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What was the scope of this right? Although I have found no one statement explicitly equating commercial and political speech, colonial Americans plainly viewed the freedom of speech as protecting far more than just political speech.

As one contributor writing under the pseudonym "Philalethes" declared in Boston's Herald of Freedom in 1788, Americans "are nurtured in the ennobling idea that to think what they please, and to speak, write, and publish their sentiments with decency and independency on every subject, constitutes the dignified character of Americans."

Commercial matters were among the "subjects" to which the freedom of speech obtained. As Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, perhaps the leading AntiFederalist, said in his demand for a bill of rights, "a free press is the channel of communication to mercantile and public affairs...."

This view is likely based on the extent to which advertising was integral to the colonial press, and therefore part of the "press" whose freedom they sought to protect in the First Amendment. As one commentator has observed: "Well before 1800 most English and American newspapers were not only supported by advertising but they were, even primarily, vehicles for the dissemination of advertising."

The majority of the ads that appeared in colonial newspapers would today be considered "commercial speech,"  i.e., a message that proposes a commercial transaction. As commercial speech scholar Kent Middleton has noted: "The colonial press regularly carried reputable medical ads, as well as those for books, cloth, empty bottles, corks, and other useful goods and services."

Frank Mott, in his classic history of journalism, notes that during the 18th century, like today, "[a]dvertising represented the chief profit margin in the newspaper business."

In fact, the inaugural issue of the first successful American newspaper, the Boston Newsletter, published on April 24, 1704, solicited ads that were carried in the next week's issue.

Fifteen years later, Benjamin Franklin and his brother James came "into journalism and sowed the seed of a free press and an expansion of advertising.

Franklin not only sold advertising to support his publishing efforts, but advertised in his own newspapers to promote the goods he sold in his Philadelphia shop. These included the Franklin stove, which he called a "Pennsylvania fireplace." An 1864 biographer of Franklin credits him with having "originated the modern system of advertising."

When the New-Hampshire Gazette was launched in 1756, its publisher said that the paper would "contain ... moral, religious, or political Essays, and such other Speculations as may have a Tendency to improve the Mind, afford any Help to Trade, Manufactures, Husbandry, and other useful Arts, and promote the public Welfare in any Respect." True to its word, the Gazette, like the other newspapers of its day, carried everything from price lists to political philosophy.

Often, more than half of the standard colonial newspaper was taken up by advertising. In 1766, 70 percent of Hugh Gaine's New-York Mercury consisted of advertising. As noted, this is the same situation as today.

When the first daily newspaper in the United States began in 1784  the Pennsylvania Packet and General Advertiser  10 of its 16 columns were filled with ads. New York's first daily was the NewYork Daily Advertiser. The front pages of the Boston, New York, and Philadelphia newspapers were devoted almost exclusively to advertising.

Also, for much of the colonial era, newspapers did not use layout techniques or differences in typeface to provide a visual distinction between advertising and editorial content. The two were regarded as of equal interest to readers and treated the same.

As advertising historian Frank Presbrey observed: "Advertisements had as much interest as the news columns, perhaps greater interest, for they were more intimately connected with the readers" daily life than were the foreign items that made up so large a part of the news. Arrival of a new cargo of food or drink, or tools, likely was what the man, home from a reading at the coffee house or tavern, talked about at his fireside rather than the reception of a new envoy at some court in Europe."

Given the pervasiveness of advertising in colonial America, it is not surprising that the idea of "the freedom of ... the press" included advertising. In fact, one of the best known statements in defense of a free press  Franklin's famous "Apology for Printers"  was written in response to an attack on an advertisement Franklin had printed.

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