That was why Alexander, as editor, pushed the issue of freedom of the
press so hard. New Yorkers who had been unaware of that freedom would
come upon it every time they opened “Zenger’s paper.” Side by side they
would find stories about the misdemeanors of the Governor and essays
defending and defining a free press, an ingenious interplay of practice
and theory, a journalistic dialectic shifting between independent news
reporting and the theory that justifies such reporting. Under
Alexander’s editing hand the contributors both pilloried their enemy in
the executive mansion and claimed the right to do so.
Alexander did not, of course, invent the technique. It was already well
known in Britain, and he took it over for his own purposes, just as our
political philosophers such as Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison took
over ideas already current in Britain and France. Like all our Colonial
editors, he was dependent on classics such as Milton, Locke, Swift,
Steele, Addison, and Defoe. He used all of these at different times,
quoting them as authorities for unfettered journalism and free speech.
Most of all he used the celebrated _Cato’s Letters_ of Thomas Gordon and
John Trenchard. They furnished him with an ideal model. The letters had
appeared in the _London Journal_ and the _British Journal_ only a decade
before, when, signing themselves “Cato,” Gordon and Trenchard castigated
his majesty’s government, and particularly the men responsible for the
scandal of the South Sea Bubble. They also larded their attacks with
animadversions on freedom of the press, which they explicitly defended
as intrinsic to liberty itself. They caused so much embarrassment to the
Ministry that it was forced to counterattack: characteristically for the
eighteenth century, it solved the problem by buying out the _London
Journal_.
But that did not kill the argument, for _Cato’s Letters_ were published
in four volumes and enjoyed a tremendous popularity on both sides of the
Atlantic. It took James Alexander to show just how much might be done
with them over here. He manifestly had read and reread Gordon and
Trenchard, soaking up their ideas as avidly as a sponge soaks up water,
and, turning editor, he found in them a treasure trove of journalistic
philosophy and invective. His policy is theirs adapted to the situation
in Colonial New York.
He copied out extracts from the _Letters_ both for his own private
edification and guidance and for use in the _Journal_. There is extant
in his handwriting part of the letter headed “Of the restraints which
ought to be laid upon public rulers.” He thought it apropos of the Cosby
administration, so it appeared in the _Journal_ on May 27, 1734. Here
are a few others that he selected, or else approved, for reprinting:
“The right and capacity of the people to judge of government,” “Of
reverence true and false,” “Of freedom of speech: that the same is
inseparable from public liberty,” “Reflections upon libelling,”
“Cautions against the natural encroachments of power.”
To put his editorial credo in a nutshell, Alexander went to another
classical source, the _Craftsman_, and printed this maxim on November
12, 1733:
The liberty of the press is a subject of the greatest importance, and
in which every individual is as much concerned as he is in any other
part of liberty.
Under the aegis of his text he adroitly maneuvered the opposition
newspaper against all the power of the Governor—and against all the
defenses thrown up by Francis Harison as editor of the Governor’s
newspaper.