Acquittal of Printer John Peter Zenger in Colonial New York Establishes Foundation for American Freedom of the Press

“Power may justly be compared to a great river. While kept within its due bounds it is both beautiful and useful. But when it overflows its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed; it bears down all before it, and brings destruction and desolation wherever it comes.”

John Peter Zenger published in his New-York Weekly Journal a series of articles critical of William Cosby, the new royal governor. For his own benefit, Cosby directed a lawsuit to an unusual non-jury trial. After New York’s Chief Justice, Lewis Morris, voted to dismiss the case, Cosby fired him, appointing a new Chief Justice to serve at his “pleasure”. Zenger reported on Crosby’s theft from taxes, attempt to rig an election in Westchester County, stealing Indian and settlers’ lands, and allowing French ships (England’s primary enemy), to dock in and scout New York harbor. The General Assembly, beholden to Crosby, refused to hold him to account.

Two grand juries refused to indict Zenger, but Cosby had him arrested anyway. While Zenger was in jail for seditions libel, his wife Anna Catharina became the first woman in America to publish a newspaper. She exposed Cosby’s packing of her husband’s jury with men in the governor’s pocket, and created enough public scorn to cause the unpacking of the jury. Then Cosby had Zenger’s N.Y. lawyers disbarred for daring to question the governor’s hand-picked judge. Pennsylvania’s former Attorney General Andrew Hamilton came to Zenger’s rescue as the trial began on August 4, 1735, in a small room in New York’s City Hall (later Federal Hall).

“in times past it was a crime to speak truth, and in that terrible court of star-chamber, many worthy and brave men suffered for so doing; and yet even in that court, and in those bad times, a great and good man durst say… ‘The practice of information for libels, is a sword in the hands of a wicked king, and an arrand coward, to cut down and destroy the innocent; the one cannot, because of his high station, and the other dares not, because of his want of courage, revenge himself in another manner”

Hamilton dared to admit that Zenger had printed the papers- but argued that there was a “natural right” to protest against abusive rulers and that a free people needed a free press to provide “a bulwark against tyranny” by “exposing and opposing arbitrary power.” Appealing to the jury, Hamilton demanded the prosecution prove that Zenger’s reports were false. Though the judge directed the jury to declare Zenger guilty, it took only 10 minutes for them to bravely acquit.

Zenger’s victory set a firm foundation for the freedom of the press and expression, and especially the right of the people to protest and oppose corruption. There were still prosecutions for seditious libel, but many cases were prevented or restrained by the prospect of jury nullification.

Printed in London three decades after the Zenger trial, this volume illustrates its continuing relevance. It also tells the story of William Owen, a London bookseller prosecuted for libel at the request of the House of Commons in 1752, but also acquitted. In 1765, John Almon published this as part of his challenge to censorship. That same year, the attorney general prosecuted him for the publication of Juries and Libels, but that prosecution also failed.

★ First ed. London: John Almon, 1765. Three-quarter brown calf, red morocco spine label, stamped in blind and in gilt, over marbled paper-covered boards; all edges trimmed. #27745