The Life of Benjamin Franklin

power in the world. But in Franklin's day it was, compar- itively, a feeble child, of small size and scant utterance, giving but faint promise of the proportions it has since assumed, and the vast influence it now exerts. The first attempt at an American newspaper, in Boston, in the year 16JO, was suppressed by the authorities, as u dangerous innovation, a second number never seeing the light. Jt was fourteen years before any person again essayed so formidable a venture. In 1704, the Boston News-Letter asked permission to publish, on the half of a foolscap sheet, ? " by authority," it is careful to state ? a few harmless advertisements and items of news. It would not venture to express an opiu- Frothingham's Rise or the Republic, page 199. ion. Readers were left to draw their own inferences. Though Massachusetts has the honor of having established, as the first college, so also the first printing-press in America, yet it detracts from her credit that, from the first, she put restrictions upon its freedom, keeping a sharp look-out upon its issues, lest some erroneous doctrine, or some opinion derogatory to the govern ment, should by it obtain currency. Legal restraints were not removed till 1755, nearly fifty years after Franklin's birth. And so Mr. Campbell, the editor, spoke only as he was authorized. In 1719, appeared the Boston Gazette, which was printed by James Franklin, who, the year after, commenced a paper c..f his own, The New England Oourant. ...