Now! Then! The editor of the Sheffield Register fires off a final broadside against Georgian despotism, and flees to the continent and thence to the United States

26 June 1794: The editor of the Sheffield Register fires off a final broadside against Georgian despotism, and flees to the continent and thence to the United States

Willis G. Briggs. 1907. Joseph Gales, Editor of Raleigh’s First Newspaper. The North Carolina Booklet, Vol. 7. Raleigh, North Carolina: North Carolina Daughters of the American Revolution. Get it:

Excerpt

The disagreeable predicament in which I stand, from the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, precludes me the happiness of staying among you, my friends, unless I would expose myself to the malice, enmity and power of an unjust aristocracy. It is in these persecuting days, a sufficient crime to have printed a newspaper which has boldly dared to doubt the infallibility of ministers, and to investigate the justice and policy of their measures. Could my imprisonment, or even death, serve the cause which I have espoused – the cause of peace, liberty and justice – it would be cowardice to fly from it; but, convinced that ruining my family and distressing my friends, by risking either, would only gratify the ignorant and the malignant, I shall seek that livelihood in another state which I can not peaceably attain in this… It will always be my pride that I have printed an impartial and truly independent newspaper, and that I have done my endeavours to rescue my countrymen from the darkness of ignorance, and to awaken them to a just sense of their privileges as human beings, and, as such, of their importance in the grand scale of creation.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Leader’s Sheffield reminiscences tell a similar tale (Leader 1876).

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Original

In 1787 Gales began the publication of The Sheffield Register, a weekly newspaper, and ardently championed reform. He warmly welcomed the French revolution. The English ministry, under leadership of Pitt, soon resorted to severe measures to repress the liberal wave, fearing that it would bring calamity to the monarchy.

[…]

A study of the file of The Sheffield Register of 1794 reveals no policy which the enlightened twentieth century would not applaud. Joseph Gales’ clear convictions gleam in his brief editorials. His sympathy was openly expressed for the two hundred wretched debtors confined in Lancaster Castle, with accommodation for only eighty persons, two sleeping in a bed. When a fifteen-year-old girl was hung for the murder of her grandfather the editor grieved because the child had been given no chance and was so ignorant and wretched as not to know right from wrong. Again he remonstrates on the severity of the law when a farmer in March, 1794, was sentenced to die for shooting a neighbor’s foal. The Sheffield editor applauded “the glorious example” of the jury, which refused five times to obey the mandates of the court and persisted in a verdict of “not guilty” in the case of Robert Erpe, charged with speaking libel in that he criticised the Pitt ministry. “Twelve gold medals” ought to be presented to those jurors, declared Gales.

[…]

Monday, April 7, 1794, was a field day for the “friends of justice, of liberty and of humanity” in Shefiield. Henry Redhead Yorke, a young man of great promise, a graduate of Cambridge, a protege of Edmund Burke, had announced his allegiance to the Liberal cause after a visit to Paris, where he met leaders of the Jacobin clubs. He was hailed as an invaluable ally, and the Constitutional Society and the Society of the Friends of the People at Shefiield endorsed the young man for parliament. Twelve thousand reformers on this April day assembled on Castle Hill, listened to a stirring speech by Yorke and adopted an address. This address, briefly stated, asserted: (1) The people were the true source of government; (2) freedom of speech is a right which cannot be denied; (3) condemnation without trials is incompatible with free government; (4) where the people have no share in the government taxation is tyrrany; (5) a government is free in proportion as the people are equally represented. The address “demanded as a right,” and no longer asked as a favor, “universal representation.” It concluded with a lengthy petiton not only for “abolition of the slave trade” but for “emancipation of negro slaves” in the British West Indies. The mechanics of Sheffield were wrought to a pitch of highest enthusiasm. Horses were unhitched and the carriage, containing Yorke, the candidate, and Joseph Gales, secretary of the meeting and probably author of the address adopted, was drawn in triumph through the town by the multitude.

[…]

The Committee of Secrecy, appointed by parliament to investigate rumored conspiracies, made a report May 23, 1794, of such a character that the Pitt ministry immediately suspended the habeas corpus act, a course almost without precedent in time of peace. The committee found that there existed “The Society for Constitutional Information” and “The London Corresponding Society” and that these societies had by resolution “applauded the publication of a cheap edition of ‘The Rights of Man,'” and voted addresses to the Jacobins at Paris and to the National Convention of France.

Continuing, the report said “The circumstance which first came under the observation of your committee containing a distinct trace of measures of this description, was a letter from a person at Sheffield, by profession a printer (who has since absconded), which was thus addressed ‘Citizen Hardy, Secretary of the London Corresponding Society’, which was found in the possession of Hardy on the twelfth of May, last, when he was taken into custody.” The letter was dated from Sheffield April 20, 1794, on paper from “Gales’ printing office” and the objectionable portion of the communication was as follows: “Fellow Citizens: The barefaced aristocracy of the present administration has made it necessary that we must be prepared to act on the defensive against any attack they may command their newly armed minions to make upon us. A plan has been hit upon, and, if encouraged sufficiently, will, no doubt, have the effect of furnishing a quantity of pikes to the Patriots, great enough to make them formidable.” This was the only reference to resistance or force in the letter. With Hardy’s paper was also found an account of a meeting at Sheffield where a full chorus sang a hymn written by James Montgomery.

When the news that the right of habeas corpus had been suspended reached Sheffield Gales exclaimed in his paper “every wretch who has either through malice or envy a dislike to his neighbor will have now an opportunity of gratifying his malicious intentions.” Warrants were issued for Yorke, Gales and others, charged with treasonable and seditious practices, and the Sheffield editor knew that the time had come when he must either seek safety elsewhere or be delivered to his enemies.

The Sheffield Register of June 26, 1794, contains the editor’s farewell. In this address he wrote: “The disagreeable predicament in which I stand, from the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, precludes me the Happiness of staying among you, My Friends, unless I would expose myself to the Malice, Enmity and Power of an unjust Aristocracy. It is in these persecuting days, a sufficient Crime to have printed a newspaper which has boldly dared to doubt the infallibility of ministers, and to investigate the justice and policy of their measures. Could my imprisonment, or even death, serve the cause which I have espoused — the cause of Peace, Liberty and Justice — it would be cowardice to fly from it; but, convinced that ruining my family and distressing my friends, by risking either, would only gratify the ignorant and the malignant, I shall seek that livelihood in another state which I can not peaceably attain in this.” He reviews his course : “I was a member of the Constitutional Society,” he admits, “and shall never, I am persuaded, whatever may be the final result, regret it, knowing that the real as well as ostensible object of this society, was a rational and peaceable reform in the representation of the people in parliament. The Secret Committee has imputed to the Society intentions of which they had no conceptions and crimes which they abhor. It has been insinuated, and, I believe, pretty generally believed, that I wrote the letter which is referred to by the Secret Committee, concerning the pikes. This charge, in the most unequivocal manner, I deny. I neither wrote, dictated or was privy to it. It will always be my pride, that I have printed an impartial and truly independent newspaper, and that I have done my endeavors to rescue my countrymen from the darkness of Ignorance and to awaken them to a just sense of their privileges as human beings, and, as such, of their importance in the grand scale of creation.”

Ten years later in America, when a rival accused Gales of having been indicted in England, he replied in his paper, “If it be deemed a crime to have opposed by means of a free press, governmental usurpation on the rights of the people, I plead guilty.”

1238 words.