at Philadelphia, the United N. A. Gazette and the Ledger. Still, not one of these papers possesses, either as a political organ or commercial enterprise, the importance of the great London or Parisian papers, nor exerts one-tenth of their powerful influence on public opinion.

The cause of this inferiority may be attributed to the political constitution of the country. Although the United States form an homogeneous nation, they are before all a collection of small states, each of them having its metropolis and special scene of activity. Hence no city exerts influence beyond a certain radius, and there is no metropolis of the country producing that concentration of talent which is of so much benefit to our London papers. Each presidency causes a new paper to spring into existence at Washington, intended to serve as ministerial organ. It is not that the American government has funds at its command to support a paper, but among the attributes of the executive is the right of nominating the printing-office to which the publication of official documents is entrusted. This is a fortune to the successful candidate; and thus no printer would hestitate to be running the risk of starting a new paper, being assured beforehand of the support of the party in power. It results from these facts that a paper rarely circulates beyond its own state. The Boston papers are read in New England, because Massachusetts generally gives the lead to Maine, Vermont, and Connecticut; the New York papers are spread through the central states and Canada; those of Philadelphia penetrate to the south and west, and this is specially the case with the German papers. A New York paper, the Herald, which has become a defender of the slave system, has thus gained a large circulation in Baltimore and Charleston; but, as a general rule, the most favourite papers do not get beyond a limited radius. Their circulation may be estimated as-three-fifths in the city where they are published, three-tenths in the state, and one-tenth without.

In addition to these circumstances, the American postal system has done much to keep up the purely local character of the press. The postage since 1853 has been uniform-one cent through the entire Union; but the post does not deliver the papers at the house unless paid extra. Hence there is every advantage as regards price, convenience, and celerity of information in taking the paper of the town where a person resides, whatever it may be. The New York and Boston papers, besides being twenty-five per cent. dearer, are necessarily behindhand with local news, and the local paper gets all important information about the markets, &c., by telegraph. The best proof of the preference for local news is found in the fact that not a single American paper, except those published at Washington, devotes more than a column to the sittings of Congress. To this must be added the absence of any stamp, and the facility of starting a paper without any considerable outlay. New York with Brooklyn, containing 700,000 souls, has fifteen daily papers, or as many as London and Paris. These papers distribute 130,000 copies daily six of them, sold at one and two cents, claim two-thirds of this amount, which leaves the average circulation of the better class New York dailies at 4000. Boston, with 140,000 souls, has twelve daily papers; Philadelphia, with 340,000, ten; and Baltimore six, with 170,000. The maximum circulation of the two principal papers at Philadelphia may be estimated at 15,000: no Boston paper has a sale above 10,000 copies. In the southern states, where the population is

not nearly so dense, and more than one-half are slaves, the papers are both less numerous and less circulated. According to the testimony of Mr. Horace Greeley, we cannot estimate the circulation of the two hundred and fifty daily American papers at more than a million, which gives an average of 4000 copies to each paper. With a circulation so restricted, the American papers, forced by competition to sell cheaply, have only small receipts and but trifling resources at their disposal; and thus the salaries paid to writers are not considerable enough to keep men whose talent can open a better career for them. Mr. Greeley, when examined before the House of Commons in 1851, stated that he knew one writer getting six hundred a year; but this was an exception, and he estimated the salaries on the chief American papers at from one hundred to three hundred per annum. The cheap papers, started about twenty years ago in America, have not, as in France, improved the salary of writers. It is probable, however, that the initiative in this direction will come from them, but it will not take place for some time, for these papers are still in a transitional state, and address themselves to a special public which possesses no literary feeling.

The usual price of the large daily papers was, until 1833, six cents per copy. At this price a paper, which had a thousand subscribers and some advertisements, covered its expenses. Much money, however, was lost in the necessity of giving credit, and an intelligent speculator at length hit on the idea that by substituting the sale by numbers for subscription, a large saving could be effected in book-keeping and bad debts. The principles on which this transformation was to be brought about was a reduction in price to the lowest margin to attract purchasers, an expectation that the sale would cover the expenses, and all profit would be derived from the advertisements. The circulation of the paper was guaranteed by the diffusion of general instruction and universal suffrage in America. In a country where every one knows how to read and write, and is a voter in the bargain, the newspaper becomes a necessity; and facts proved this. The 700,000 inhabitants of New York and its suburbs absorb 130,000 copies of the daily papers-that is to say, one citizen in three buys a paper. The morning papers have to be ready by the time the workmen go to breakfast, for news is as necessary to them as bread for the morning meal. Success rarely attends an inventor, and the first papers started at one cent could not live; another attempt, by raising the price to two cents, was more successful, and produced imitators. The Herald, and some other cheap papers, succeeded in their rivalry against the dear journals, and when they had taken root, they were themselves stripped of the lion's share by a one-cent rival, the Sun. Although the Sun was only four pages, the profit on each copy sold was so small that it required a regular sale of 40,000 copies to cover the expenses. As the Sun has attained an average sale of 45,000 copies, advertisers have flocked in to make the fortune of the lucky speculators. A journal in the United States has, for the first time, been rich enough to have a house of its own. The construction of the immense edifice where the Sun has installed its presses and offices cost 20,000l. After he had made his fortune, Mr. Benjamin Day, the proprietor of the Sun, sold it for 250,000 dollars; and this price does not appear excessive, as the daily sale covers the expenses, and the advertisements, which are nearly all taken by the year, give a clear profit of 607. a day, or nearly

20,000l. a year. Although they have not produced so great results, the two-cent papers are also lucrative. Like the Sun, they expect their profit from advertisements, but their expenses are very much larger. The two most prosperous are the Herald and the Tribune, which, besides the morning edition, publishes an evening and a weekly edition; the total circulation under the different forms averaging from 20,000 to 25,000 copies. The Tribune, edited by Horace Grieley, was started in 1841. On the 11th of April, 1853, the day on which it completed its twelfth year, it was increased to eight pages, the proprietors announcing that the cost of the paper alone exceeded that paid for each copy.

It would be a difficult task to describe the expenses of an American paper, for they vary infinitely, according to the locality. The subscription to the first-class papers is eight to ten dollars, exclusive of postage. The subscription to the two-cent papers is six dollars. Payment is now demanded in advance; but subscribing has become the exception, at least in the towns. In each district there are news agents, who take a certain number of copies on their own risk, and the readers prefer applying to them, especially the lower classes, as it is easier for them to pay one or two cents a day than the subscription in a lump. When a paper enjoys a good circulation, the allowance of thirty per cent. it makes to the agents forms a very satisfactory income; and one of the agents of the Sun, at New York, recently sold his good-will for 700 dollars. On their side, the papers are glad to favour a system which saves them the expense of distribution, and brings them in ready money daily. On the subject of advertisements, our author writes as follows:

Advertisements occupy the first place in the papers of the United States, as in the habits of the American public. We cannot form an idea of the development the advertising act has assumed across the Atlantic. People often express their wonder at the multitude of advertisements published in the English papers, and the eight-page supplement of the Times is regarded as a miracle. Still the total number of advertisements published by all the English papers does not exceed two millions, while, if we calculate the American advertisements at five times that number, we should be below the truth. We cannot repeat often enough that the American papers live only by advertisements and for them. We cannot judge from the Boston and New York papers that reach England. The two-cent papers give their readers four pages of matter and four of advertisements; the one-cent papers reserve three pages out of four for advertisements. The further we proceed from the Atlantic the larger the space devoted to publicity. Thus, St. Louis, a town of forty-four thousand souls, and capital of a state, has a daily paper larger in size than the Times, printed in smaller and finer type, but which is occupied by advertisements, except in four columns. But this multiplication of advertisements may be explained by the want of any other mode of publicity, and by the extreme cheapness. An advertisement of four lines cost 25 cents the first time, and may be repeated ad infinitum for 12 cents a time. The general custom is for a tradesman to hire a certain and invariable space by the year, which the hirer can dispose of as he pleases. He may employ a small cut representing a steam-boat, a horse, a car, a boot, according to his trade. He may have his advertisement printed topsy-turvy, or dia gonally, in a lozenge or a circle, in prose or in verse; this is a matter dependent on his own taste, and the paper which derives the best part of its income from such whims is very careful not to say a word against them.

But, although the editorial expenses are small on an Ameriean paper, the general outlay is very considerable. One of the heaviest expenses is entailed by the countless telegraphic despatches that fill their columns. The five two-cent papers at New York have combined to receive in com

mon the analyses of the debates of Congress at Washington, the meetings of the Legislative Assembly at Albany, the result of elections, &c., and the expense amounts to 100,000 dollars a year. But this does not prevent each paper having private despatches forwarded by correspondents. As the English steamers touch at Halifax before coming to New York, the papers of the latter city send steamers at common expense, or separately, to catch the mails off Newfoundland, and bring the letters direct to New York. There is not a single American paper without a correspondent at Halifax to send on a summary of the European news immediately on the arrival of the mail. Next to the telegraphic despatches, the heaviest expense is in the correspondences. Not only have they correspondents in all the principal towns of the Union bound to telegraph or write upon any event, but they have them also in every large European town and through South America. The English papers are satisfied with news from the Continent: an American paper is a panorama of the whole world. It registers all occurring in Brazil, Peru, Chili, with as much care and detail as the news from Paris and London, and a letter from China frequently follows one from Constantinople. The Delta, and other first-class New Orleans papers, publish Californian and South American news daily, which they procure at an enormous expense. The following account of the appearance of an American paper is amusing:

This multitude of correspondences and telegrams contributes no little to the strange appearance the American papers offer to the European reader. Nothing differs more from a French paper than an English one; still, with a little practice, it is easy to find one's way through the immense columns of the Times or Post; each matter has its special place, and you are certain of finding facts in the same order daily. There is nothing of this sort in the American papers. On opening them the eye is dazzled by a sea of microscopic characters in which there is no guiding point. There is no methodical classification of the matter; no difference of type to distinguish one article from the other, or call attention to the important part of the paper. Advertisements at the beginning, middle, and end; such is what is noticed at the first glance. At certain distances the head of a column is traversed by seven or eight lines of title, followed by an article of the same number of lines; sometimes it is merely a despatch, which has been cut up and the text altered before giving it purely and simply. Then, columns further on, you may find fresh details about the same fact, or a variation of the same despatch; and nothing but the caprice of the editor or printer explains why an article is in one place in preference to another. As for the "editorial," it is always extremely short, rarely exceeding half or three-fourths of a column. It is followed by a number of still shorter paragraphs, treating of the most various topics. Sometimes the same question forms the subject of half a dozen paragraphs, which the editor did not take the trouble to consolidate into one. Local news is given profusely, with an abundance and minuteness of details wearisome to a French reader. At the end of the news you are sure to find two or three lists of candidates, for the elections are perpetual-federal elections, elections for the state, for the county, for the city; elections of deputies, aldermen, judges, collectors of taxes, inspectors of markets, &c. An exact and zealous elector has always some one to elect to something between breakfast and dinner, and his paper must inform him of the candidates to the vacant post. Then come the statistics, comparing the results of the elections with those of the previous elections, to know whether the Whigs or democrats have lost or gained votes. Lastly, a large space is devoted to commercial news, and the practical temper of the American nation is perfectly displayed in it. Nothing is more lucid, sensible, more full of facts and arguments, than the articles in which a state of the exchange is given or the situation of affairs appreciated. The news is classed with order and method, summed up with a

conciseness to which the clearness is not sacrificed. The variation of the funds and markets through the world is scrupulously registered, for the least forgetfulness or delay would displease men of business. Nearly each line of this part of the paper represents a telegram, and on regarding the lists, which are nothing better than hieroglyphics to the "outsider" and fill two or three columns, the reader is startled at the expense this department must entail. When the various matters we have enumerated do not suffice, with the advertisements, to fill the paper, the editor " stops the hole" with anything that occurs to him, with verses, quotations from good authors, sometimes with a novel, which he cuts into lengths according to the demand of the printer. In a word, if we were to take out of an American paper all that is unnecessary or void of interest, all that resembles the gossip of a small town, there would be frequently little left to read, and an English writer was justified in his remark that all the news in the largest American papers could be got into a single page of the Times or Daily News.

We cannot terminate these observations on the political press of the United States, without making some remarks as to its moral situation. Here, again, the truth will not permit any absolute conclusion. As an instrument of publicity, the American press has an immense part to play: we may say that it forms a part of the very life of the nation, and is the necessary complement of its political institutions. The press alone animates and vivifies this immense electoral system; it alone excites and maintains that competition, without which the elections would frequently degenerate into mere formalities; by attaching a significance to names, and associating with a nomination the triumph of an idea or a party, it calls the people to the voting-booth. On the other side, the journal has not less importance. As the sole reading of the working classes, it is the great public educator; it instructs the workman in his rights, guides him in the exercise of his civic prerogative, instructs him about men and things, combats, but too often strengthens, his prejudices. In a country of universal suffrage, whoever disposes of the masses is master of the national fortunes; when, then, the majority of the press combine to force the nation in any direction, to war or peace, the annexation of Texas, or the conquest of California, and no unforeseen event occurs to distract public attention, this incessant lesson always ends by producing an irresistible movement of public opinion. This is an immense power, but each paper only has a fraction of it, insufficient to make the fortune of an individual. Hence, an engagement on a paper in America does not produce that prestige which is its usual accompaniment, in France more especially; it rarely leads to influence, more rarely still to renown. It may be urged that several journalists have been sent to Congress, and in 1851 there were six in the Chamber of Representatives and tour in the Senate. But it is doubtful whether they were elected solely in their quality as writers. In addition, a political career in the United States is the least productive of all; it does not tempt those who have a fortune ready made, still less those who have a fortune to make. In the new states, there is often a difficulty in finding any one who will leave his family and business every year to go three or four hundred miles to Congress, and any one who devotes himself to politics can soon become a leading But, though it may be easy to become a notability on the banks of the Illinois or the Arkansas, it is very difficult to become the subject of popular applause, like a Clay, a Calhoun, or a Webster. A newspaper in the United States has no authority or value, save what it derives from its editor, and he, in his turn, is judged by his works. In the larger towns, a man of merit, who conducts a paper cleverly and honestly, is