203 



NEW PROVIDENCE NEWSPAPERS. 



sense, has led some to reject those accounts which 

 they cite to prove their opinions ; and it lias been 

 asserted that they, themselves living at so late a 

 period, cannot be testimonies to facts partly buried 

 in the obscurity of remote history. But, on the other 

 hand, it has been asserted that many of these antiqua- 

 rian and mythological notices, which we find first or 

 only with the New Platonists, bear too much the stamp 

 of truth to be considered as invented by them, and 

 that they might have been taken from earlier sources. 

 The, .scholastic philosophy and dialectic subtlety of 

 the middle ages, which were" addressed solely to the 

 understanding, and the want of a philosophy which 

 should satisfy the whole nature of man, caused, to- 

 wards the end of the fifteenth century, the renewal 

 of Platonism, as modified by the New Platonists. 

 The most distinguished supporter of this new Italian 

 Platonic philosophy, patronised by the Medici, in 

 Florence, was Marsilius Ficinus, who died in 1499. 



NEW PROVIDENCE. See Providence. 



NEW SOUTH WALES ; an English colony, on 

 the eastern coast of New Holland. (See Holland, 

 New.) Cook landed here (1770) on his first voyage, 

 took possession of the country in the name of his 

 sovereign, and called it New South Wales. He also 

 gave its name to Botany bay, which he entered at 

 the same time. The favourable report which he 

 made of the harbour and the neighbouring country, 

 determined the British government to found a colony 

 there (1778), which was soon after removed to Syd- 

 ney, in Port Jackson, and which, although composed, 

 in a great measure, of convicts, soon became very 

 prosperous. In 1803, a settlement was established 

 on Van Diemen's Land. (See Diemen's (Fan) 

 Land.) In 1813, the Blue mountains were passed, 

 and, in 1815, the site of the town of Bathurst (140 

 miles west of Sydney) was selected. In 1829, ex- 

 ploring parties had penetrated to a distance of 600 

 miles into the interior. On the eastern coast, coloni- 

 zation has extended to Moreton bay, 450 miles north 

 of Sydney, and to Port Western, at an equal distance 

 south. Swan river (q. v.) settlement was established 

 on the western coast of New Holland in 1829. By 

 a proclamation of the governor, in 1829, the limits 

 within which it was permitted to settle, comprised 

 34,000 square miles, and included nineteen counties. 

 The census of that year gave a population of 36,548 

 souls. The number of acres located was 2,906,000 ; 

 cleared, 231,573 ; cultivated, 71,523 : horses, 12,479; 

 horned cattle, 262,868 ; sheep, 536,391, The staple 

 of the colony is wool, of which, in 1822, 172,880 

 pounds were exported: in 1829, the export had 

 increased to 1,006,000 pounds. The total value of 

 exports in 1829 was 184,720; of imports, 678,063. 

 The inhabitants consist of the officers of the colony, 

 who are landed proprietors, and have some of the 

 convicts as servants ; of voluntary emigrants, gene- 

 rally poor persons, transported free of expense, to 

 whom land, &c., is given; of convicts who have 

 become free ; and of convicts still under the opera- 

 tion of their sentence. Bushrangers are convicts 

 who escape to the woods, and live by depredations on 

 the colonists. The colonists have lately turned their 

 attention less exclusively to pasturage, and more to 

 agriculture ; corn, potatoes, tobacco, hemp, flax^ and 

 all kinds of tropical fruits, are cultivated. The 

 climate is mild and healthy ; the winter is rainy; it 

 begins in March, and continues till August : there is 

 no snow except on the highest mountains. The 

 colony, although it promises to be of great import- 

 ance to the mother country, has thus far been a bur- 

 den. The revenue, in 1828, was 102,577; the 

 expenditure, 287,954. The commercial connexions 

 are principally with Britain, Cape of Good Hope, 

 China, Mauritius, Van Diemen's Land, and New 



I Zealand. The moral condition of the colonists is 

 low : schools, however, have been instituted, and are 

 producing good effects ; and, in 1829, a college was 

 founded at Sydney. Several newspapers, and three 

 or four quarterly periodicals, are published. The 

 government is under a governor-general, and a legis- 

 lative council (created in 1829) ; justice is adminis- 

 tered by civil, criminal, and admiralty courts. For 

 further information, see Cunningham's New Soutk 

 Wales (London, 1827), and the Asiatic Journal or 

 Monthly Register for India, China, and Australia. 



NEW SPAIN. See Mexico. 



NEWSPAPERS. One of the most remarkable 

 phenomena of modern times is the periodical pre*s. 

 vitally affecting society in all its relations, and form- 

 ing one of the political elements of modern fr< < 

 nations, which the ancients had not even in embryo. 

 They make the course of the statesman very different, 

 and, with most nations, much more difficult, in the 

 present than in former times, so that our days have 

 witnessed not merely the shipwreck of a ministry on 

 these dangerous breakers, but that of a whole 

 dynasty. Of the periodicals, the newspapers form 

 the most powerful political engine ; and of them \ve 

 shall treat chiefly in this article, leaving a few more 

 remarks for the head Periodical. Reviews, and the 

 like, may contribute more to enlighten the public 

 mind on certain important questions ; but the wide 

 diffusion of newspapers, their rapid communication of 

 intelligence on subjects of immediate interest, and 

 the means which they afford of acting on the public 

 mind in its state of highest excitement, make them 

 much more powerful as political engines. News- 

 papers have changed all the relations of government 

 by their unceasing activity. So important an agent 

 of modern society offers a vast field for remark. \Ve 

 might treat of their effects, and of what is, and what 

 ought to be, their character; also of the great diffi- 

 culty which future historians will find in distinguish- 

 ing, in many cases, the true from the false in the 

 great mass of conflicting statements which these re- 

 cords of the time present a difficulty not less than 

 that which arises from the scantiness of materials in 

 respect to many parts of ancient history ; but we 

 fear that even a mere historical treatment of the sub- 

 ject will carry us beyond our .proper limits. 



The origin of newspapers, like that of many insti- 

 tutions important to modem civilization, is to be 

 referred to Italy. The war which the republic of 

 Venice waged against Solyman II., in Dalmatia, 

 gave rise, in 1563, to the custom in Venice of com- 

 municating the military and commercial information 

 received, by written sheets (notizie scritte], to be 

 read at a particular place by those desirous to learn 

 the news, who paid for this privilege in a coin, not 

 any longer in use, called gazetta a name which, by 

 degrees, was transferred to the newspaper itself in 

 Italy and France, and passed over into England.* 

 A file of these Venetian papers, for sixty years, is 

 still preserved in thfe Magliabecchi library at Flo- 

 rence. The first regular paper was a' monthly, writ- 

 ten, government paper at Venice ; and Chalmers, in 

 his life of Ruddiman, informs us that " a jealous 

 government did not allow a printed newspaper ; and 

 the Venetian Gazetta continued long after the inven- 

 tion of printing, to the close of the sixteenth century, 

 and even to our own days, to be distributed in manu- 



* Some etymologists have thought the name gazet/ais to lie 

 dnrived from gazzera, a magpie, or, in this case, a chatterer ; 

 others from the Latin gaza, which, being colloquially length- 

 ened into ff/izetta, would signify a little treasury of news. The 

 Spanish derive it, indeed, from the Latin gaza (Urcek, yf). 

 though their newspapers, least of all, deserve the name of 

 treasure. They have a peculiar word, wanting in our idiom, 

 gazetiita, a lover of the gazette. The German Zeilung is from 

 the ancient theidinge, or theidung (the English tiding, the 

 Swedish Tidlngar). 



