A substantial octavo prose account of the initial stages of the controversy between the coffee-men and the newspaper publishers that erupted in 1728, defending the coffee-men’s position. Tensions between the newspaper proprietors and the coffee-men were long-running, with the former claiming that men came to coffee-houses only to read newspapers for free, while the latter claimed that the cost of subscriptions to numerous papers was ruinous. A news-writer complained in 1721 that ‘the coffee-house men have met in form, and agreed to receive no new papers. The confederates in excuse pretend expence, that papers given at first, are not always given, and that some coffee-men are at £150 per ann charge or more for papers of all kinds’ (The Projector, 17 February 1721, quoted in Jeremy Black, English Press in the 18th Century (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1987), p. 20). By 1728 the coffee-men were conspiring to seize control of a slice of the newspaper business. On 6 November 1728, a circular letter from eleven coffee-men was disseminated to the proprietors of the coffee-houses of London, asking them to attend a public meeting to address the impositions of the ‘news-writers’. The letter proposed that the coffee-men should establish their own morning and evening newspapers, to be published by subscription, and made available to the coffee-houses without further charge. On 18 November 1728, an advertisement was published in the Daily-Post further advertising the proposal, and giving notice that the subscription would close on 25 November. On 30 November a meeting of the subscribers was held at Tom’s 90Coffee-house in Wood-Street, declaring their intention to go forward with the plan. An advertisement was printed for each subscribing coffee-house announcing the plan to publish two half-sheet papers comprising foreign and domestic news. To gather domestic news for their newspapers, the coffee-men proposed to collect ‘intelligence’ from the coffee-houses themselves twice-daily, using an ingenious system of anonymisation and untraceability to ensure the quality of their intelligence. This pamphlet was probably published in December 1728. The opening eighteen pages outline the coffee-men’s complaints against the news-writers: that their news is old and unreliable; that it is collected from the coffee-houses of the town by disreputable hacks; that the newspapers are a ruinous expense for the coffee-men; and that the news-writers profit both from the sale of the newspaper and the sale of advertising space.