Brice introduced a new feature into his paper by devoting the first two pages to some tale or narrative of voyages, continued from week to week, in the style of the French feuilleton. His paper terminated its career on Friday, 23 April, 1725, owing to the imposition of a Stamp Duty of a penny for every whole sheet; but on the ensuing 30th April, in the same year, appeared a new journal from his press, entitled Brice’s Weekly Journal, price twopence.
In the meantime Samuel Farley, an enterprising printer, had started a rival paper, Farley’s Exeter Journal, and this seriously interfered with the sale of Brice’s Journal. This led to bickering that reached a climax in 1726, when there ensued an open quarrel, and Brice was obliged to publish an apology. According to his own admission, he had acted in an injudicious and unjustifiable manner. However, he wrote: “The Farleys have vauntingly given out, That they will totally effect my Overthrow, and that I am now tottering on the Brink of Destruction; For that Sam the younger is now actually gone to London to swear some dreadful Thing (I know not what) against me,” and he intimates that he may possibly be compelled to shift his quarters to Bristol.
In 1727 Brice energetically took up the case of the treatment of insolvent debtors. In his Journal of 8 September appeared “The Case of Mr. Charles Lanyon, &c., of Newlyn, near Penzance, Merchant, a Prisoner in the Sheriff’s Ward in St. Thomas’s,” with a copy of a letter to Mr. George Glanvill, gaoler of this prison, which had been disregarded by him; and a postscript commencing: “We have desired Mr. Brice, in pure Commiseration, to insert this Account in his Journal, that the World may be made sensible of our Sufferings.”
On 20 October he contrasted the manner in which Dally, the keeper of Southgate Prison, treated those committed to his charge with that of Glanvill at St. Thomas’s. “Be it known to my Country Readers, that that very worthy Governor is as distinguishable for Humanity, Good-nature, Charity, and Indulgence to the poor People under his Guard and Care, as He in St. Thomas’s is for Revenge, Savageness, Cruelty, and a long et cætera of abhorred Things which want a Name.”
Brice doubtless had good cause to bring before the public the atrocious manner in which insolvent debtors were treated, but he did this in an intemperate manner, and with personal abuse that Glanvill could not allow to pass without placing the matter in the hands of his lawyer, and legal proceedings were taken against Brice.
In his Journal of 10 November is the remarkable paragraph: “This is to give Notice, that the poor Printer hereof, who expects never to be free from Trouble till Death or Dishonesty takes him under Tutelage, was last Week sued by the most merciful Governour of St. Thomas’s. But he dares lay 2d. ob. neither he nor his Councel knows for what. Well! the Comfort is he fears none but God.... However, being just going to drink, Mr. Grandvile, my humble Service t’ye!”
Up to the end of the year Brice continued to hammer at Glanvill; one of his leaders, being a specially vituperative one, he repeated twice; and in his paper of 16 August, 1728, he accused Glanvill of riding round the country, visiting the gentlemen empanelled on the jury for the trial of the case, to endeavour to prejudice and influence them in his own favour against Brice. After several adjournments the case was tried; and judgment was given against Andrew Brice, and a fine and costs imposed, amounting to a large sum.
Dr. Brushfield says truly: “That Brice’s language was strong, outspoken, coarse, and at times savage, no one will dispute—he was undoubtedly a hard hitter, and went straight to the mark. In reflecting upon him, due regard must be had to the coarse period in which he lived. Let any one read the accounts given by the debtors themselves and others (in Brice’s Weekly Journal, 8 September, 1717, 19 July, and 6 December, 1728); and if they even make allowance for some exaggeration, let them ask themselves whether anything could be more revolting than Glanvill’s treatment of the debtors, and whether Brice’s language could be too strong in his condemnation of such practices. In such a case, truth, if vigorously expressed, was a libel in law. His active sympathies were roused by, what appeared to him to be, the gross injustice and cruelty of the keeper of St. Thomas’s Ward. His enthusiasm never wavered in the support of what he deemed to be a good cause; and no subject did he prosecute more vigorously than that of rendering some assistance to the confined debtors. Under such circumstances, trouble, expense, and future consequences were never considered by him.”
Brice could not and would not pay his fine; and it has been asserted that he was sent to prison. This, however, seems not to have been the case. He retired into his own house, and remained there in voluntary confinement for seven years; where he still continued to produce his Journal. That of 27 February, 1730, contains some information about him in a leading article. After alluding to “the vile Prosecution commenced against” him “near Two Years and a Half since,” he thus refers to the consequences of the action: “I’ve the sad Choice of paying that other Honourable Man, my gentle Adversary above a Hundred Pounds, go to Gaol (the Den of Legion Woe), or retire from and guard against the horrid Catchpoles’ rapacious Clutches. The first none who can’t instruct me honestly to get the Sum will, I presume, advise me to comply with; the second I’ve a natural Antipathy against; and therefore the latter, how much soever it may rub against the grain, I’m forced to submit to.” Then follows the first announcement of a poem he had composed during his retirement, entitled Freedom; and this had appended to it a notice of another poem, “already printed, to be published very soon,” entitled “BEHEMOTH, or, The horrid bloody Monster of St. Thomas’s (an Island scituate directly under the Æquinoctial Line, between Guinea and Lower Æthiopia, subject to the Portuguese).” This, of course, was another attack upon Glanvill, but no copy of it is now known to exist.