CHAPTER XI.

PAST METROPOLITAN DAILY PAPERS.

THE MORNING CHRONICLE.-PART FIRST.

Commencement of the Morning Chronicle-Mr. William Woodfall -Mr. James Perry-Literary Men on Mr. Perry's Staff, including Mr. Sergeant Spankie, Mr. S. T. Coleridge, Mr. Thomas Campbell, Mr. Charles Lamb, Mr. John Campbell, afterwards Lord Campbell, Lord Chancellor of England; Mr. Mackintosh, afterwards Sir James Mackintosh, Mr. William Hazlitt Profits of the Morning Chronicle at Mr. Perry's Death Editorship of Mr. John Black - "Tom Hill"Literary Men on Mr. Black's Staff-Mr. George Hogarth, Mr. John Payne Collier, Mr. Albany Fonblanque, Rev. W. J. Fox, &c.

BEFORE I Come to the existing daily journals it is necessary, in order that I may make my history of the Newspaper Press as complete as possible, that I should devote some amount of the space at my disposal to a retrospective glance at some of the political journals, which, within the memory of many persons now living, enjoyed a great popularity, and exercised a powerful influence on the public mind. I will take them in the order in which they entered the newspaper world.

In accordance with this arrangement I begin with the late Morning Chronicle, regarding which I have

made some anticipatory remarks in what I have said of Mr. William Woodfall, the brother of Mr. Henry Sampson Woodfall, the printer and editor of the Public Advertiser. The Morning Chronicle was started in 1769. I have not been able to ascertain who were the parties by whom it was commenced. All that is definitely known with regard to the circumstances connected with its birth, is that Mr. William Woodfall was its first editor, reporter, and printer,-a combination of functions which though no longer existing in connexion with any daily paper, was to be found in the case of every newspaper till towards the close of the last century. The Morning Chronicle was not, in the first instance, its only title. There was the addition to that title, of the words, "and London Advertiser." Its principles were thoroughly those of the Whig party, then a growing party in Parliament and the country; but it is admitted that it was not set on foot so much to promote certain political principles, as to accomplish commercial ends. With these the projectors felt confident they would be successful, because the Public Advertiser, the Daily Advertiser, and one or two other newspapers, were at the time profitable journalistic properties. Mr. William Woodfall, who, because of his remarkable memory in remembering, and afterwards reporting with the most perfect accuracy, from recollection, any speech he had ever heard, was called "Memory Woodfall," continued to conduct the Morning Chronicle for a term of ten years. It was not, however, during that period commercially

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a success, nor did it gain for itself any high journalistic reputation. On its establishment, and for many years afterwards, it had but a poor appearance, both in a material and mental sense. It consisted of four pages, somewhat larger than four pages of our present Globe, and containing less matter, because the type, generally speaking, was larger, while more space was appropriated to advertisements. These statements apply to the earliest number which is to be found in the British Museum, which is numbered 889, and dated the 28th March, 1772, being considerably more than two years and a half after the appearance of the first number. The imprint was: "Printed for William Woodfall." The names of the proprietors of the newspapers of these times were always concealed, lest, if known to the public, they might become known to the Government of the day, and thereby expose them to unpleasant consequences both as regarded their purse and persons. This is an explanation of the fact with which all must be acquainted who are conversant with the Newspaper Press of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was always the registered, not the real proprietor of the journal, who was made the victim whenever actions for libel were brought against it.

Down till the year 1781, of which I am speaking, most readers will, I am sure, feel surprised when I mention that the Morning Chronicle should have had no leading article, not even the very semblance of At least there was nothing of that kind in any of the numbers which I have seen, and which

one.

appeared nearly twelve years after the journal was started; and though I cannot positively assert that none appeared in the numbers which had previously been published, the general character of the paper would lead to the conclusion, that leading articles were not one of its features. When I mention this fact, the wonder will cease how the functions of editor, printer, and publisher, could be, as they were, all combined in one person. The editor had no duty to perform in the way of writing anything original. The only thing, indeed, original in the Morning Chronicle, in the year 1780-the volume for which year I have carefully looked over-were a few paragraphs of political or other intelligence, and two or three letters in some particular impression of the paper. The heading " Morning Chronicle, London, &c."-which preceded the leading articles in its later history, was followed, when Parliament was sitting, by debates in Parliament. It is the same now in the case of many provincial papers. It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. William Woodfall, however great may have been his responsibility in the case of actions, as printer of the Morning Chronicle, had a perfect sinecure as editor of the paper. All that he had to look after, as editor, was to see that no libellous matter got into its columns.

Mr. James Perry succeeded Mr. Woodfall as editor of the Morning Chronicle in 1789. As the new editor soon raised the character and circulation of that journal to a point which in either sense no daily

paper had reached, with the exception, for a few years, of the Public Advertiser; and as the Morning Chronicle maintained both its character and prosperity during the forty years and upwards it was under his sole editorial control, it is but due to a man whose memory still occupies so prominent a place in the journalism of Great Britain, that an outline of the career of Mr. Perry should be given in a work devoted to a history of the Newspaper Press.

He was born in Aberdeen in 1756, and educated at Marischal College of that city. But his father, who was a somewhat extensive builder, having failed just as young Perry left the university, he repaired to Edinburgh, in the hope of getting into some lawyer's office there. Disappointed in that, he proceeded to Manchester, where in his twentieth year he got a situation in a counting-house in that great emporium of manufacture and commerce. There he became a member of some debating society, which chose for its discussion topics more or less intimately related to questions of a philosophical kind. The knowledge of these subjects which young Perry displayed, and the abilities he showed in debate, together with the talent which characterized some of his literary essays, attracted the attention of intellectual men in Manchester; and several of these, on his leaving soon after for London, gave him letters to literary men, in addition to those he had received to parties in the mercantile world. But instead of giving my own account of the appearance and sub