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

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be limited and that it could be limited only if individuals were free to speak truth to
power.” Freedom of expression was closely tied to the new religious diversity and
the importance of individual minds seeking religious truth. “The individual had the
right only to serve the truth, as men were free to serve God.” 42 Nord agrees with
Gary Nash, Rhys Isaac, and others that the Great Awakening helped to undermine
the deference to authority, setting the stage for the political dissidence that in turn
led to the American Revolution. 43 “Junius” also made that connection in writing:
“Let it be impressed upon your minds, let it be instilled into your children, that the
liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of
an Englishman …” 44 Religious freedom of thought is one of the key roots to the
development of freedom of speech and print in Virginia.
While espousing liberal political ideology might be fine for anonymous
writers, the printers themselves had to face the hard realities of business. When
Benjamin Franklin ran his own press in Pennsylvania, he found the need to
apologize in advance for offending people for what he printed, and he espoused a
somewhat less radical and more practical ideology of press freedom than he had in
his youth:
Printers are educated in the belief, that when men differ in opinion,
both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the
public; and that when truth and error have fair play, the former is
always an overmatch for the latter. Hence they cheerfully serve all
42 Nord, Communities of Journalism, xxxii, 70-76.
43 William G. McLoughlin, “ ‘Enthusiasm for Liberty’: The Great Awakening as the Key to
the Revolution,” in Preachers and Politicians: Two Essays on the Origins of the American Revolution,
eds. Jack P. Greene and William G. McLouglin (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society,
1977), and Gary Nash, Urban Crucible, the Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American
Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), chapter 8, both quoted in Nord,
Communities of Journalism, 73. Isaac, Transformation of Virginia.
44 “Junius’s Dedication to the English Nation,” Virginia Gazette (Rind, May 21, 1772), 1.