become formidable to the Government. Prosecutions therefore multiplied;
but not without reason in many cases. Addison complains over and over
again of the misdirection of their influence, and says, among other
things:

'Their papers, filled with different party spirit, divide the
people into different sentiments, who generally consider rather the
principles than the truth of the news writers.'

At no time, probably, in the history of journalism did party feeling run
higher than at this period. New organs sprang up every day, but were,
for the most part, very short lived. Among the papers of most note were
_The Weekly Journal_, Mist's _Weekly Journal_, the _London Journal_,
_The Free Briton_, and the _Weekly Gazetteer_. Mist was especially a
stout opponent of the Government, and was consequently always in
trouble. In 1724 there were printed nineteen first-class journals, of
which three were daily, ten tri-weekly--three of them 'half-penny
_Posts_'--and six weekly. News was abundant, and the old plan of leaving
blank spaces or filling up with passages of Scripture--an editor
actually reproduced from week to week the first two books of the
Pentateuch--was now abandoned. In 1726 appeared the _Public
Advertiser_, afterward called the _London Daily Advertiser_, which
deserves to be remembered as having been the medium through which the
letters of Junius were originally given to the world. In the same year,
too, was started _The Craftsman_, one of the ablest political papers
which London had yet seen, and of which Bolingbroke was joint editor. It
was immediately successful, and its circulation soon reached ten or
twelve thousand. In 1731 a great novelty came out, the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, or _Monthly Intelligencer_, under the proprietorship of
Edward Cave, the printer. The title page contained a woodcut of St.