Philadelphia in the same year. Then James Franklin started the Boston Courant in 1721, but, after some persecution from the authorities, it passed nominally under the management of Benjamin Franklin. It ceased to exist in 1727. It was too independent. The first newspaper in New York made its entrée in 1725. It was the New York Gazette, and was the pioneer of the wonderfully enterprising newspapers of the great metropolis of the present time. Another Gazette, then the favorite name for newspapers, came out in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1727. Another in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1731, and yet another, the Rhode Island Gazette, in Newport, in 1733. There was very little originality in names in this early period of newspapers, for we find that the first one printed in Virginia was the Gazette, and published in Williamsburg in 1736. Twenty years later, in 1756, the New Hampshire Gazette, yet in existence, was published in Portsmouth, N. H. Thus, with the discovery of printing, the initial printed newspapers of the world appeared in the following order: Other papers were of course published in Europe and in the United States prior to the Revolution of 1776, but the object we have in view, in this introductory chapter, is to give the first sheets as they appeared in the world. These twenty Gazettes, and NewsLetters, and Occurrences were the pioneers. Although they were the merest chroniclers of brief items of news, bits of history, without The Age of Steam and Electricity. xli philosophy, to be used and rearranged in after ages, they were the originators of the palladiums of the people, now so numerous and necessary wherever the rights of man are recognized, and corrupt corporations, and political leaders and "rings" are to be exposed. Very little space was devoted, in these early days, to editorial articles, or communications, or expression of opinions. News, with an advertisement here and there, filled the short columns in the small half sheets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was in the next epoch, between 1755 and 1783, that intellect began to manifest itself, and political and religious liberty receive its great impulse from the public press, particularly in the United States, resulting in the Revolution of 1776. If, as in the case of Benjamin Harris in 1690, or James Franklin in 1721, those journals indulged in the modern luxury of publicly uttering their political sentiments, or even in a free publication of news affecting the authorities, they were doomed to persecution and punishment, as in England under Charles the First and Second in the sixteenth, and in France under Napoleon the Third and Thiers in the nineteenth century. These initial sheets were an illustration of the papers, and the people, and the times of those early periods, as the leading journals of to-day are the illustration of the papers, and people, and the times of our epoch. Our modern organs of public opinion-the Augsburg Gazette, the London Times, the Paris Journal des Débats, and the New York Herald of 1872, with their daily circulation of a quarter of a million sheets, or a million and a half of readers, are the natu ral and progressive result and historical contrast of the Nuremberg Gazette of 1457, the London Weekley Newes of 1622, the Gazette de France of 1631, and the Boston News-Letter of 1704, with their weekly circulation of less than two thousand copies, or ten thousand readers. Slow chroniclers and imperfect impressions of 1457 and 1622 compared with the rapidity of steam, the flash of electricity, and the perfect photographic impressions of 1872! JOURNALISM IN AMERICA. THE FIRST EPOCH. 1690-1704. CHAPTER I. THE INITIAL NEWSPAPER. HARRIS'S PUBLICK OCCURRENCES IN BOSTON.-ONE DAY'S EXISTENCE ONLY. -ITS CONTENts.—The reprINTED LONDON GAZETTE IN New York. THERE is always a beginning in every nation and with every individual. The primer is every where. All created things have an origin. Where there is a necessity in a community, some one supplies the want. The activity of the human intellect is constantly meeting the requirements of the human family. When ideas, and signs, and words came, something was necessary to put words into shape to communicate ideas with greater rapidity. Type were invented for this purpose. Ink and rude presses came with type, as gutta-percha with the telegraph. Written news-slips were too slowly prepared even for the slow age of Gutenburg and Schoeffer. Newspapers, therefore, became a necessity, and were invented in their turn. Then came steam and electricity as auxiliary powers to intellect. What next? The pneumatic tunnel—the universal newspaper carrier! With the progress of civilization and the increase of population in America, the same elements, the same manners, the same customs, the same wants, the same desires that existed in Europe were required here. We imported them and paid taxes on them. Newspapers had become a necessity in England, France, and Germany; they were equally so in America. We therefore imported the idea, and the type, and the ink, and the press, and the paper. So a newspaper was established on this side of the Atlantic. It made its first appearance in Boston, and that city has the honor and the glory of bringing into existence this useful and popular institution. Seventy years after the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, and two hundred and fifty years after the invention of printing, a newspaper was issued in that colony. It lived one day, and one copy only is known to have been preserved. That specimen sheet-that great curiosity in newspaper literature, is in the Colonial State Paper Office in London. It is not mentioned in any history that we have seen, nor in Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, that the capital of Massachusetts derived its sobriquets of Athens of America, or the Hub of the Universe, from the important fact that the first American newspaper was printed there. It is not altogether unlikely that such is the fact. All we need say is that Boston enjoys these titles to fame, and she gave birth to the first newspaper. The people of that labyrinthine city feel that these titles belong to them. They are so much accustomed to the sound of the names that they hear them without visible emotion and with the utmost placidity. The historian of Salem, the Rev. J. B. Felt, in his researches for facts connected with that ancient commercial town, discovered the copy of the "original newspaper" in the State Paper Office. Till then it was believed that the News-Letter, issued fourteen years later, was the first gazette printed on this side of the Atlantic. The pioneer of American journalism was published by Benjamin Harris at the London Coffee-house, and was printed for him by Richard Pierce on Thursday, the 25th of September, 1690, nearly two centuries after Columbus discovered this continent. This newspaper was printed on three pages of a folded sheet, leaving one page blank, with two columns to a page, and each page about eleven inches by seven in size. It was intended by its enterprising projector as a monthly, which, in his "journalistic" dreams, might do to start with in that progressive town. We give the editor's prospectus, which is a model in its way. It exhibits a comprehensiveness, common in the early days of newspapers, that must be charming and refreshing to many journalists of the more modern era : NUMB. 1. PUBLICK Both FORREIGN and DOMESTICK. Boston, Thursday, Sept. 25th, 1690. It is designed that the Countrey shall be furnished once a moneth (or if any Glut of Occurrences happen oftener) with an Account of such considerable things as have arrived unto our Notice. In order here unto, the Publisher will take what pains he can to obtain a Faithful Relation of all such things; and will particularly make himself beholden to such Persons in Boston whom he knows to have been for their own use the diligent Observers of such matters. That which is herein proposed, is, First, That Memorable Occurrents of Divine Providence may not be neglected or forgotten, as they too often are. Secondly, That people everywhere may better understand the Circumstances of Publique Affairs, both |