Europe and the American Revolution 181
the importance of government and political institutions, and believed that there
was something called the public welfare, which depended on the policies of gov-
ernments and on the enlightened behavior of citizens. Such people were con-
scious of more than local or private problems, and of the existence of similar
people, and similar problems, in distant places. This growth of communication
was obviously one of the fundamental preconditions to the whole revolutionary
era. It had enabled the Thirteen Colonies to stage a collective resistance to En-
gland, it now made America and Europe feel together, and it undermined, in
Europe, the whole idea of government as a kind of private occupation of limited
governmental circles.
The advent of public opinion was signalized by a phenomenal growth of the
press, both of books and of newspapers and magazines. Books had never before
been so numerous, and for the newly developing reading public America was a
welcome subject, satisfying a popular taste for the exotic, or a philosophical attrac-
tion to worldwide views. The press also was less narrowly national than it later
became; French was an international language for the educated, many books in
French were printed in Holland and Germany, and translation soon carried many
works across language frontiers. A little investigation discloses no less than twenty-
six works on America that appeared in at least three languages, wholly or in large
part, in the years roughly from 1760 to 1790. Fifteen of these appeared in at least
four languages, most commonly in the combination of English, French, German,
and Dutch, which together formed a solid zone well into eastern Europe. They are
listed for reference in the accompanying table.
For the periodical press it is possible to form a quantitative impression of the
growth taking place. In England it appears that 66 new magazines and newspapers
were launched in the 1770’s, 96 in the 1780’s, and 151 in the 1790’s. In Germany,
because of the dispersion among many small capitals and university towns, the
number of newly established periodicals (often short- lived) was astounding: 410 in
the 1760’s, 718 in the 1770’s, 1,225 in the 1780’s. Many of these were heavily eru-
dite, but many also were addressed to the public or devoted to the public welfare.
For example, there were 29 newspapers and magazines in Germany before 1790
that called themselves Der Patriot, such as the Hessischer Patriot, the Musikalischer
Patriot, etc. The number of periodicals published in France was smaller than in
Germany, because of the greater centralization in Paris, and because the French
depended heavily on French- language journals edited under freer conditions in
Holland or at Liège. Only 40 new ones have been counted for the eight years pre-
ceding 1789, whereas 1,350 are known to have been launched in Paris alone from
1789 to 1800.^6
With this growth of the press went the formation of reading clubs, in which
friends or fellow- townsmen pooled their funds to buy books, magazines, and
6 The Times, London, Tercentenary handlist of English and Welsh Newspapers, Magazines, and Re-
views (London, 1920); J. Kirchner, Die Grundlagen des deutschen Zeitschriftenwesens mit einer gesamt-
bibliographie der deutschen Zeitschriften bis zum Jahre 1790, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1928); E. Hatin, Biblio-
graphic historique et critique de la presse périodique française (Paris, 1866). Since Kirchner was very
complete, and Hatin admitted a certain ignorance of the provincial press, the difference between
Germany and France is exaggerated to an unknown extent in the above figures.