tirely by the party, and it received all sorts of aid and comfort from Washington.

Another letter was sent, five or six weeks later, of which the following is a copy:

PHILADELPHIA, July 27th, 1833. DEAR HOYT,—I have written to Van Buren to-day about the old affair. I must have a loan of $2500 for a couple of years from some quarter. I can't get on without it; and if the common friends of our cause-those I have been working for for eight years-can not do it, I must look for it somewhere else. My business here is doing very well, and the money would be perfectly safe in two years. You see already the effect produced in Pennsylvania-we can have the state; but, if our friends won't lay aside their heartlessness, why, we'll go to the devil-that is all.

There is no man who will go further with friends than I will-who will sacrifice more-who will work harder. You know it very well.

I must be perfectly independent of the little sections in this city, who would hurry me into their small courses, at the risk of the main object.

Kendall leaves Washington to-morrow on his tour of Bank inspection. Let me hear from you. Yours, etc., JAS. GORDON Bennett.

The italics are ours, as indicative of the spirit which governed the writer as an editor at that time, and which has characterized the Herald since its first issue. But here is the sequel:

MR. HOYT TO MR. BENNETT.

August 16, 1833.

MY DEAR SIR,-I have not answered yours of the 3d for various reasons. Among other reasons, I was quite too much provoked with you. It appears, at the moment I was trying to favor you, the Pennsylvanian was taking such a course as calculated to thwart all my efforts. There are but very few of our people, comparatively, that see your paper, and they have to look for its character to the party papers here. And what does the Post and Standard say of it? I am not going to set myself up as the judge to decide who and which is the aggressor, but I admit that an intelligent newspaper, edited any where in this country, ought to have known that the Northern Banner and the Doylestown Democrat are papers substantially hostile to the administration; but, because it was not known to some of our "corps editorial," it was no reason why you should quarrel with all of us—by which I mean all the prominent Jackson papers, from the Argus down. There is a wonderful coincidence between the course the Pennsylvanian threatens to take and that taken by the Courier and Enquirer when it first began to secede from the Jackson ranks. It began, you will recollect, by assailing what was called the "Money Changers." You are about to commence "No. 1, New York Stock Jobbing, etc., etc., and certain expresses in the fall of 1832." This has all been published in the opposition papers, and they did not make much of it, and, therefore, I should doubt whether a bona fide Jackson paper could do better with it. If this was intended for Mumford, I could tell you reasons for letting him alone; if for Mr. Hone, there are similar reasons; but as he is no friend of mine, I speak only from general principles-there is nothing to be gained by it; it mends nobody's principles, or improves the morals of any one, but rather helps your enemies in their efforts to satisfy others that you are not "a reliable man," as the phrase is. The Post, this afternoon, no doubt will call you hard names for associating "vinegar" with the complacent countenance of my excellent and amiable-ay, amiable friend Croswell. Dr. Holland, of the Standard, will rewrite the same idea for to-morrow morning. All this is quite ridiculous on all sides, but you will perceive it is the worst for you here, because the people read but one side, and that is the side against you.

I suppose you think it is time to have the moral of my tale, and it is this, that I can get no one to join me in rendering any aid, and my means alone are wholly inadequate to render you any relief, and what I have written you is but the essence of the arguments that have met me at every turn.

The Chrysalis of Modern Journalism.

413

You have heard me talk to Webb by the hour of the folly of his being on the face of the record a friend of Mr. Van Buren's, and, at the same time, attacking his most firm and consistent friend, viz., the editor of the Argus; and you stand in almost the same attitude, and there are many here who believe that your friendship will end as Mr. Webb's has. I will do you the justice to say that I believe no such thing, but at the same time I will exercise the frankness to say that the course of your paper lays you open to the suspicion. I know enough of affairs to know that you had high authority for the ground you have taken on the Deposit Question, and I thought you managed the subject well for the meridian you are in. I was told by a person a day or two since that you would be aided from another quarter; I could not learn how. But you ought not to expect my friend at the North to do any thing, not that he has an indisposition to do what is right, or that he would not serve a friend, but he is in the attitude that requires the most fastidious reserve. The people are jealous of the public press, and the moment it is attempted to be controlled, its usefulness is not only destroyed, but he who would gain public favor through its columns is quite sure to fail. I am satisfied the press has lost some portion of its hold upon public confidence; recent developments have had a tendency to satisfy the people that its conductors, or many of them at least, are as negotiable as a promissory note. This impression can only be removed by a firm adherence to principle in adversity as well as prosperity. I can, my dear sir, only say, as I have before said to you, be patient, "love them who persecute you." You have a great field before you, and it is impossible but you will succeed if you are, as I think you to be, honest, intelligent, and industrious. Yours truly,

In reply to this letter Mr. Bennett said:

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J. HOYT.

PHILADELPHIA, August 16th, 1833. DEAR HOYT,-Your letter amuses me. The only point of consequence is that conveying the refusal. This is the best evidence of the deadly hostility which you all have entertained towards me. It explains, too, the course of the Standard and Post in their aggressions upon me ever since I came to Philadelphia. The name for such a feeling in the breasts of those I have only served and aided at my own cost and my own sacrifice puzzles me beyond example. I can account for it in no other way than the simple fact that I happen to have been born in another country. I must put up with it as well as I can. The assaults of the Post and Standard I shall put down like the grass that grows. I shall carry the war into Africa, and "cursed be he who cries hold, enough." Neither Mr. Van Buren and the Argus, nor any of their true friends, will or can have any fellow feeling with the men-the stockjobbers-who for the last two years have been trying to destroy my character and reputation. * I will endeavor to do the best I can to get along. I will go among my personal friends, who are unshackled as to politics or banks, and who will leave me free to act as a man of honor and principle. So, my dear Hoyt, do not lose your sleep on my account. I am certain of YOUR friendship, whatever the others may say or do. I fear nothing in the shape of man, devil, or newspaper; I can row my own boat, and if the Post and Standard don't get out of my way, they must sink me-that is all. If I adhere to the same principles, and run hereafter as I have done heretofore, and which I mean to do, recollect it is not so much that "I love my persecutors" as that I regard my own honor and reputation. Your lighting up poor Webb like a fat tallow candle at one end, and holding him out as a beacon-light to frighten me, only makes me smile. Webb is a gentleman in private life, a good-hearted fellow, honorable in all his private transactions as I have found him, but in politics and newspapers a perfect child-a boy. You will never find the Pennsylvanian going the career of the C. & E. That suspicion answers as a good excuse to those who have resolved beforehand to do me all the injury they can, but it will answer for nothing else. I am, dear Hoyt, yours truly,

JAMES GORDON BENNETT.

The war was indeed carried into Africa, and vigorously continued for more than a quarter of a century. The result is before the journalistic world. Mifflin, Parry, and Bennett, as publishers of the

Pennsylvanian, dissolved partnership in December, 1833, and Mr. Bennett gave up the editorial management of that and all other party papers forever. He returned to the metropolis, and made arrangements, under great difficulties and obstacles, for the publication of the New York Herald on purely journalistic principles, which have made it a wonderful and permanent success.

After the excitement is over, and most of the characters have passed away, what does one of the chief actors in these political scenes say of the play? In a conversation with a correspondent of the Herald in 1870, Mr. Blair, the old editor of the Washington Globe, thus oddly and pleasantly speaks of Mr. Bennett and his course in that sensational period of our political history:

I knew Mr. Bennett during the administration of Jackson, while I was editing the Globe. Mr. Bennett had a desire to join his fortunes with mine in the Globe enterprise; but I told him two such great men as he and I would be too great a weight for such a small vessel as the Globe, and that we might swamp it. I advised him to go to Philadelphia, which he would find to be a Bootia. There he would find a splendid field for his talents and genius. He went there and established a paper, but at one time the weight of Jackson's administration was thrown against it and it was crushed. A few years ago, when I visited Mr. Bennett, he reminded me of this circumstance, and I said to him, "It is the best thing that ever happened you, and you ought to thank General Jackson and me for it; for was it not the cause of driving you to New York, where you started the Herald, and have built up the greatest newspaper enterprise? Now, sir, you are higher than the highest senator on earth." I have followed Mr. Bennett's course with a great deal of interest, and we have always been good friends, though sometimes he gives me a rap in his paper.

Such was the position of the Press throughout the country at this period of its history. It was bound to party. It was fettered in every way. It was the slave of the two political oligarchies. It was necessary, in the estimation of the Albany Regency, that every paper should have "an editor who would take care of the interests of the party and its friends." If any further evidence of this sort is wanted, our readers will find it in the "Recollections of a Busy Life" of Horace Greeley, published in 1868, in which he describes, with refreshing naïveté, the famous political firm of Seward, Weed, and Greeley, and the causes of its dissolution, which, we are happy to say, made the Tribune, although still a party paper, a more independent and a more successful journal. Seward and Weed finally retired to private life in 1869, leaving Greeley alone in his glory as a journalist, and as a political traveler reading the unreliable guideposts on the road to the White House.

This political element, which was afterwards joined by the financial and religious elements, was powerful in 1832, and for a number of years after in its opposition to the Cheap Cash Press. The crusade against it, the moral war of 1840, the threats, the personal assaults, the attempts at assassination, and the libel suits which rap

idly followed each other, were episodes of no small proportions in the history of modern journalism. But time, with energy and perseverance, creating a revolution with the reading public, swept away all this rubbish and all these obstacles. In 1833 and '34 the "Penny Press" was an accomplished fact, and in 1835 the "Independent Press" was organized, and has since become a permanent and overshadowing institution in America.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE PENNY PRESS.

WHERE DID IT ORIGINATE?-THE CENT OF PhiladelphIA.-THE MORNING POST OF NEW YORK.-DR. HORATIO D. SHEPARD AND HORACE GREELEY. -THE NEW YORK SUN. SPEECH OF THE ORIGINATOR. THE MOON HOAX.-RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE.-ENTERPRISE OF THE SUN.-OPINION OF A "BLANKET SHEET" ON THE CHEAP PRESS. THE CITIZEN AND MILES O'REILLY.

THE Penny Press of America dates from 1833. There were small and cheap papers published in Boston and Philadelphia before and about that time. The Bostonian was one. The Cent, in Philadelphia, was another. The latter was issued by Christopher C. Cornwell in 1830. These and all similar adventures were not permanent. Most of them were issued by printers when they had nothing else to do. Still they belonged to the class of cheap papers. The idea came from the Illustrated Penny Magazine, issued in London in 1830, which was imported and sold in large quantities in New York and other cities, thus creating a taste for cheap literature in this country.

There were low-priced papers in England as early as 1706. The Orange Postman was established then, and sold for one cent. It was the Father of the Penny Press. Newspapers in this country run into subscription papers at a fixed price per year, and delivered to subscribers by mail or by regularly paid carriers employed by the newspaper publishers. Before the time of L'Estrange, in London, in 1665, there were newsboys and newswomen, as in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago now. They were condemned by L'Estrange in the Intelligencer. He, indeed, refused to employ them to sell his paper. In New York, newspapers were sold in places where the people mostly congregated in 1765; but the Press became, in the course of time, " blanket sheets" and "respectable sixpennies," mammoth folios of ridiculous dignity and limited circulation. Stone, and Webb, and Bryant, and Hale, and Hallock, and others, all over the country, following in the footsteps of L'Estrange, would only sell their "wares" over the counter, or deliver them by their regular carriers; and as late as 1850, as sensible and as practical a journalist as he was considered to be, Gerard Hallock boasted of an "increase of daily circulation of five hundred" in one year,