In 1672 the Mercure galant was established by Donneau de Vize. Its title was later changed to Nouveau Mercure, and in 1728 to Mercure de France, a designation retained, with slight modification, until 1853, when the paper finally ceased. It had many prominent contributors. In 1790 its circulation rose very rapidly and reached for a time 13,00o copies. Mirabeau styled it in debate "the most able of the newspapers." Great pains were taken in the collection of statistics and state papers, the absence of which from the French newspaper press had helped to depress its credit as compared with the political journalism of England and to some extent of Germany.
Under Napoleon the organ of official information was the Moniteur (Gazette rationale, on le moniteur universel), founded in 1789 under the same general management with the Mercure. The Moniteur kept step with the majority of the assembly, the Mercure with the minority. So marked a contrast between two journals with one proprietor gave too favourable a leverage to the republican wits not to be turned to good account. Camille Des moulins depicted him as Janus—one face radiant at the blessings of coming liberty, the other plunged in grief for the epoch that was rapidly disappearing.
The only other newspaper of a date anterior to the Revolution which need be noticed here is the first French daily, the Journal de Paris, which was started on New Year's Day of 1777 and lived till 1819. Its period of highest prosperity may be dated about 1792, when its circulation is said to have exceeded 20,000. The Journal des Debats, which still flourishes, was founded in 1789 by Baudouin.
The cheap journalism of Paris began in 1836 (1st July) with the journal of Girardin, La Presse, followed instantly by Le Siecle, under the management of Dutacq, to whom, it is said— not incredibly—the original idea was really due. The first-named journal attained a circulation of Io,000 copies within three months of its commencement and soon doubled that number. The Siecle prospered even more strikingly, and in a few years had reached a circulation (then without precedent in France) of 38,000 copies.
The rapid growth of the newspaper press of Paris under Louis Philippe will be best appreciated from the fact that, while in 1828 the number of stamps issued was 28 millions, in 1836, 1843, and 1846 the figures were 42, 61, 65 and 79 millions respectively.
At the last-mentioned date the papers with a circulation of up wards of 10,000 were (besides the Moniteur, of which the circula tion was chiefly official and gratuitous) as follows : Le Siecle, 32,000; La Presse and Le Constitutionnel, between 20,000 and 25,00o; Journal des Debats and L'Epoque, to 15,000.
The impulse given to the growth of advertisements in the days which followed July 183o became, as the years rolled on, suffi ciently developed to induce the formation of a company—in which one of the Laffittes took part—to farm them, or rather to farm a certain conspicuous page of each newspaper, at a yearly rent of 112,000 sterling (300,00o francs), so far (at first) as regarded the four leading journals (Debats, Constitutionnel, Siecle, Presse), to which were afterwards added two others (Le Pays and Lai Patrie). The combination greatly embarrassed advertisers, first, since its great aim was to force them either to advertise in all, whether addressing the classes to be canvassed or not, or else to pay for each advertisement in a selected newspaper the price of many proffered advertisements in all the papers collectively, and, secondly, because by many repetitions in certain newspapers no additional publicity was really gained, two or three of the favoured journals circulating for the main amongst the same class of buyers.
On July 16, 185o, the assembly passed what is called the "loi Tinguy" (from the name of the otherwise obscure deputy who proposed it), by which the author of every newspaper article on any subject, political, philosophical or religious, was bound to affix his name to it, on penalty of a fine of 500 francs for the first offence, and of ',coo francs for its repetition. Every false or feigned signature was to be punished by a fine of i,000 francs, "together with six months' imprisonment, both for the author and the editor." The practical working of this law lay in the creation of a new functionary in the more important newspaper offices, who was called secretaire de la redaction, and was, in fact, the scapegoat ex The "loi Tinguy," though now long repealed, has had a permanent influence on French journalism in the continued prevalence of signed articles, and the consequent prominence of individual writers as compared with the same class of work in other countries.