further Encouragement be not given by a larger Number of Subscribers for said Gazette we must let it fall, and cease publishing the same. Many Persons that take this Gazette being above a year behind in their Payments, and some not having paid since the first publishing of the same, They are now desired to pay in what is due, in order to enable the further Publication, if it be continued.
This advertisement, or appeal, in Bradford's own paper settles, beyond the permissibility of a doubt, the month in which his Gazette first appeared. It should be noticed that Bradford did not say the first day of November, but "the first of November 1725," and consequently, because of the other proofs just given, his assertion may be taken as a common way about speaking of the first week of the month. In view of these facts, the date of New York's first newspaper may be set down as November 8, 1725.
From 1725 to 1730 The New-York Gazette consisted of a single sheet of four pages. From 1730 on, the number of pages was irregular, sometimes, two, other times, three, and occasionally, six. The paper was invariably poorly printed doubtless due to the fact that Bradford had used the type for a long time before he began to print this newspaper. Advertisements were few in number and the subscribers were not numerous enough to afford much encouragement to the printer a fact brought out by the two quotations already printed from Bradford's Gazette.
During all the years that Bradford conducted his paper, he was most loyal to those in authority. Yet Bradford, at heart, undoubtedly was in favor of the freedom of the press and supported in his columns many things simply because he needed the salary which he received as "Printer to the Province of New York," and which he would doubtless have lost had he adopted the motto of The New-York Chronicle, the tenth paper in New York, which read: "Open to all Parties and Influenced by None." Had The New-York Gazette been open to the Popular Party, it is a matter of doubt whether John Peter Zenger would have started The New-York Weekly Journal in 1733.
The newspaper war which arose between The New-York Gazette and The New-York Weekly Journal) the next paper of
