Writing on the Wall by Tom Standage

Author:Tom Standage
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

Care has been taken that the art of printing should be encouraged, and that it should be easy and cheap and safe for any person to communicate his thoughts to the public. And you, Messieurs printers, whatever the tyrants of the earth may say of your paper, have done important service to your country by your readiness and freedom in publishing the speculations of the curious … the jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing … Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom, whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country … it seems very manifest from the Stamp Act itself, that a design is formed to strip us in a great measure of the means of knowledge, by loading the press, the colleges, and even an almanack and a newspaper, with restraints and duties.

An unprecedented sense of cooperation and collective resistance emerged among the colonists, culminating in the Stamp Act Congress in New York in October 1765. Delegates from nine colonies met to call for the act’s repeal, and to insist that only colonial assemblies had the right to levy taxes. The meeting’s final declaration was drawn up by John Dickinson, a lawyer representing Pennsylvania, who also wrote two pamphlets arguing against the act. One of them, “The Late Regulations respecting the British Colonies on the Continent of America Considered, in a Letter from a Gentleman in Philadelphia to his Friend in London,” was aimed at British readers and caused sufficient interest that it was reprinted in London. The other pamphlet, reprinted in the New-York Gazette and other newspapers, urged Pennsylvanians to ignore the new law, explaining that it was a test of their willingness to stand up to tyranny. “Your Conduct at this Period must decide the future Fortunes of yourselves and of your Posterity—must decide whether Pennsylvanians from henceforward shall be Freemen or Slaves,” he wrote. “If you comply with the Act by using Stamped Papers, you fix, you rivet perpetual Chains upon your unhappy Country.”

The argument was not entirely one-sided. Loyalist views also received an airing: writing under the name “Americanus” a Pennsylvania politician, Joseph Galloway, argued that it was only right that the colonists should contribute to their own defense, and that they were unwise to pick a fight with the British government. “Permit me, however unpopular the task, through the impartial channel of your paper, to point out the impudence and folly of such conduct,” he wrote. His letter appeared in the New-York Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal. But for the most part the presses groaned with pamphlets and newspapers denouncing the Stamp Act—not least because printers themselves were strongly opposed to it.

In the weeks before the act came into force, the Maryland Gazette appeared with a skull-and-crossbones on its front page, and restyled itself “The Maryland Gazette Expiring.” Many newspapers ceased publication on November 1, when the act took effect.

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