CIGARETTE PAPERS.

Southland Times, Issue 21650, 11 March 1932, Page 8

CIGARETTE PAPERS.

THE FIRST DAILY. Two hundred and thirty years ago the first daily paper appeared in Britain. This was The Daily Courant, published by “E. Mallet, against the Ditch at Fleet Bridge,” a site not far from the position of the present office of The Times. It was a single page of two columns, and professed to give solely foreign news. The editor or publisher was careful to assure Jiis readers that he would not indulge in any comments of his own, no editorials, because he supposed “othej- people to have sense enough to make reflections for themselves.” Before long the Daily Courant passed into the hands of Samuel Buckley, “at the Sign of the Dolphin” in Little Britain. Buckley afterwards became the printer of the Spectator. Buckley was a man of more literary quality than Mallet, and he changed the character of the Daily Courant. He was a man of some standing and it is interesting, as a sidelight of the practices of the Government of George L, that Buckley's name appeared in a list of persons laid before a Secretary of State in 1724 as “Buckley, Amen—corner, the worthy printer of tho Gazette—well affected.” This final comment meant, of course, that Mr Buckley was “wcll-affected” to the Hanoverian succession, a point of considerable importance in those times when the House of Hanover did not feel itself too firmly seated on the throne. Eleven years later the Daily Courant, having survived a life of thirty-three years, was absorbed by the Daily Gazeteer. In those days the daily papers were small, mild affairs, and their news though valuable was meagre. One wonders what friend Mallet would say if he could walk down Fleet street to-day and see the modern dailies being produced. —CRITICUS.