And We do hereby command all officers ... civil and military, and all other Inhabitants ... to be obedient aiding and assisting unto you, the said Benning Wentworth, in the Execution of this our Commission ... and in case of your Death, or absence out of our Province, unto such person as shall be appointed by us to be our Lieutenant Governor ... to whom we do therefore by these Presents give and grant all and singular the Powers and authorities aforesaid [and, if no Lieutenant Governor has been named, then] the Eldest Councillor, whose Name is first placed in our Instructions to you ... shall take upon him the administration of the government and Execute our said Commission ... and the several Powers therein contained.
113. Free Speech Vindicated
(Trial of John Peter Zenger, 1735.)
Zenger, in 1738, published a "Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryall," somewhat in the form of a modern "Report," though he speaks in the first person. In 1735 the governor of New York removed the chief justice of the colony for personal reasons. Zenger, in his Weekly Journal, vigorously criticized this and other despotic actions of the governor. He was prosecuted for criminal libel; and the new chief justice showed a determination to secure a conviction, trying to limit the jury to deciding only whether Zenger was responsible for the publication, and reserving to himself the decision whether the words were punishable. This was the custom in English courts of the day in government prosecutions.
Italics and black-faced type are as in the original.
[The Attorney General's complaint, as Zenger reports, characterized him as "a seditious person and a frequent Printer and Publisher of false news and seditious Libels, and charged specifically that he] "did falsely, seditiously, and scandalously print and publish ... a certain false, malicious, seditious, scandalous Libel ... concerning His Excellency the Governour ... [in which publication he represented a former inhabitant explaining that he had left the colony, as he doubts not others will, because, among other reasons] They ... think ... that their LIBERTIES and PROPERTIES are precarious, and that SLAVERY is likely to be intailed on them and their Posterity if some past Things be not amended ... (meaning, the past Proceedings of his Excellency the Governor ...) ... [and] WE ... SEE MENS DEEDS DESTROYED, JUDGES ARBITRARILY DISPLACED, NEW COURTS ERECTED WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE LEGISLATURE....
"Who then [can] call any Thing his own, or enjoy any Liberty ... longer than those in the Administration ... will condescend to let them?"
[This publication, the Attorney General charges, was] to the great disturbance of the Peace of the ... Province ... to the Great Scandal of Our said Lord the King, of His Excellency the Governor [etc]; whereupon the said Attorney General of Our said Lord the King, for Our said Lord the King, prays ... the due Process of the Law against him the said John Peter Zenger ... in the Premises.
[The Report continues:]