628 Chapter XXVI
It cannot be too often repeated that publicity, not secrecy, was the moving force
in the revolutionary- republican movement. Or, to put it more accurately, the desire
for publicity was the moving force, for in most countries a politically articulate
periodical press did not exist under the old order, but was one of the immediate
consequences and manifestations of the new.^39 Political journalism was oldest,
most firmly established and most free in England and the United States, but even
in England it was only since the 1770’s that newspapers had been allowed to re-
port speeches in Parliament. In the old Dutch provinces, the bishopric of Liège,
and some of the German states and cities, the periodical press had for some time
been relatively free and very voluminous, but even in Holland the editors were not
free to report or comment on local affairs, especially after the Orange restoration
of 1787. At most, such papers criticized the governments of their political neigh-
bors. In France, the Mediterranean countries, and Eastern Europe there were no
politically minded newspapers at all under the old regime.
What happened was therefore in some countries the marked politicization of a
press already well established, and in others the creation of a political press as a new
thing. A few editors were supported by governments, revolutionary or counter-
revolutionary as the case might be; but the economics of publishing were so simple
that political journalism was an easy field for private and individual enterprise. Few
papers had the gravity or the dimensions of the Paris Moniteur. Never “official” in
the 1790’s, the Moniteur was established late in 1789, and appeared daily in four or
more folio pages eighteen inches high. It was filled with despatches from foreign
countries, local news, and full texts of legislation and speeches in the assembly. The
name was widely copied, as in the Monitore Cisalpino of 1798 and the Monitore Na-
poletano of 1799. But most newspapers were small in size, crudely printed, weekly or
semi- weekly or simply irregular, limited to a few hundreds or at most a few thou-
sands in circulation, and frequently quite ephemeral. They were short on news and
long on opinion, and usually polemical in the extreme. Venom, recrimination, name-
calling, and wild accusations were common in all political camps. It is well known
what the American Founding Fathers had to suffer at the hands of newspaper writ-
ers. The indignation of conservatives at the excesses of the new democratic press
would have been justified, had not the conservative papers been equally bad.
In the United States the newspapers multiplied as the democratic movement
developed, and most of the persons indicted under the Sedition Act of 1798 were
newspaper editors. In Ireland the press had been very lively during the political
agitation of 1780–1784, but was thereafter held under restraint, though it man-
aged to express a good deal of enthusiasm for the French Revolution in 1789. The
Irishman John Daly Burk, after getting into trouble for his newspaper writings in
Dublin, and hence emigrating to America, got into further trouble with his New
York Time Piece in 1798. In England there was more freedom, and as late as 1798,
five years after the war with France had begun, there were three London newspa-
pers that disapproved of the government and its foreign policy, and were called
“Jacobin” by their opponents. They were the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post,
and the Courier. The editor of the Morning Chronicle was the favorite target of
39 See the chapter, “L’essor de la presse politique,” in Godechot, op.cit., II, 367–417.