The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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Jürgen Habermas viewed such civic discourse spurred by printed materials in
Europe as a crucial aspect of the transition from monarchy to democracy. Warner
emphasized the relevance of print in this development, and saw this transition
taking place in the British-American colonies. The disputes over taxation by
Parliament became a major subject of the public prints of this period and of the
discourse that people had in public spaces. Printed material generated discussions
centered on this literature in coffeehouses and taverns. The participants were
initially the elites, but by 1765 the discussion had expanded to include a larger,
middling group, including smaller farmers, craftsmen, and tradespeople. This was
a key to development of political dissent, operating for the first time outside of
the government. A key to understanding what happened in pre-revolutionary
Virginia is to recognize that printed material combined with public discussions to
create a civic public that was able to be independently critical of government. 80 A
growing and changing print culture, and the public discourse it spawned, played
an important role in a social and political transformation.
The expanding market nature of colonial society was a force for
expansion of the reading world as well as a force that made printers tend to avoid
anything controversial that might lose business. Print historian Stephen Botein
noted that colonial printers were not ideologically driven revolutionaries, but
rather lower-class, “meer mechanics,” who were primarily interested in good
business. He concluded that the Stamp Act profoundly changed their business.
Financial interests overrode printers’ normally cautious tendencies to stay out of
controversies. The standard viewpoint had been that a free press meant presenting
varied opinions while staying out of extreme disputes that might alienate any
business. Botein quoted printer Benjamin Franklin, who suggested that up until
just before the Revolution, commercial pragmatism encouraged neutrality:
80 Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, introduction. Warner, Letters of
the Republic.