Some knowledge of Defoe's political work is necessary to a comprehension of the early eighteenth century. During his life the power of the people and of the House of Commons was slowly extended, and the foundations of the modern English Constitution were laid. The trading and manufacturing classes, especially in the city of London, increased in wealth and political consequence. The reading public on which a popular writer could rely, widened. With these changes--partly as cause and purely as consequence--came the establishment of "News Journals" and "Reviews." Besides Addison's Spectator for the more cultured classes, multitudes of periodicals were founded which aimed to reach a more general public. The old method of a broad-sheet or the pamphlet, hawked in the streets or exposed for sale and cried at the book-stalls, was still in use, but the regular issue of a news-letter was taking its place. Defoe attacked the public in both ways with unwearied assiduity. His poem 'The True-Born Englishman' was sold in the streets to the astonishing number of eighty thousand. In 1704 he established the Review, a bi-weekly. It ran to 1713, and Defoe wrote nearly all of each number. Afterwards he was for eight years main contributor and substantially manager of Mist's Journal, a Tory organ; and one of the most serious and well-founded charges against this first great journalist is, that he was deficient in journalistic honor, and remained in the pay of the Whig Ministry while attached to the Opposition organ. During this period he founded and conducted several other journals. Defoe possessed in a large measure the journalistic sense. No one ever had a finer instinct in the subtle arts of "working the public" and of advertising. When the notorious Jack Sheppard was condemned, he visited him at Newgate, wrote his life, and had the highwayman, standing under the gallows, send for a copy and deliver it as his "last speech and dying confession." There is a certain breadth and originality in this stroke, hardly to be paralleled in modern journalism. Defoe had the knack of singling out from the mass of passing events whatever would be likely to interest the public. He brought out an account in some newspaper, and if successful, made the occurrence the subject of a longer article in pamphlet or book form. He was always on the lookout for matter, which he utilized with a pen of marvelous rapidity. The gazette or embryonic newspaper was at first confined to a rehearsal of news. Defoe invented the leading article or "news-letter" of weekly comment, and the society column of Mercure Scandaleuse.