Politicians and the Press

As the newspaper press grew in size and influence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it faced a variety of state controls and political influences. As has been noted, the lapsing of the Printing Act in 1695 freed the press from considerable legal restraints. According to Schwoerer, this was not the result of deliberate planning on the part of the government, but reflected instead its preoccupation with other matters. Downie, on the other hand, maintains that the licensing system ended because of its fundamental inefficiency. ¹ Even after concerns had been raised by MPs about the dangers of an unregulated press in the years following 1695, parliament was neither sufficiently united nor committed enough to reimpose the kind of laws which had governed printing in the seventeenth century. This attitude remained despite calls from London printers who were keen for regulation to continue in order to protect their trade. ² But whilst the government failed to keep the press under as tight a grip as it had previously, newspapers were not free from governmental constraints, and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the enactment of a variety of controlling and containing measures.