University of Virginia Library

I

In June, 1808, Henry White and John Herriott Hart, proprietor and printer respectively of The Independent Whig (a Sunday paper distinguished for its criticism of Tory policies),[5] were twice brought to trial for libels.[6] Both prosecutions were based upon ex-officio informations filed by the Attorney General, and the first group of circulation figures to be considered was apparently compiled in preparation for the trials. It consists of reports on the quantities of stamps issued by the Stamp Office to the printer of the Independent Whig. The period covered extends from the first issue of the paper on January 5, 1806, to the middle of January, 1808.

The earliest memorandum in the group records that "the Circulation [of the Independent Whig] commenced with printing 1188-Stamps issued 1500[.] During the first Thirty weeks gradually increased to 2439-Stamps 2500." The circulation figures, as here distinguished from the number of stamps issued, seem to indicate that the compiler received information from someone close to the paper itself, but such a distinction is not carried consistently through the reports. The second note is headed "1806 Number of Stamps paid for by Mr Hart Printer of the Whig Newspaper" and records issues of stamps at irregular intervals from January 4 to November 20, 1806. The total number issued was 109,100, an average of 2,424 stamps for each number of the paper during the forty-five week period. A similar list of stamps purchased by Hart between January 8 and July 29, 1807, totals 83,950, for a weekly average of 2,894.

There is no report of purchases at the Stamp Office for the Independent Whig between July, 1807, and an unspecified date in the following year, but a noted signed "L. Booth Regr (i.e., "Register") explains the absence of such figures for the period: "Mr Hart does not appear to have paid for any Stamps since July 29-1807-therefore must have been served by some Stationers." Booth's surmise is borne out by another memorandum headed "Independent Whig-bought of Messrs Magnay and Pickering-Newspaper Stamps." Magnay and Pickering were stationers in Queen Street, Cheapside. A list of four purchases from them reveals that the Independent Whig used 80,500 stamps between September 10, 1807, and January 14, 1808. In the manuscript, this figure has been divided by twenty-four (the number of weeks between Hart's last recorded purchase at the Stamp Office and the latest purchase from the stationers), and the quotient, 3,354, is labelled "d week." The approximate circulation of each

issue of the paper from January, 1806, to January, 1808, may be tabulated, then, as follows:      

January to November, 1806	2,400
January to July, 1807	2,800
September, 1807 to January, 1808	3,300

The owner and printer of the Independent Whig were found guilty at both trials in June, 1808, but they appealed to the House of Lords, and the Attorney General remained interested for a time in the circulation of their paper. The final reference to it in this group of documents occurs in a letter of November, 1808, addressed to W. C. Litchfield, the Treasury Solicitor:

The enclosure is as follows: The figure supplied in Booth's memorandum reveals an increase of nearly twenty-six per cent in the average number of stamps purchased weekly between January and November, 1808. The proportionate circulation increase which is indicated was undoubtedly due in part to the notoriety attendant upon the prosecutions themselves.