TO THE REPEAL OF THE STAMP ACT IN 1855,

WITH

SKETCHES OF PRESS CELEBRITIES.

BY

ALEXANDER ANDREWS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

WITH AN INDEX.

LONDON:

RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to her Majesty.

M DCCC LIX.

THE HISTORY

OF

BRITISH JOURNALISM.

66

CHAPTER I.

CUCHEVAL CLARIGNY'S "HISTOIRE DE LA PRESSE"-DANIEL STUART AND HIS
BRILLIANT STAFF-COLERIDGE, LAMB, SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND MACKIN-
TOSH-THE MORNING POST AND COURIER," AND WHAT THEY SOLD FOR
-BURNS SPURNS STUART'S OFFERS-COLERIDGE'S CHARGES AND STUART'S
DEFENCE-FOX'S OPINION OF COLERIDGE'S WRITINGS-DE QUINCEY ON THE
SAME-THE MORNING POST" LOOKING UP-MACKINTOSH WORKING FOR THE
"ORACLE" AND JOHN BULL-THE "
""
BRITISH PRESS ESTABLISHED GEORGE
LANE-STUART SELLS THE MORNING POST". -THE MORNING HERALD
AT THE BAR OF THE HOUSE-THE ALBION AND WHAT BEFEL IT-ITS
EDITORS, M'LEOD AND FENWICK-CHARLES LAMB BECOMES A REBEL AND A
TRAITOR-SIR FRANCIS BURDETT TRIES A MUZZLE ON THE PRESS-COBBETT'S
POLITICAL REGISTER "-NAPOLEON DECLARES WAR AGAINST THE ENGLISH
PRESS-THE GOVERNMENT SIDES WITH IT-BUT BETRAYS IT-TRIAL OF
PELTIER FOR A LIBEL ON NAPOLEON-NO ROOM FOR THE REPORTERS-
PELTIER SUBSIDISED SECRETLY AND PROSECUTED OPENLY.

THE more recent events of British journalism, which we are now approaching, have been dwelt upon more frequently and more fully than the former portion of the subject, and another writer has added a few contributions to the history of the press for the last fifty years. This is a Frenchman, M. Cucheval Clarigny, formerly editor in chief of the Constitutionnel of Paris, who, content with adopting Mr. Knight Hunt's newspaper records of two

centuries, has apparently made some research into the more recent annals of the press. * But he is soon tempted into the playground of his truant predecessors, who have revelled in wonderful stories of the vast circulation, the gigantic establishment, the world-wide information, the despotic influence, and the princely income of one paper, or the internal economy and getting up of another; in fact, jumped from the past into the middle of the present. As Mr. Hunt embarrassed himself with a kindred but too extensive subject, the liberty of printing, so M. Clarigny, not content with extending the range of inquiry so as to take in the United States, with their legion of journals, gives us a couple of chapters of the history of our existing monthly periodicals and reviews, apparently unconscious that that branch of literary history was commenced by Dr. Nathan Drake.† Thus is the history of the newspaper press again coffined up within unnecessarily narrow limits to admit kindred subjects which, after all, each claim a volume to themselves; but, in what is original of his remarks upon newspapers, M. Clarigny displays a wonderful capacity (unusual in a foreigner) of understanding by what means the newspaper attained its greatness in England, and what has been at various periods of its later career its position in relation to the other estates of the realm. Now and then he treads boldly out of the footsteps which Knight Hunt took straight across the region of history; but the march of both writers was too rapid to thoroughly investigate the objects by the way, and they hurried on to the present leviathan sight which the press exhibits, caring too little for those which lay by the wayside of the past.

The new century found hands humbly and obscurely at work on the newspapers that have since, with the aid of

* "Histoire de la Presse en Angleterre et aux Etats Unis," par Cucheval Clarigny. Paris, 1857.

Essays on Periodical Publications.