Daily National Intelligencer

NEWSPAPERS

We find the following article passing through the newspapers, (as Sterne said of literature among his contemporaries)—pouring the contents of one phial into another, all round the circle:

Gazettes, or Newspapers.—Monsieur de Saint-foix, in his Historical Essays on Paris, gives this account of their introduction:

Theophrastus Renaudot, a physician of Paris picked up news from all quarters to amuse his patients; he presently became more in request than any of his brethren; but as a whole city is not ill, or at least don't imagine itself to be so, he began to reflect at the end of some years that he might have a more considerable income by giving a paper every week, containing the news of different countries. A permission was necessary; he obtained it, with an exclusive privilege, in 1632. Such papers had been in use for a considerable time in Venice and were called Gazettes, because a small piece of money, called Gazetta, was paid for reading them. This is the origin of our Gazette, and its name. About ten years afterwards they were common in England, by the name of Mercuries.

This account of the origin of newspapers, is no doubt correct enough, as far as it relates to Paris, and may have been original in him; but we must not mistake Paris, any more than London, for the whole world. The circulation of news, in a compact form, and in papers literally limited to news, formed a particular profession in Rome, in Athens, and in more ancient times than either Athens or Rome in the courts of ancient Asia, where the same practice continues to this day.

Newspapers probably, owe their origin to commerce and diplomacy. The Grecian newspaper was well adapted to the inquisitive and commercial character of the people of Attica, and the spreading of false reports to favor commercial speculations and monopolies was as well understood, & as much practised at Athens as in London, Hamburg or Philadelphia, as we learn from an oration of Lysias against the monopolizer of cotton. The newspaper at this period must have partaken of the character of the price current. Bills of exchange, banks and bank notes were contemporaneous both at Athens and Carthage, as we learn from Æschines, the philosopher, in his dialogues. Ptolemy mentions a Grecian merchant who sent his factors to Sericum, on the borders of China; and they penetrated to the mouth of the Vistula, the Hyrcanian forests, and even the Moluccas. They communicated not only with Sicily and the Euxine for subsistence, but with the rest of the known world for general commerce; and their letters were multiplied by writing, and circulated wherever they visited.

The Athenians maintained agents under the disguise of merchants in every country with which they had connexions. They were by this means regularly informed of whatever passed in foreign countries, the letters of these agents formed part of the popular pleasures in the walks and public places in Athens. The Asiatic princes in the most ancient times known, and it is more ancient than any other history, employed persons, whose exclusive business it was to report news daily occurring at the courts of their neighbors. This practice continues on the same footing to this day.

In the courts of Asia there is a hall or anti-chamber, which is appropriated to the tribe of Newsmongers; the principals in this occupation move among the crowd wherever intelligence is to be procured, and return to their deputies in the hall where they dictate to them the advices and reports they have received; as the kubbe, or kubs or newsmongers depend upon each other, each furnishes to the rest, and the copies of every man's news are multiplied so as to reach every court by its own special messengers. It may be easily conceived what use dexterous politicians and speculators in commerce or money make of these newsmongers.

Cumberland, in the 52d number of the Observer, gives some amusing particulars of the Roman newspapers, which appear to have partaken more of the literary than the political or commercial character; abounding with wit and satire.