The resolution which follows calls upon the Assembly to disavow the action of these men and give them up to receive proper punishment. This the Assembly refused to do, and then both houses carried the matter on petition to the Crown, and it had not been settled when the breaking out of the Revolutionary War put an end to the affair.
In this case the attempt of the upper house to destroy the liberty of the press, was opposed by the desire of the lower house to uphold it, and the fact that this occurred on the eve of the Revolution is significant, teaching us that even to the last the principle that the press must be free had not been established in the American colonies.
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
We have had brought before us all the instances of any importance, throughout the American colonies of efforts on the part of the government to control the liberty of the press. Let us now attempt to deduce from them the general principles which governed the matter.
In the first place it is clear that, as the several colonies differed the one from another in their relations with and dependence upon the home government and their Governor, who represented that government, so too the press was in some colonies far more free from control than in others. In Massachusetts, where interference from outside was always resisted, control by the Governor was seldom attempted. Before the administration of Governor Andros the Crown made no attempt to interfere; Andros himself appointed Edward Randolph (vide p. 9) as licenser, and Bartholomew Green, the Boston publisher testifies (vide p. 10) to the fact that in his time (the end of the seventeenth century), Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton took a keen interest in the productions of the press, and refused to allow any publications without a previous application to him, with a copy of the matter to be published. After this period the control by the Crown again was lost in that as also in political matters.
In Pennsylvania we have an instance of a Governor representing an individual proprietor. Here the struggle between the people and Penn’s representative in political matters was carried over into the field occupied by the press, and so we find in the early period of the existence of the press a dual authority exercised, the Crown and the Quarterly Meeting, both claiming the right of censorship (vide p. 23). In the first half of the eighteenth century the power of the Quakers passed away as far as our subject is concerned, but the control exercised by the Crown continued, although more and more questioned, until the breaking out of the Revolutionary struggle.
In New York the Governor himself was responsible for the introduction of the press and for forty years (1692–1734), it took no active part in political agitations, maintaining a cautious neutrality under Bradford. In this colony it was rather a question of the right to freedom of speech, a question raised in the prosecution of Col. Nicholas Bayard. From the period of the Zenger trial newspapers continued to increase and the twenty-five years before 1775 witnessed a continuous production of pamphlets in which the Crown and its representative were attacked, the efforts to punish by the government being in almost every case entirely futile. The press divides itself into two groups, the supporters and opponents of the Governor, and the party newspaper becomes a reality.
In the Southern colonies the press never attained any liberty, the government being ever on the watch to repress the smallest attempt at freedom of discussion and criticism.
In the second place we find that the attitude assumed by the inhabitants of the colonies, as expressed by the actions of their representatives, varied in the different colonies. We do find this general similarity, that in all there was a very jealous upholding of the rights of the legislative body as against criticism. That can be easily established by a perusal of the Minutes of any of the Assemblies. But in Massachusetts a distinction seems to have been early established between a criticism of the proceedings of the General Court as such, and a criticism of the policy of the government. In Pennsylvania this view was only in the latter period arrived at; in New York the General Assembly was constantly taking offense at writings appearing in the newspapers or distributed in the form of pamphlets; while in Virginia the question never arose because there was no criticism.
Everywhere we find that there was, as time goes on, a general advance towards freedom of discussion. But this is best seen in nonpolitical matters. With the failure by Parliament in 1695 to renew the Licensing Act all publication became at least theoretically free except in so far as it was restrained by the law of libel. To just what extent this law could be stretched was always a matter of dispute. The maxim “the greater the truth, the greater the libel” must certainly have exercised an influence to deter the publications of the time from the discussion of private affairs. In fact in many instances the news contained in an issue of a newspaper was practically nothing, the few columns being occupied with a very bald statement of Indian affairs, or the relations with France or perhaps a short account of something which had taken place in England or on the Continent. The needs of the community, as better roads or the impounding of wandering cattle, were lightly touched on, but there was but slight evidence of any conception of the idea that the press could lead and direct public opinion as to municipal affairs.