Mr. Attorney General opened the information, which was as follows:
MR. ATTORNEY. May it please Your Honors and you, Gentlemen of the Jury. The information now before the Court, and to which the defendant, Zenger, has pleaded “Not guilty,” is an information for printing and publishing a false, scandalous, and seditious libel in which His Excellency, the Governor of this Province, who is the king’s immediate representative here, is greatly and unjustly scandalized as a person that has no regard to law or justice; with much more, as will appear upon reading the information. Libeling has always been discouraged as a thing that tends to create differences among men, ill blood among the people, and oftentimes great bloodshed between the party libeling and the party libeled. There can be no doubt but you, Gentlemen of the Jury, will have the same ill opinion of such practices as judges have always shown upon such occasions. But I shall say no more at this time, until you hear the information, which is as follows:
Be it remembered that Richard Bradley, Attorney General of the king for the Province of New York, who prosecutes for the king in this part, in his own proper person comes here into the Court of the king, and for the king gives the Court her to understand and be informed:
That John Peter Zenger, of the City of New York, printer (being a seditious person; and a frequent printer and publisher of false news and seditious libels, both wickedly and maliciously devising the administration of His Excellency William Cosby, Captain General and Governor in Chief, to traduce, scandalize, and vilify both His Excellency the Governor and the ministers and officers of the king, and to bring them into suspicion and the ill opinion of the subjects of the king residing within the Province), on the twenty-eighth day of January, in the seventh year of the reign of George the Second, at the City of New York did falsely, seditiously, and scandalously print and publish, and cause to be printed and published, a certain false, malicious, seditious, scandalous libel entitled The New York Weekly Journal.
In which libel, among other things therein contained, are these words, “Your appearance in print at last gives a pleasure to many, although most wish you had come fairly into the open field, and not appeared behind entrenchments made of the supposed laws against libeling, and of what other men had said and done before. These entrenchments, gentlemen, may soon be shown to you and to all men to be weak, and to have neither law nor reason for their foundation, and so cannot long stand in your stead. Therefore you had much better as yet leave them, and come to what the people of this City and Province (the City and Province of New York meaning) think are the points in question. They (the people of the City and Province of New York meaning) think, as matters now stand, that their liberties and properties are precarious, and that slavery is like to be entailed on them and their posterity if some past things be not amended, and this they collect from many past proceedings.” (Meaning many of the past proceedings of His Excellency, the Governor, and of the ministers and officers of the king, of and for the said Province.)
And the Attorney General likewise gives the Court here to understand and be informed:
That the said John Peter Zenger afterwards, to wit on the eighth day of April, did falsely, seditiously and scandalously print and publish another false, malicious, seditious, and scandalous libel entitled The New York Weekly Journal.
In which libel, among other things therein contained, are these words, “One of our neighbors (one of the inhabitants of New Jersey meaning) being in company and observing the strangers (some of the inhabitants of New York meaning) full of complaints, endeavored to persuade them to remove into Jersey. To which it was replied, that would be leaping out of the frying pan into the fire; for, says he, we both are under the same Governor (His Excellency the said Governor meaning), and your Assembly have shown with a vengeance what is to be expected from them. One that was then moving to Pennsylvania (meaning one that was then removing from New York with intent to reside at Pennsylvania), to which place it is reported that several considerable men are removing (from New York meaning), expressed in terms very moving much concern for the circumstances of New York (the bad circumstances of the Province and people of New York meaning), and seemed to think them very much owing to the influence that some men (whom he called tools) had in the administration (meaning the administration of government of the said Province of New York). He said he was now going from them, and was not to be hurt by any measures they should take, but could not help having some concern for the welfare of his countrymen, and should be glad to hear that the Assembly (meaning the General Assembly of the Province of New York) would exert themselves as became them by showing that they have the interest of their country more at heart than the gratification of any private view of any of their members, or being at all affected by the smiles or frowns of a governor (His Excellency the said Governor meaning); both of which ought equally to be despised when the interest of their country is at stake.
“You, says he, complain of the lawyers, but I think the law itself is at an end. We (the people of the Province of New York meaning) see men’s deeds destroyed, judges arbitrarily displaced, new courts erected without consent of the legislature (within the Province of New York meaning) by which it seems to me trial by jury is taken away when a governor pleases (His Excellency the said Governor meaning), and men of known estates denied their votes contrary to the received practice, the best expositor of any law. Who is there then in that Province (meaning the Province of New York) that can call anything his own, or enjoy any liberty, longer than those in the administration (meaning the administration of government of the said Province of New York) will condescend to let them do it? For which reason I have left it, as I believe more will.”
These words are to the great disturbance of the peace of the said Province of New York, to the great scandal of the king, of His Excellency the Governor, and of all others concerned in the administration of the government of the Province, and against the peace of the king, his crown, and his dignity.