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

their rulings, not party to any discussion of them. Before 1720, overtly political
publications were not the norm in the British-American colonies, which makes the
anonymous tobacco pamphlet writer’s apology understandable. By publicizing a
political decision, the medium of print became a vehicle for civic discourse,
broadening the concept of political decision-making from the private realm of the
rulers to a somewhat broader forum. Government was beginning to become public,
and thus subject to public debate and criticism. 53
Lawmakers in Virginia saw the need for a public printer, and Parks began
also printing for the Virginia government, which still had no printer in the colony.
The Virginia assembly encouraged him to open an office there, which he did in
1730. For several years, he printed for both the Maryland and Virginia
governments. In 1737, Parks gave up his Maryland business and moved his entire
shop to an office on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg, where Virginia’s
capital had moved in 1699. Annapolis got a new printer, Jonas Green, in 1738. 54
The government in Virginia paid Parks an annual salary of £120, later increased to
£200, for his official printing duties. These included printing the collected laws of
the colony, and regularly printing and distributing Journals of the House of
Burgesses. The printer had to be educated enough to read, write, and edit a
newspaper, yet he was also a mechanic in a very hands-on trade. The print shop was
a busy center of colonial commerce, housing printing presses, a bookbindery, a
bookstore, and the post office. 55
53 Warner, in “Res Publica,” 40-46, has an excellent discussion on this pamphlet and the
transition it marks, from private exchanges to public discourse on political matters.
54 Green was from a distinguished line of printers, descending from Samuel Green who in
1649 became the second British-American printer in Massachusetts.
55 McMurtrie, Printing United States, 276-306. McMurtrie, Beginnings of Printing in
Virginia, 15-21, Lawrence Wroth, A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland, 1686-1766
(Baltimore: Typothetae of Baltimore, 1922), 55-87. Journals of the House of Burgesses (June 10,
1732), 6:141-2. The salary had to be voted on by the burgesses but also approved by the governor
and the council. Parks’ raise is in Journals (June 16, 1740), 6:432.
31