334 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 206. 



without them ? It is not free from error, and no 

 estate of the realm can be. The purity of the 

 public press will be increased as Christianity ad- 

 vances. There is no nation in the world which 

 can boast of a press so moral, and so just, as the 

 daily newspaper press of Great Britain. The vic- 

 tories it achieves are seen and felt by all : and 

 when compared with the newspaper press of other 

 countries, it has superior claims to our admiration 

 and regard. 



Taking The Times as the highest type of that 

 class of newspapers which we denominate the daily 

 press, these remarks will more particularly apply. 

 The history of such a paper, and its wonderful 

 career, is not sufficiently known, and its great 

 commercial and intellectual power not adequately 

 estimated. The extinction of such a journal (could 

 we suppose such a thing) would be a public 

 calamity. Its vast influence is felt throughout 

 the civilised world ; and we believe that influence, 

 generally speaking, is on the side of right, and for 

 the promotion of the common weal. It is strange 

 that such an organ of public sentiment should have 

 been charged with the moral turpitude of receiv- 

 ing bribes. That it should destroy its reputation, 

 darken its fair fame, and undermine the very 

 foundation of its prosperity, by a course so de- 

 grading, we find it impossible to believe. We feel 

 assured it is far removed from everything of the 

 kind : that its course is marked by great honesty 

 of purpose, and its exalted aim will never allow it 

 to stoop to anything so beneath the dignity of its 

 character, and so repugnant to every sense of rec- 

 titude and propriety. It is no presumption to 

 assert that, under such overt influences, it remains 

 unmoved and immovable ; and to reiterate a re- 

 mark made in the former part of this article, " its 

 independency can never be bribed, or its patron- 

 age won by unlawful means." Looking at it in 

 its colossal strength, and with its omnipotent 

 power (tor truth is omnipotent), it may be classed, 

 without any impropriety, among the wonders of 

 the world. 



Allow me to give to the readers of " N. & Q." 

 the following facts in connexion with The Times, 

 and on the subject of newspapers generally. They 

 are deserving of a place in your valuable journal. 

 There were sold of The Times on Nov. 19, 1852, 

 containing an account of the Duke of Wellington's 

 funeral, 70,000 copies : these were worked ofl" at 

 the rate of from 10,000 to 12,000 an hour. The 

 Times of Jan. 10, 1806, with an account of the 

 funeral of Lord Nelson, is a small paper com- 

 pared with The Times of the present day. Its size 

 is nineteen inches by thirteen : having about eighty 

 advertisements, and occupying, with woodcuts of 

 the cofHn and funeral car, a space of fifteen inches 

 by nine. Nearly fifty years have elapsed since 

 then, and now the same paper frequently publishes 

 a double supplement, which, with the paper itself. 



contains the large number of about 1,700 adver- 

 tisements. * 54,000 copies of The Times were sold 

 when the Royal Exchange was opened by the 

 Queen ; 44,500 at the close of Rush's trial. In 

 1828, the circulation of The Times was under 

 7,000 a day ; now its average circulation is about 

 42,000 a day, or 12,000,000 annually, f The gross 

 proceeds of The Times, in 1828, was about 45,000/. 

 a year : and, from an article which appeared twelve 

 months ago in its columns, it now enjoys a gross 

 income equal to that of a flourishing German 

 principality. 



We believe we are correct when we assert, that 

 there were sold of the Illustrated London Netvs, 

 with a narrative of the Duke's funeral (a double 

 number), 400,000 copies. One newsman is said to 

 have taken 1000 quires double number, or 2000 

 quires single number : making 27,000 double 

 papers, or 54,000 single papers (twenty- seven 

 papers being the number to a quire), and for 

 which he must have paid 1075Z. J It is a remark- 

 able fact, that Manchester, with a population of 

 400,000, has but three newspapers ; Liverpool,* 

 with 367,000, eleven ; Glasgow, with 390,000, 

 sixteen ; Dublin, with but 200,000, no less than 

 twenty-two. The largest paper ever known was 

 published some years ago by Brother Jonathan, 

 and called the Boston Notion. The head letters 

 stand two inches high ; the sheet measures five 

 feet ten inches by four feet one inch, beijig about 

 twenty-four square feet ; it is a double sheet, with 

 ten columns in each page ; making in all eighty 

 columns, containing 1,000,000 letters, and sold 

 for 3^d. In the good old times, one of the earliest 

 provincial newspapers in the southern part of the 

 kingdom was printed by a man named Mogridge, 

 who used to insert the intelligence from Yorkshire 

 imder the head " Foreign News." 



It is curious to search a file of old newspapers. 

 It is seldom we have the opportunity of doing so, 

 because we rarely preserve them in consecutive 

 order. It is easy to keep them, and would repay 

 the trouble, and their value would increase as 

 years rolled on. Such reading would be very in- 

 teresting, and more so than we can at all imagine. 

 It is a history of every day, and a record of a 

 people's sayings and doings. It throws us back 

 on the past, and makes forgotten times live again. 

 Some of the early volumes of The Times new.s- 

 paper, for instance, would be a curiosity in their 



* The largest number of advertisements in one 

 paper with a double supplement was in June last, 

 2,250. 



f The quantity of paper used for The Times with a 

 single supplement is 126 reams, each ream weighing 

 92 lbs., or 7 tons weight of paper; with a double sup- 

 plement, 168 reams. 



X During the week of the Duke's funeral, there 

 were issued by the Stamp Office to the newspaper 

 press more than 2,000,000 of stamps. 



