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

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the Virginia House of Burgesses invited William Parks to bring a printing press to
Williamsburg. They paid him a government salary for the printing of official
documents. 23 In his first newspaper published there, his “Printer’s Introduction” was
more remarkable for its recognition of the limitations of press freedom than for its
assertion of such a right: “By the Liberty of the Press, we are not to understand any
licentious Freedom,” Parks wrote, and he recognized the need for deference to laws,
religion, political leaders, and private reputations. 24 His idea of a press is consistent
with the standard ideology of that time in England, including Blackstone’s
observation that press liberty—albeit a very limited freedom—was essential to a free
state. 25 This concept of liberty meant a press was free from licensing, yet allowed
what we today consider prior restraints, or interference before publishing such as
taxation on newspapers and buying off critics, as well as prosecution after the fact—
including punishment for seditious libel and blasphemy. 26 Another essential
difference was that the law did not recognize truth as a defense against libel; in fact,
truth could exacerbate the violation. 27 Within that relatively conservative concept,
however, free press was viewed as an important watchdog to balance against
potentially corrupt governments. “The Lord Chancellor, Lord Hardwicke, for
to Louis Edward Ingelhart, Press and Speech Freedoms in America, 1619-1995: A Chronology
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997), 17. Research could not verify this claim.
No footnote provides evidence, and Spotswood was governor only until 1722.
23 McMurtrie, History of Printing in The United States, 276-306. McMurtrie, Printing in
Virginia, 15-21, Wroth, Printing in Colonial Maryland, 55-87. Journals of the House of Burgesses
(June 10, 1732), 6:141-2.
24 Issue number 1, Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg: Parks, August 6, 1736), 1, no longer
extant, quoted in Maxwell, Virginia Historical Register, 6: 21-31.
25 Blackstone, Commentaries, 4:151, quoted in Tedford, and Herbeck Freedom of Speech, 5.
26 While not often recognized in discussions of the American Stamp Act, English
newspapers were taxed from 1721-1855, as noted here in Chapter 6, from Barker, Newspapers,
Politics and English Society, 1 and 31.
27 Carter, et al, First Amendment, 28.