New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1853-04-26
NEWSPAPER HIsTORY-THE TRIBUNE.

The growth of this country and the spread of its
liberal ideas are better evidenced by the rise and ex
pansion of the daily and'weekly press than by any
other obviously plain test We have held in our hands
little sheet published by the pioneer printer, Frank
lin. How puny modest, naif it seems germ of our
newspaper literature To compare its size with fully
looming journal Of the present day. is like contrasting
the acorn with the oak. From its date find gra-
dual growth in the superfcies and the authorship of
newspapers As tender to the daily literary journal
may be considered Thomas Pane's pamphlet Of CON-
MON SENSE which had a success, up to its time IN
paraleed in the annals of literature in any country
one hundred thousand being sold, and proving i'm
mensey potent in kindng the fires of our Revolution
into that steady blaze which finally burnt out oligar
cbical oppression
10 to the period that the Erie Canal was opened Phil
adephia held the first rank national city Accord
nely in citing the incidents of earlier newspaper his
tory attention must be most directed TO that quarter AT
ter Frankns paper the journal which occupied the larg
est national space The aurora, published at Phla
delpha This gazette at time was the Democratic
Bible of its party Its circulation the times considered
was nmense Its hostility to Federalism did not pu
slanimousy wait till the death of Washington but it
bearded even that noble lion in his den When Wash
ingtons of service expired The aurora said Now
20 Lord let thy servant depart, so great was its JOY
over the close of the antFrench" Administration
The rhetoric to this text so exasperated
the Spring Garden Butchers who were WashingtOnan
Federalists many of them veterans of bis army, that
they Quilted The aurora office, pitched the types into
the street and wreaked their huge muscular indignation
on the printing materials which had blackened the hero
their worship.
Next in order of newspaper political Importance,
came The Richmond Enquirer. Up almost to the
time that p A; Browne wrote his Geological Notes
on Virginia the SONS of the Old Dominion, not
withstandng Jeferson's University, appeared to have
no other idea than that politics eeconeerng was
the chief end of man that Virginia politics in particular
was the light of the world and that the stuff fit for
Presidents could only grow near the Potomac. so tho
roughly impressed they with this notion that there
used be continual pother in the columns OF The Rich
mond Enquirer about the respective claims of Vrgnans
simply for the Office. County politicians were exalted
into national savors: men who, like John Randolph,
uever quoted anything but the rest scraps Of Latin,
and who didno speak single language of Europe were
called ripe scholars; and, in word while Agriculture
running to seed Science undeveloped, and Art I'M
born, The Richmond Enquirer swelled out with not only
metropolitan but cosmopolitanke grandeur though
the parish politics reehborhood exhausted knowl
edge and glory. John Randolph well typifed this spirit
in his rude assaults all and things that were not
Of the Vrginan School He etenay sought to measure
the ocean Of universal intellect with his pintpot. A