90 Political Journals. [Chap. XXII, 



The earliest British Gazette of which any di- 

 stinct record remains was that published in 1663 

 by sir Roger L'Estrange, under the title of the 

 Public Intelligencer. This he continued until the 

 y^T 1665, when a kind of court newspaper was 

 es\;ablished at Oxford, then the seat of govern- 

 ment, and issued every Tuesday. The first num- 

 ber 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 that year, and appears to have superseded sir 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 prohi- 

 bition was taken oil; but in a few years after- 

 ward newspapers were made the objects of tax- 

 ation, and were first stamped for this purpose in 

 1713. Their number, however, has been constant- 

 ly increasing from that period till the present 

 time : but since the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, this increase, particularly in Great Bri- 

 tain *, France, Germany, and America, has been 

 almost incredibly great. 



* There was no newspaper in Scotland till after the accession 

 6f king William and queen Mary. At the Union there were 

 three established in that part of the united kingdom. In th« 

 kingdoni of Great Britain the whol^ number of newspapers print- 



