CHAPTER V

THE PRESS IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES

In the Southern colonies we find, as we should expect, an absence of any very important cases bearing on the subject under consideration.

The ideas of Sir Wm. Berkeley, (for thirty-eight years Governor of Virginia), in regard to the dissemination of information, may be gathered from a reply made by him to some enquiries of the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations.

The question being “What course is taken about the instructing the people, within your government in the Christian religion; and what provision is there made for the paying of your minister?” his answer is: “The same course that is taken in England out of towns: every man according to his ability instructing his children. We have forty-eight parishes, and our ministers are well paid, and by my consent should be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. But of all other commodities, so of this, the worst is sent us, and we had few that we could boast of, since the persecution in Cromwell’s tiranny drove divers worthy men hither. But, I thank God, we have not free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both.”[10]

At the beginning of the last quarter of the seventeenth century Virginia suffered from internal disorders (as Bacon’s Rebellion), due to political disturbances having their origin in the English Civil War. Lord Culpepper, the Governor, was inclined to stretch the royal prerogative to its furthest limit and met the murmurings of the Assembly with a cold and gloomy dignity.[11]

The Assembly insisting on its rights as given in the charters, Lord Culpepper dissolved the body and endeavored to stamp out all remembrance of past freedom. In the Bland MS. p. 498,[12] we find the following entry: “Feb. 21, 1682, John Buckner called before the Lord Culpepper and his Council for printing the laws of 1680, without his Excellency’s license, and he and the printer ordered to enter into bond in £100 not to print anything thereafter, until his majesty’s pleasure should be known.” Thus, the press was strangled at its birth, since we have no record or copy of any other work, and that the government continued to watch carefully lest it should appear again is proven by the Instructions of Lord Effingham, the next Governor, in which he is ordered “to allow no person to use a printing press on any occasion whatsoever.”[13]

In the period between 1733, when Wm. Parks established his press at Williamsburg, and 1765 when Wm. Rind began to issue a paper at Williamsburg, there was but the single press in Virginia, and being the organ of the government it may be easily imagined that it had no great temptation to struggle for the liberty of the press.

With the exception of libel suits against Wm. Parks about the year 1740 (by which the House of Burgesses sought to punish him for publishing an article reflecting on one of the members), and the presentment in 1766 of Rind, and of Purdie and Dixon, the publishers of the two Virginia Gazettes (for referring in a way considered improper, to the bailment of Colonel Chiswell), in both of which instances the prosecution failed utterly in its attempt,—there is nothing on the subject which claims our attention.

In South Carolina the press was encouraged, liberal inducements being held out to any printer who would settle in the colony. As a result of this policy we find the printing press in operation from the year 1730, a newspaper being published in 1731. In the early period of the history of the press in the colony the only cause of serious trouble that we find was one involving Peter Timothy, of the Gazette, who had published a letter by one Hugh Bryan in which occurred the statement that “the clergy of South Carolina broke their Canons daily.” With Timothy were also arrested Bryan and George Whitefield, the Evangelist, who had corrected the manuscript. All three were admitted to bail, and the matter was dropped.

In 1773 one of the most important cases that ever occurred in the colonies came about through the publication in the South Carolina Gazette, then owned by Timothy and a partner whom he had lately taken, named Thomas Powell, but managed entirely by the latter, of a portion of the proceedings of the Council on the previous day. Being summoned to attend the body, he admitted that he was the publisher of the Gazette, and that he had printed the proceedings, which on being asked he said had been brought to him by the Hon. Wm. Henry Drayton, a member of the Council. The Council then adjudged him “guilty of a high breach of the privileges, and a contempt of the house.”

Powell refused to ask pardon of the Council which then,

“Resolved, That Thomas Powell, who hath this day been adjudged by this house, to have been guilty of a high breach of privilege, and a contempt of this house, be for his said offense committed to the Common Gaol of Charleston; and that his Honor, the President of this house, do issue his warrant accordingly.”

Mr. Drayton, who was present, and had acknowledged his share in the affair, protested strongly, but without avail, and Powell was placed in prison. Two days later, on Sept. 2d, the Hon. Rawlins Lowndes, and Mr. George Gabriel Powell, the former being Speaker of the Assembly, and the latter one of the members of the body, and both being justices of the peace, had Powell brought before them on a writ of Habeas Corpus and discharged him. The Council then took action in these resolutions:

“Resolved, That the power of commitment is so necessarily incident to each house of Assembly, that without it neither their authority nor dignity can in any degree whatsoever be maintained or supported.

Resolved, That Rawlins Lowndes, Esqr., Speaker of the Commons House of Assembly, and George Gabriel Powell, Esqr. member of the said house, being two justices of the peace, _unus quorum_, lately assistant judges and justices of his majesty’s court of Common Pleas, have, by virtue of habeas corpus by them issued, caused the body of T. Powell to be brought before them, on the second of this instant September, and the said justices, disregarding the commitment of this house, did presumptuously discharge T. Powell out of the custody of the sheriff under the commitment of this house.

Resolved, That the said justices have been guilty of the most atrocious contempt of this house.”

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.