Mind-Munitions

132
Propaganda in the Age of Revolutionary Warfare
Nothing encourages newspaper circulation more than war, and
in England sales increased dramatically during the Seven Years War
(1756-63). Although expensive (prices were not helped by increases
in the Stamp Tax), newspapers were widely shared and read aloud
in public places such as coffee houses, barber shops, and pubs. As
early as 1711, it was calculated that one newspaper was seen or
heard by a minimum of twenty readers. Edmund Burke (1729-97),
the editor of the Annual Register, wrote that ‘newspapers are a
more important instrument than is generally imagined; they are
part of the reading of all; they are the whole of the reading of the
far greater number’. Even so, newspapers in England printed virtually
anything they wanted, with the result that Lord Camden could
comment with some authority that ‘the newspapers are so poisoned
with falsehood, that I find it utterly impossible to distinguish the
truth’. As Professor Levy has written, ‘the press, once the object of
censorship, placed the government under its censureship… [the
government] manipulated the press, subsidized it, and prosecuted
it, but could not control it.’ The degree to which politicians such as
John Wilkes (1727-97) used his newspaper, the North Briton, for
his own political purposes says more about his criticisms of the
period than it does about the period itself. Eighteenth-century
historians must therefore approach such newspaper sources with
extreme care, despite Macaulay’s claim that ‘the true history of a
nation is to be found in its newspapers’. In England, the press
provided an outlet for dissent and criticism of constitutional
government, a liberating force without recourse to violent change.