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

the press was tightly controlled would turn to nearby nations where controls were
looser, or where it served the censors’ purposes to print what was forbidden
elsewhere. For example, books banned in France were regularly printed in Holland
or Switzerland and smuggled across the border. 111 In the appendix to his pamphlet,
Camm accused Royle of refusing to publish his response, “shew[ing] beyond
Contradiction, that you want either the Inclination, or the Permission, to keep a
Free Press.” Royle’s response was that it would be very imprudent of him to print
criticism of the General Assembly, “it is my Duty, as Printer to the Public,
studiously to avoid giving Offence to the Legislature.” Royle did print Camm’s next
two pamphlets. Royle’s records show that he profited more on Camm’s two
pamphlets than on the two written by Carter and Bland. Overall, seven pamphlets
were published regarding this dispute; six were printed in Williamsburg, one in
Annapolis. 112
Starkly displayed here was the conflict between two views of the press. The
first perspective, demonstrated here by printer Royle, was one of his press as a
subservient agent to a controlling government. Early colonial printers managed to
stay in business only by remaining as neutral as possible, and were rarely critical of
the government in power. 113 The second view, shown here by Pastor Camm, was
111 See, for example, Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), vi. Eisenstein, Agent of Change, 410-421, and
Jeremy Popkin, “The Prerevolutionary Origins of Political Journalism,” The French Revolution and
Intellectual History, edited by Jack Censer, (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1989), 117.
112 Royle to Camm, Williamsburg, Aug. 1, 1763, quoted in John Camm, Single and Distinct
View of the Act, Vulgarly entitled, The Two Penny Act… (Annapolis: Green, 1763), Appendix, 47,
Landon Carter, The Diary Of Colonel Landon Carter Of Sabine Hall, 1752-1778, ed. Jack P. Greene
(Charlottesville: Published for the Virginia Historical Society by the University Press of Virginia,
1965), entry for Monday, March 19, 1764, 261. Royle’s Printing Office Journal, Cynthia Stiverson
and Gregory Stiverson, “The Colonial Retail Book Trade: Availability and Affordability of
Reading Material in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” in William Joyce, David Hall, Richard
Brown, and John Hench, eds., Printing and Society in Early America (Worcester: American
Antiquarian Society, 1983), 151 and 158-9, and Berg, “Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg Press,”
52-59.
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