member of the London Corresponding Society, which, consisting chiefly of working men, had for its main objects the establishment of universal suffrage and annual Parliaments. This society owed its origin to the French Revolution, and it kept up a regular correspondence with the National Convention and the French Jacobins. It numbered about fifty thousand members, in different parts of the kingdom, and disseminated its opinions by means of newspapers, pamphlets, and handbills, which were published at a low price, or given away in the streets. One of the most influential of these pamphlets was Tom Paine's 'Rights of Man,' for writing which he was tried and convicted. Erskine was his counsel, and in the course of his speech said:
'Other liberties are held under Governments, but the liberty of opinion keeps Governments themselves in due subjection to their duties. This has produced the martyrdom of truth in every age, and the world has been only purged from ignorance with the innocent blood of those who have enlightened it.'
The effect of these writings was that Government became alarmed, and a proclamation was issued against seditious speaking and writing. Thehabeas corpusact was suspended, and political trials became the order of the day. Horne Tooke's was one of the latest of these trials, in 1794. Erskine was his counsel, and was more successful than when defending Paine. The public excitement had by this time very much toned down, and Tooke was acquitted. One result of this trial was to secure the fortunes of Erskine; but another and much more important one was to establish on a firmer basis the right of free discussion and liberty of speech, and to check the ministry in the career of terrorism and oppression upon which they had entered. Looking back upon these trials, at this distance of time, one cannot but feel a conviction that the fears of the Government and the nation were absurdly exaggerated. The foundations of English society and British institutions were too firmly fixed to be easily shaken, even when the whole continent of Europe was convulsed from one end to the other. But the London Corresponding Society still continued its efforts, till its secretary was tried and convicted, and the society itself was suppressed, along with many other similar associations, by an act of Parliament, called the Corresponding Societies Bill, in 1799. Tooke's connection with it had ceased some time before; in fact, it is more than doubtful if he had ever been a thorough-going supporter of it in heart, or had any other object than that of making political capital out of it, and of indulging his belligerent proclivities. He died in 1812, at the age of seventy-six.
In 1777 there were seventeen regular newspapers published in London, of which seven were daily, eight tri-weekly, one bi-weekly, and one weekly. In 1778 appeared the first Sunday newspaper, under the title ofJohnson's Sunday Monitor.
We have now arrived at the threshold of a very important event—too important, in fact, to be introduced at the end of an article, and which we therefore reserve for our next number. That event is the birth of theTimes.
Warm and bright the sun is shiningOn the farmhouse far away,Like a pleasant picture lyingBright before my gaze all day.And I see the tall, gray chimney,And the steep roof sloping down;And far off the spires rise dimlyOf the old New Hampshire town.And the little footpath creepingThrough the long grass to the door,And the hopvine's tresses sweepingThe low roof and lintels o'er.And the barn with loft and rafter,Weather beaten, scarred, and wide—And the tree I used to clamber,With the well-sweep on one side.And beyond that wide old farmyard,And the bridge across the stream,I can see the ancient orchard,Where the russets thickly gleam,And the birds sing just as sweetly,In the branches knarled and low,As when autumns there serenelyWalked a hundred years ago.And upon the east are beamingThe salt meadows to the sea,Or the hillside pastures, dreamingOf October pleasantly.On the west, like lanterns glimmerThick the ears of corn to-day,That I sowed along each furrow,Singing as I went, last May.So it hangs, that vision tender,Over all my loss and pain,Where the maples flame their splendorBy the old house in the lane.And, beside the warm south window,At this very hour of day,Where the sunbeams love to linger,With her knitting dropped away,She is sitting—mother—mother,With your pale and patient face,Where the frosted hairs foreverShed their sad and tender grace.Are you thinking of that morningYour last kisses faltered down,When the summer sun was dawningO'er the old New Hampshire town?For my country, in her anguish,Came betwixt us mightily:'Save me, or, my son, I perish!'Was her dread appeal to me.Youth and strength and life made answer:When that cry of bitter stressWoke the hills of old New Hampshire,Could I give my country less?And not when the battle's thunder,Crashed along our ranks its power—And not now, though fiercer hungerDrains my life-springs at this hour—Would I fainter make the answer,Or the offering less complete,That I laid, in old New Hampshire,Joyful at my country's feet!Though your boy has borne, dear mother,Watching by that window low,Through the long, slow hours this hungerIt would break your heart to know.Though the thought of that old larder,And the shelves o'erflowing there,Made the pang of hunger harderThrough the day and night to bear.And the doves have come each morning,And the lowing kine been fed,While your only boy was starvingFor a single crust of bread!But through all this need and sorrowHas the end been drawing nigh:In these prison walls, to-morrow,It will not be hard to die.Though, upon this cold floor lying,Bitter the last pang may be—Still your prayers have sweet replying—The dear Lord has stood with me!And His hand the gates shall open,And the home shall fairer shine,That mine earthly one was given,And my life, dear land, for thine.So I patient wait the dawningThat shall rise and still this pain—Brighter than that last sweet morningBy the old house in the lane!
Warm and bright the sun is shiningOn the farmhouse far away,Like a pleasant picture lyingBright before my gaze all day.
And I see the tall, gray chimney,And the steep roof sloping down;And far off the spires rise dimlyOf the old New Hampshire town.
And the little footpath creepingThrough the long grass to the door,And the hopvine's tresses sweepingThe low roof and lintels o'er.
And the barn with loft and rafter,Weather beaten, scarred, and wide—And the tree I used to clamber,With the well-sweep on one side.
And beyond that wide old farmyard,And the bridge across the stream,I can see the ancient orchard,Where the russets thickly gleam,
And the birds sing just as sweetly,In the branches knarled and low,As when autumns there serenelyWalked a hundred years ago.
And upon the east are beamingThe salt meadows to the sea,Or the hillside pastures, dreamingOf October pleasantly.
On the west, like lanterns glimmerThick the ears of corn to-day,That I sowed along each furrow,Singing as I went, last May.
So it hangs, that vision tender,Over all my loss and pain,Where the maples flame their splendorBy the old house in the lane.
And, beside the warm south window,At this very hour of day,Where the sunbeams love to linger,With her knitting dropped away,
She is sitting—mother—mother,With your pale and patient face,Where the frosted hairs foreverShed their sad and tender grace.
Are you thinking of that morningYour last kisses faltered down,When the summer sun was dawningO'er the old New Hampshire town?
For my country, in her anguish,Came betwixt us mightily:'Save me, or, my son, I perish!'Was her dread appeal to me.
Youth and strength and life made answer:When that cry of bitter stressWoke the hills of old New Hampshire,Could I give my country less?
And not when the battle's thunder,Crashed along our ranks its power—And not now, though fiercer hungerDrains my life-springs at this hour—
Would I fainter make the answer,Or the offering less complete,That I laid, in old New Hampshire,Joyful at my country's feet!
Though your boy has borne, dear mother,Watching by that window low,Through the long, slow hours this hungerIt would break your heart to know.
Though the thought of that old larder,And the shelves o'erflowing there,Made the pang of hunger harderThrough the day and night to bear.
And the doves have come each morning,And the lowing kine been fed,While your only boy was starvingFor a single crust of bread!
But through all this need and sorrowHas the end been drawing nigh:In these prison walls, to-morrow,It will not be hard to die.
Though, upon this cold floor lying,Bitter the last pang may be—Still your prayers have sweet replying—The dear Lord has stood with me!
And His hand the gates shall open,And the home shall fairer shine,That mine earthly one was given,And my life, dear land, for thine.
So I patient wait the dawningThat shall rise and still this pain—Brighter than that last sweet morningBy the old house in the lane!