and thus early in the history of the colony of New York, in connection with the events out of which the accusation arose, contributed to the foundation and the subsequent establishment in the American Colonies and the United States of America of the now cherished principles of constitutional liberty, freedom of the press, independence of the judiciary, independence of the bar, freedom of elections and independence of the jury.
These words Senator Borah considered of such moment to the American people and their government that they ought to be permanently enshrined in the proceedings of the national legislature—and so they are.
Fittingly enough, New York City paid the final tribute to one of her great sons. In 1953 was established the John Peter Zenger Memorial Room. Located in the old Sub-Treasury Building, which stands on the site of the City Hall in which Zenger was first imprisoned and then tried, the Memorial Room depicts various scenes from the life and career of the German immigrant who looms so large in the history of our journalism and of our free institutions.
This tribute does not take Peter Zenger out of living history to place him in a museum. Rather does it emphasize the truth that his memory will never die as long as American democracy survives. Interest in his trial should never flag if only because freedom of the press is not something that can be taken for granted. In our time the Communist and Fascist challenges have compelled us to go back to our national origins to justify our way of life. That way of life stands or falls with the right of journalists to criticize the government. We cannot afford to ignore or slur over the printer and his colleagues who first insisted on independence in publishing the news, put their principle into practice, produced a great newspaper that magnificently vindicated them, defended their newspaper in the teeth of official condemnation and judicial indictment, and were so obviously in the right that a jury of their fellow citizens upheld them in spite of a hostile court. Peter Zenger was never more of a portent and a precedent than he is today.
3. The Text
This edition of the trial is, like all others, based on A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger, Printer of the New York Weekly Journal, which was edited by James Alexander and printed by the Zenger press in 1736.
Alexander’s is the only authentic version, for he was the sole person close to the affair who undertook to prepare a written text. He was in this, as in so many other ways, the formal apologist for his side. A rival edition would have been logical, and could easily have been produced by the men of the prosecution, but they never saw fit to attempt their own vindication.
Indeed, Attorney General Bradley declined even to participate in publication, withholding his notes and his brief when the Zenger camp asked to see them, refusing any kind of advice, comment, correction, or even objection; obviously because, staggered and humiliated by the acquittal, he was in no mood to help embalm his courtroom defeat in print. It is a pity that he allowed his case to go by default. He could not, of course, have changed the pleading as we find it set down, except possibly for minor points of emphasis or phraseology, but he might have made a more respectable showing than he does in the bare synopses to which the Brief Narrative is reduced from time to time. True, he might have appeared in an even worse light; perhaps he was afraid that that was exactly what his opponents had in mind. Nevertheless, at the very least he would have allowed the public and posterity to view what happened from his angle of vision. He deliberately chose not to do so.
The defense had no inhibitions about publishing a full account of the trial. The cheering and shouting had scarcely died away before Alexander was at work copying out the arguments, arranging notes, gathering information from those who could fill in the gaps for him.
He was the obvious man for the job. Writer, journalist, and editor, he had been schooled in the task of integrating written material and in working up connecting links and explanatory passages as they were needed. Again, not only did he stand near the head of the legal profession, so that he was fully equipped to juggle the problem of libel, the textbook citations, and the technicalities and philosophy of the law (essentials in dealing with any such trial), but he had an unparalleled position at the center of the Zenger turmoil.