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

most often described as “deferential.” 33 The idea of deference as a way to describe
British politics goes back to Walter Bagehot, who in the nineteenth century
described social and political relations as consensual, “but hierarchical in its
distribution of power and authority.” 34 Public virtue, the principle of subordinating
private interest to the public good, is thought to have encouraged the many to defer
to the judgment and wisdom of the few. Such deference extended from social
matters to political ones, and included conversations and written communication.
“In America in the seventeenth century, though, discussion anywhere that
questioned authority raised the ire and prosecutorial hackles of authorities.” 35
The legal system enforced this deference with the concept of seditious libel:
Statements that challenged the existing religious or civil power structure were
subject to severe prosecution. In 1711, Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood
issued a proclamation threatening imprisonment, loss of a limb, or even execution
to anyone who spread “Seditious principles … or other Insinuations tending to the
disturbance of the peace.” In 1714, one justice of the peace was prosecuted for
“Seditious Speeches,” and six years later, a minister was accused of “uttering false
and Scandalous Speeches.” 36 In the seventeenth and early eighteenth century,
questioning the “natural order” of civil and religious leadership by the elite could—
and often did—lead to prosecution for seditious libel.
Especially in the Tidewater region, common people deferred to their elite
leaders’ superiority, and these leaders returned that trust by recognizing the merits
33 Beeman, “Deference in Eighteenth-Century America,” 413.
34 Ibid., 401-430. Bagehot, English Constitution.
35 Copeland, Idea of a Free Press, 115.
36 Levy, Emergence Of A Free Press, 60, quoting H. R. McIlwaine and W. L. Hall, eds.,
Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, 1680-1754, (Richmond: 1925-1945) 3:586-
587.
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