ll newspapers, were sold
at sixpence a copy, each bearing a Government stamp of the value of
threehalf-pence. Is it surprising, under these conditions, that few
newspapers should circulate, and that news should travel slowly
throughout the country?

But the growth of newspapers to their present magnificent proportions is
a thing of quite recent times, for even so lately as 1857 the
_Scotsman_, then sold unstamped for a penny, weighed only about
three-quarters of an ounce, while to-day the same paper, which continues
to be sold for a penny, weighs fully four and a half ounces. And other
newspapers throughout the country have no doubt swelled their columns to
a somewhat similar degree.

A very good instance of the small amount of personal travelling indulged
in by the people a century ago is given by Cleland in his _Annals of
Glasgow_. Writing in the year 1816, he says: "It has been calculated
that, previous to the erection of steamboats, not more than fifty
persons passed and repassed from Glasgow to Greenock in one day, whereas
it is now supposed that there are from four to five hundred passes and
repasses in the same period." In the present day a single steamboat
sailing from the Broomielaw, Glasgow, will often carry far more
passengers to Greenock, or beyond Greenock, than the whole passengers
travelling between the towns named in one day in 1816. For example, the
tourist steamer _Columba_ is certificated to carry some 1800 passengers.

In 1792 the principal mails to and from London were carried by
mail-coaches, which were then running between the Metropolis and some
score of the chief towns in the country at the speed of seven or eight
miles an hour; and so far as direct mails were concerned the towns in
question kept up relations with London under the conditions of speed
just described. But the cross post service--that is, the service between
places not lying in the main routes out of London--was not yet
developed, and these cross post towns were beyond the reach of anything
like early information of what was going on, not, let us say, in the
world at large, but in their own country. The people in these towns had
to patiently await the laggard arrival of news from the greater centres
of activity; and when it did arrive it probably came to hand in a very
imperfect form, or so late as to be useless for any purpose of combined
action or criticism.

Dr. James Russell, in his _Reminiscences of Yarrow_, describes how