In 1834 not a single town in the kingdom with the exception of London possessed a daily paper.  The invention of steam printing, and the introduction of shorthand reporting and the use of telegraph and railways, revolutionized the whole world of journalism.

Charles Dickens, on the occasion of his presiding, in May 1865, at the second annual dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund, gave his hearers an idea of what newspaper reporters were and what they suffered in the early days.  “I have pursued the calling of a reporter under circumstances of which many of my brethren here can form no adequate conception.  I have often transcribed for the printer, from my shorthand notes, important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young man severely compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a dark lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a wild country, and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour. . . .  I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back-row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep—­kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing.  Returning home from exciting political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country.  I have been, in my time, belated on miry by-roads, towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts I ever knew.”

During these later years England came to look upon her duties and responsibilities toward her colonial possessions in quite a different light.  Imperialism became a factor in the political life of the nation.

The builders of Empire in the time of Queen Elizabeth took a very narrow view of their responsibilities; they were not in the least degree concerned about the well-being of a colony or possession for its own sake.  The state of Ireland in those days spoke for itself.  The horrors of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 was the first lesson which opened England’s eyes to the fact that an Empire, if it is to be anything more than a name, must be a united whole under wise and sympathetic guidance.

The rebellion proved to be the end of the old East Indian Company.  England took over the administration of Indian affairs into her own hands.  An “Act for the better Government of India” was passed in 1858, which provided that all the territories previously under the government of the Company were to be vested in Her Majesty, and all the Company’s powers to be exercised in her name.  The Viceroy, with the assistance of a Council, was to be supreme in India.