Political Journals. 249 



The earliest British Gazette of which any dis- 

 tinct record remains, was that published in 1663, 

 by Sir Rog-er L'Estrange, under the title of the 

 Public Intelligencer. This he continued until the 

 year 1665, when a kind of court newspaper was 

 established at Oxford, then the seat of government, 

 and issued every Tuesday. The first number was 

 printed in the month of November of that year, 

 and appears to have superseded Sir Roger's. Soon 

 after this the court was removed to London, on 

 which the title of the paper was changed to the 

 London Gazette, the name which it still bears. 



From the middle of the seventeenth century the 

 employment of newspapers as channels of intel- 

 ligence became more frequent and popular, not 

 only in Great-Britain, but also in several other 

 countries of Europe. Newspapers and pamphlets 

 were prohibited in England by royal proclamation 

 in 1680. At the revolution, in 1688, this prohibition 

 was taken off; but, in a few years afterwards news- 

 papers were made the objects of taxation, and 

 were first stamped for this purpose in 1713. Their 

 number, however, has been constantly increasing 

 from that period till the present time. But since 

 the beginning of the eighteenth century, this 

 increase, particularly in Great-Britain/ France, 

 Germany, and America, has been almost incre- 

 dibly great. 



Perhaps in no respect, and certainly in no other 

 enterprizes of a literary kind, have the United 

 States made such rapid progress as in the esta- 

 blishment of political journals. At the beginning 



j There was no newspaper in Scotland till after the accession of King 

 William and Queen Mart. At the Union there were three established 

 in that part of the United Kingdom. In the kingdom of Great-Britain 

 the whole number of newspapers printed in the year 1775, was 12,680,000. 

 In 178a the number had increased to I5,*7*,jl9. At the close of the 

 century they were still more numerous. 

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