Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/85

CHAPTER VI

RISE OF THE FOURTH ESTATE

Development of journalism in connection with democracy—Growth of spirit of nationality—First call for congress of colonies—Conditions under which press grew—Benjamin Franklin—His aid to other printers—Progress slow in South—Gradual withdrawal of government interference — Meeting of colonial congress—Franklin's plan for union of colonies.

In the short period of forty-four years we have seen a new institution born and developed into an actual power—the veritable creation of a new Estate. Like so many other institutions of civilization arid progress, it apparently prospered in adversity; it fed on the oppression that would have annihilated it.

Little wonder that there was small understanding by contemporaries, or even by those who were able to take a view from afar, of the importance of this event. The power of the Commons itself, the Third Estate, was almost of recent origin; yet it had taken centuries, with the people in continual warfare for their rights, to build it up and to establish it.

But that there should spring up, overnight, as it were, another Estate, a power hitherto unknown,—a power which, in the language of Burke, should be more powerful than the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons combined,—was something that only the mind of a Burke could understand. We have seen that power born amid vicissitudes in the wilderness of newly settled colonies. Henceforth the history of the country is not