It is a remarkable fact that the infant newspapers were all on the side of King William and the Revolution.  This fact may be partly explained by the circumstance that the editors were, at first, on their good behaviour.  It was by no means clear that their trade was not in itself illegal.  The printing of newspapers was certainly not prohibited by any statute.  But, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the judges had pronounced that it was a misdemeanour at common law to publish political intelligence without the King’s license.  It is true that the judges who laid down this doctrine were removable at the royal pleasure and were eager on all occasions to exalt the royal prerogative.  How the question, if it were again raised, would be decided by Holt and Treby was doubtful; and the effect of the doubt was to make the ministers of the Crown indulgent and to make the journalists cautious.  On neither side was there a wish to bring the question of right to issue.  The government therefore connived at the publication of the newspapers; and the conductors of the newspapers carefully abstained from publishing any thing that could provoke or alarm the government.  It is true that, in one of the earliest numbers of one of the new journals, a paragraph appeared which seemed intended to convey an insinuation that the Princess Anne did not sincerely rejoice at the fall of Namur.  But the printer made haste to atone for his fault by the most submissive apologies.  During a considerable time the unofficial gazettes, though much more garrulous and amusing than the official gazette, were scarcely less courtly.  Whoever examines them will find that the King is always mentioned with profound respect.  About the debates and divisions of the two Houses a reverential silence is preserved.  There is much invective; but it is almost all directed against the Jacobites and the French.  It seems certain that the government of William gained not a little by the substitution of these printed newspapers, composed under constant dread of the Attorney General, for the old newsletters, which were written with unbounded license.616

The pamphleteers were under less restraint than the journalists; yet no person who has studied with attention the political controversies of that time can have failed to perceive that the libels on William’s person and government were decidedly less coarse and rancorous during the latter half of his reign than during the earlier half.  And the reason evidently is that the press, which had been fettered during the earlier half of his reign, was free during the latter half.  While the censorship existed, no tract blaming, even in the most temperate and decorous language, the conduct of any public department, was likely to be printed with the approbation of the licenser.  To print such a tract without the approbation of the licenser was illegal.  In general, therefore, the respectable and moderate opponents of the Court,