Contemporary with its extension to the provinces, newspaper enterprise was penetrating into the colonies, and America took the lead. Small were the beginnings in the land where the freedom of the press was destined to attain its fullest development. America's first journal--the _Boston News Letter_--was printed at Boston in 1704, and survived to the limit assigned by the Psalmist to the age of man. In 1719 appeared the _Boston Gazette_, and in the same year the _American Weekly Miscellany_, at Philadelphia. In 1721 appeared James Franklin's paper, the _New England Courant_, and in 1728 the _New York Journal_. In 1733 John P. Tenzer brought out the _New York Weekly Journal_, a paper which was so ably conducted in opposition to the Government, that in the following year a prosecution, or rather persecution, was determined upon. Andrew Hamilton was Tenzer's counsel, and the temptation to quote a passage from the peroration of his speech for the defence is irresistible: 'The question which is argued before you this day is not only the cause of a poor printer, nor yet even of the colony of New York alone: it is the best of causes--the cause of liberty. Every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honor in you the men whose verdict will have secured to us upon a firm basis--to us, to our posterity, to our neighbors, that right which both nature and the honor of our country gives us, the liberty of freely speaking and writing the truth.' What could the jury do, after these burning words, but acquit the prisoner? They did acquit him, and from this famous trial dates, according to Gouverneur Morris, the dawn of the American Revolution, which myriads of Englishmen, whatever may be thought or said to the contrary by persons who wish to raise bad blood between two mighty countries, delight to acknowledge as glorious. But the progress of the press in America was slow under British rule, for in 1775 there were only thirty-six journals in the various States altogether. The West India islands soon began to establish papers of their own, and Barbadoes led the way in 1731 with the _Barbadoes Gazette_. Yet the development of journalism in other British colonies belongs to a later period of history.