When it came to the power and influence of the daily press, and the crucial role of newspaper offices in supplying politicians with the latest intelligence, especially in war-time, Charles Stuart knew what he was talking about. One of a trio of entrepreneurial Scottish brothers who descended on London in the 1780s to make their fortunes in printing and publishing, Charles was firmly and lucratively ensconced in the pay of the Treasury, as was his brother Peter, proprietor of a ministerial paper and eager servant of whatever party was in power. The third brother was Daniel Stuart, editor-proprietor of the Morning Post, the daily London newspaper whose founding in 1772 has been described as one of the most significant events in the history of journalism. When Stuart purchased the Morning Post in 1795 its circulation had declined to 350 copies per day. Within three years, he had increased this to 2,000 copies per day, reaching an unprecedented sale of 4,500 copies per day in 1803, the year he sold it and bought the evening paper, the Courier. Coleridge wrote prose and verse for both of Daniel Stuart's newspapers, but his best efforts were for the Morning Post during its period of spectacular recovery, starting with poetry contributions in 1797 and rising to essays and leading columns in 1800. So successful were Coleridge's essays at this time, particularly his astute psychological anatomy of William Pitt (March 1800), that he appears to have been offered a proprietary interest in the paper (EOTi, lx).