rewarded. In nearly every colony a gazette
or chronicle appeared within the next thirty years or more. Benjamin
Franklin was able to record in 1771 that America had twenty-five
newspapers. Boston led with five. Philadelphia had three: two in English
and one in German.

=Censorship and Restraints on the Press.=--The idea of printing,
unlicensed by the government and uncontrolled by the church, was,
however, slow in taking form. The founders of the American colonies had
never known what it was to have the free and open publication of books,
pamphlets, broadsides, and newspapers. When the art of printing was
first discovered, the control of publishing was vested in clerical
authorities. After the establishment of the State Church in England in
the reign of Elizabeth, censorship of the press became a part of royal
prerogative. Printing was restricted to Oxford, Cambridge, and London;
and no one could publish anything without previous approval of the
official censor. When the Puritans were in power, the popular party,
with a zeal which rivaled that of the crown, sought, in turn, to silence
royalist and clerical writers by a vigorous censorship. After the
restoration of the monarchy, control of the press was once more placed
in royal hands, where it remained until 1695, when Parliament, by
failing to renew the licensing act, did away entirely with the official
censorship. By that time political parties were so powerful and so
active and printing presses were so numerous that official review of all
published matter became a sheer impossibility.

In America, likewise, some troublesome questions arose in connection
with freedom of the press. The Puritans of Massachusetts were no less
anxious than King Charles or the Archbishop of London to shut out from
the prying eyes of the people all literature "not mete for them to
read"; and so they established a system of official licensing for
presses, which lasted until 1755. In the other colonies where there was
more diversity of opinion and publishers could set up in business with
impunity, they were nevertheless constantly liable to arrest for
printing anything displeasing to the colonial governments. In 1721 the
editor of the _Mercury_ in Philadelphia was called before the
proprietary council and ordered to apologize for a political article,
and for a later offense of a similar character he was thrown into jail.
A still more famous case was that of Peter Zenger, a New York publisher