The history of our literature, at the early era of printing, till the
first indications appear of what is termed "copyright," forms a chapter
in the history of our civilization which has not been opened to us.
This history includes two important incidents in our literary annals;
the one, an exposition of the complicate arts practised by an alarmed
government to possess an absolute control over the printers, which
annihilated the freedom of the press; and the other, the contests of
those printers and booksellers who had grants and licenses, and other
privileges of a monopoly, with the rest of the brotherhood, who
maintained an equal right of publication, and contended for the freedom
of the trade.
Although Caxton, our first printer, bore the title of _Regius
Impressor_, printed books were still so rare in this country under
Richard the Third, that an act of parliament in 1483 contains a proviso
in favour of aliens to encourage the importation of books. During a
period of forty years, books were supplied by foreign printers, some of
whom appear to have accompanied their merchandise, and to have settled
themselves here. It became necessary to repeal this privilege conceded
to foreign presses, when under Henry the Eighth the art of printing was
skilfully exercised by the King's natural subjects, and to protect the
English printers lest their art should decline from a failure of
encouragement.
Our earliest printers were the vendors and the binders of their own
books, and their domicile on their title-pages directed the curious to
their abodes. Few in number, their limited editions, it is conjectured,
did not exceed from two to four hundred copies. The first printers were
generally men of competent wealth; and every book was the sole property
of its single printer. The separate departments of author, bookseller,
and bookbinder, were not yet required, for as yet there was no "reading
public." Some of our ancient printers combined all these characters in
themselves. The commerce of literature had not yet opened in the
speculative vendors of books, and that race of writers who have been
designated in the modern phrase as "authors by profession." The very
nature of literary property could only originate in a more advanced and
intellectual state of society, when unsettled opinions and contending
principles would create a growing demand for books which no one yet
contemplated, and a property, of a novel and peculiar nature, in the
very thoughts and words of a writer.
The art of printing, confined within a few hands, was usually practised
under the patronage of the King, or the Archbishop, or some nobleman.
There existed not the remotest suspicion, that the simple machinery of
the printer's press, could ever be converted into an engine of torture
to try the strength, or the truth, of the church and the state.
Sedition, or any allusion to public affairs, never entered the brains of
the ingenious mechanics, solely occupied in lowering the prices of the
text-writers in the manuscript market, by their own novel and wondrous
transcript. Their first wares had consisted of romances which were
consulted as authentic histories; "dictes, or sayings," of ancient sages
which no one cared to contradict; and homilies and allegories whose
voluminousness had no tediousness. Neither did the higher powers ever
imagine that any control seemed needful over the printer's press. They
only lent the sanction of their names, or the shelter of their abode, at
the Abbey of Westminster or the monastery of St. Albans, to encourage
the manufacture of a novel curiosity, for its beautiful toy, a printed
book--and the press at first was at once free and innocent.
But the day of portents was not slow in its approach--a stirring age
pressed on, an age for books. Under Henry the Eighth, books became the
organs of the passions of mankind, and were not only printed, but spread
about; for if the presses of England dared not disclose the hazardous
secrets of the writers, the people were surreptitiously furnished with
English books from foreign presses. It was then that the jealousy of the
state opened its hundred eyes on the awful track of the strange
omnipotence of the press. Then first began that WAR AGAINST BOOKS which
has not ceased in our time.
Perhaps he who first, with a statesman's prescient view, had
contemplated on this novel and unknown power, and, as we shall see, had
detected its insidious steps stealing into the cabinet of the sovereign,
was the great minister of this great monarch. It has been surmised that
the cardinal aimed to crush the head of the serpent, by stopping the
printing press in the monastery at St. Albans, of which he was the
abbot; for that press remained silent for half a century. In a
convocation the cardinal expressed his hostility against printing;
assuring the simple clergy that, if they did not in time suppress
printing, printing would suppress them.[1] This great statesman, at this
early period, had taken into view its remote consequences. Lord Herbert
has curiously assigned to the cardinal his ideas as addressed to the
pope:--"This new invention of printing has produced various effects of
which your Holiness cannot be ignorant. If it has restored books and
learning, it has also been the occasion of those sects and schisms which
daily appear. Men begin to call in question the present faith and tenets
of the church; and the laity read the Scriptures; and pray in their
vulgar tongue. Were this suffered, the common people might come to
believe that there was not so much use of the clergy. If men were
persuaded that they could make their own way to God, and in their
ordinary language as well as Latin, the authority of the mass would
fall, which would be very prejudicious to our ecclesiastical orders. The
mysteries of religion must be kept in the hands of priests--the secret
and arcanum of church government. Nothing remains more to be done than
to prevent further apostacy. For this purpose, since printing could not
be put down, it were best to set up learning against learning; and, by
introducing able persons to dispute, to suspend the laity between fears
and controversies. Since printing cannot be put down, it may still be
made useful." Thus, the statesman, who could not by a single blow
annihilate this monster of all schism, would have wrestled with it with
a statesman's policy.
The cardinal at length was shaken by terrors he had never before felt
from the hated press. This minister had writhed under the printed
personalities of the rabid SKELTON and the merciless ROY; but a pamphlet
in the form of "_The Supplication of Beggars_" is a famed invective,
which served as a prelude to the fall of the minister. The author, SIMON
FISH, had been a student of Gray's Inn, where, in an Aristophanic
interlude, he had enacted his grace the cardinal to the life, and deemed
himself fortunate to escape from his native shores to elude the gripe of
Wolsey. In this pamphlet all the poverty of the nation,--for our
national poverty at all times is the cry of "The Beggars,"--the
taxation, and the grievances, are all laid to the oppression of the
whole motley prelacy. These were the thieves and the freebooters, the
cormorants and the wolves of the state, and the king had nothing more to
do than to put them to the cart's tail, and end all the beggary of
England by appropriating the monastic lands.
On a day of a procession at Westminster this seditious tract, aiming at
the annihilation of the whole revenues of churchmen, was found scattered
in the streets. Wolsey had the copies carefully gathered and delivered
to him, to prevent any from reaching the king's eyes. Merchants, at that
day, were often itinerants in their way of trade with their foreign
correspondents, and frequently conveyed to England these writings of our
fugitive reformers. Two of these merchants, by the favour of Anne
Bullen, had a secret interview with the king. They offered to recite to
the royal ear the substance of the suppressed libel. "I dare say you
have it all by heart," the king shrewdly observed, and listened. After a
pause, Henry let fall this remarkable observation--"If a man should pull
down an old stone wall, and begin at the lower part, the upper might
chance to fall on his head." What at that moment was passing in the
sagacious mind of the future regal reformer, is now more evident than
probably it was to its first hearers. Wolsey, suspicious and troubled,
came to warn the king of "a pestilent heretical libel being abroad."
Henry, suddenly drawing the very libel out of his bosom, presented a
portentous copy to the startled and falling minister. The book became a
court-book; and "the witty atheistical author," as the Roman Catholic
historian designated him, was invited back to England under the
safeguard of the royal protection.
But the secret, and, perhaps, the yet obscure influence of the press,
must often have been apparent to Henry the Eighth, when the king sat in
council. There he marked the alarms of Wolsey, and the terrified
remonstrances of the entire body of "the Papelins;" and when the day
came that their ejectors filled their seats, the king discovered, that
though the objects were changed, the same dread of the press continued.
The war against books commenced; an expurgatory index, or a catalogue of
prohibited books, chiefly English, was sent forth before Henry had
broken with the papal power; subsequently, the fresher proclamation
declared the books of the Papelins to be "seditious," as the use of "the
new learning" had been anathematized as "heretical."
In these rapid events, dates become as essential as arguments. In 1526,
anti-popery books, with their dispersers, were condemned as heretical.
In 1535, all books favouring popery were decreed to be "seditious
books." There were books on the king's supremacy, for or against, which
cost some of their writers their heads; and there were "injunctions
against English books," frequently renewed as "pestilent and infectious
learnings."[2] All these show that now the press had obtained activity,
and betray the uneasy condition of the ruling powers, who were startled
by a supernatural voice which they had never before heard.
When the first persecution of "the new religion" occurred, it did not
abate the secret importations of Lutheran books.[3] These with the
merchant had become an article of commerce; and with the zealous
dispensers, an article of faith: both alike ventured their lives in
conveying them to London, and other places, and even smuggled them into
the universities. They landed their prohibited goods in the most distant
places, at Colchester, or in Norfolk. One of these chapmen in this
hazardous commodity of free-thinking was at last caught at his
bookbinder's. He suffered at the flaming stake, and others met his fate.
It was now apparent that the secrecy and velocity of conveying the novel
projects of reform, which could not otherwise have been communicated to
the great body of the people, till this awful instrument had been set to
work; the unity of opinion which it might create among the confused
multitude; and the passions which a party either in terror, or in
triumph, could artfully rouse in the sympathies of men; were felt and
acknowledged by the monarch, who had himself staked the possession of
his independent dominion on the energy and the eloquence of a single
book,[4] to prepare his people for his meditated emancipation from the
Tiara; and were any other proof wanting, we discover the terror of the
Bishop of Durham, on the appearance of "a little book printed in
English, issuing from Newcastle." His lordship writes in great
trepidation to the minister Cromwell, of this portentous little book,
"like to do great harm among the people," and advising that "letters be
directed to all havens, towns, and other places, to forbid the book to
be sold." All the ports to be closed against "a little book brought by
some folks from Newcastle!" These incidents were certain demonstrations
of the political influence of this new sovereignty of the
printing-press.
In the simplicity of this early era of printing, the same bishop had all
the copies of Tindal's Testament bought up at Antwerp, and burned. The
English merchant employed on this occasion was a secret follower of the
modern apostle, who, on his part, gladly furnished all the unsold copies
which had hung on hand, anxious to correct a new edition which he was
too poor to publish. When one of the Tindalites was promised his pardon
if he would reveal the name of the person who had encouraged this new
edition, he accepted the grace; and he assured the Lord Chancellor that
the greatest encourager and supporter of his Antwerp friends had been
the bishop himself, who, by buying up half the unsold impression, had
enabled them to produce a second. This was the first lesson which taught
that it is easier to burn authors than books.
There were two methods by which governments could counteract the
inconveniences of the press: the one, by clipping its wings, and
contracting the sphere of its action, which we shall see was early
attempted; and the other, by adroitly turning its vehemence into an
opposite direction, making the press contend with the press, and by
division weaken its dominion.
Henry the Eighth left the age he had himself created, with its awakened
spirit. The three succeeding reigns, acting in direct opposition to each
other, disturbed the minds of the people; controversies raged, and books
multiplied. The sphere of publication widened, in this vertiginous era,
printers greatly increased in the reign of Edward the Sixth. But the
craft did not flourish, when the craftsmen had become numerous. We have
the contemporary authority of one of the most eminent printers, that the
practice of the art, and the cost of the materials, had become so
exceedingly chargeable, that the printers were driven by necessity to
throw themselves into the hands of "the Stationers," or booksellers, for
"small gains."[5] It is probable that at this period, the printers
perceived that vending their books at the printing-office was not a mode
which made them sufficiently public. This is the first indication that
the printing, and the publication or the sale of books, were becoming
separate trades.
In this history of the progress of the press in our country, the
Stationers' Company now appears. This institution becomes an important
branch of our investigation, for its influence over our literature, for
its monopoly, opposed to the interests of other publishers, and above
all, for the practice of the government in converting this company into
a ready instrument to restrain the freedom of the press.
Anterior to the invention of printing, there flourished a craft or trade
who were denominated _Stationers_; they were scribes and limners, and
dealers in manuscript copies, and in parchment and paper, and other
literary wares. It is believed by our antiquaries that they derived
their denomination from their fixed locality, or _station in a street_,
either by a shop or shed, and probably when their former occupation had
gone, still retained their dealings in literature, and turned to
booksellers.[6] This denomination of _stationers_, indicating their
stationary residence, would also distinguish them from the itinerant
vendors, who in a more subordinate capacity at a later period, appear to
have hawked about the town and the country pamphlets and other portable
books.
In the reign of Philip and Mary "the Stationers" were granted a charter
of incorporation, and were invested with the most inquisitorial powers.
The favours of a tyrant are usually favours to individuals who profit at
the cost of the community, and who themselves overlooking every
principle of justice, bind up their own selfish monopoly with the
prosperity of criminal power. This we discover in the Company of
Stationers, who were the willing dupes of that absolute power in the
State which had created the corporation to do its watchful work, to
carry on the war against books, and by their passive obedience they
secured to themselves those privileges, and licenses, and other
monopolies, which they now amply enjoyed.
By this charter of the Stationers, it was specified that no one was to
exercise the art of printing, unless he was one of the society; and the
corporation, with their extraordinary but lawful authority, were to
search as often as they pleased any house or chamber, &c., of any
stamper or printer, or binder, or seller, of any manner of books, which
they deemed obnoxious to the State, or their own interest!--to seize,
burn, take away, or destroy, or convert to their own use.[7] The
Stationers were, in fact, a Spanish inquisition for the cabinet of
Philip and Mary, and whom the queen consulted on critical occasions, for
her majesty once sent for the warden to inquire whether they had seen or
heard of a sort of books sent from Zurich? The war against books was
never pushed to such extremities as in a proclamation of Philip and
Mary, which Strype calls, "a short but terrible proclamation." Here we
learn that "whoever finds books of heresy, sedition, and treason, and
does not forthwith burn the same without showing or reading them to any
other person, shall be _executed for a rebel_!"[8] It is evident, that
the grant of this incorporation was designed to make the interests of
the company subservient to those of the court; for by the intermediate
aid of the vigilant Stationers, every printer would be controlled, since
none were allowed to be printers who were not members of this
corporation, and therefore amenable to its laws.
In the succeeding reign of Elizabeth everything changed except these
state-proclamations in the war against books. The object had altered,
but not the objection, for though the books were different the
Elizabethan style is identical with the Marian. The same plenary powers
of the Stationers were strengthened by an additional injunction, by
which the government held the whole brotherhood with a closer grasp. The
company were commissioned not only "to search into bookbinders' shops,
as well as printing-offices, for unlawful and heretical books," but they
were responsible for "any unruly printer who might endanger the church
and state," and "who for covetousness regard not what they print,
whereby ariseth great disorder by publication of unfruitful, vain, and
infamous books and papers. None shall print any manner of book except
the same be first _licensed by her majesty by express words in writing_,
or by _six of her privy council_."[9]
When we recollect that the Stationers' Company under Mary, were composed
of the very same individuals who two years after under Elizabeth, were
busily ornamenting their shelves with all their late "seditious and
heretical" books, and in removing out of sight all their late lawful and
loyal ware, this transition of the feelings must have placed them in a
position painful as it was ridiculous. But the true genius of a
commercial body is of no party, save the predominant; pliant with their
interests, a corporation, like a republic, in their zealous union can do
that with public propriety which, in the individuals it is composed of,
would be incongruous and absurd.
The rage of government in this war against books was still sharper at a
later period, provoked by the spread of the Mar-prelate pamphlets. A
decree of the Star-chamber in 1586, among other orders, allows no
printer to have an additional press without license; awards that there
shall be no printing in any obscure part of a house; nor any printer out
of the city of London, excepting at the two Universities; and till "the
excessive multitude of printers be abated, diminished, or by death given
over," no one shall resume that trade; and that the wardens of the
Stationers' Company, with assistants, shall enter at all times
warehouses, shops, &c., to seize all "letter-presses, and other printing
instruments, to be defaced, melted, sawed in pieces, broken or battered
at the smith's forge."[10] Amid all this book-phobia, a curious
circumstance occurred. The learned could not prosecute their studies for
the prohibition against many excellent works, written by those who were
"addicted to the errors of Popery in foreign parts," and which also
contained "matters against the state of this land." In this dilemma, a
singular expedient was adopted. The archbishop allowed "Ascanius de
Renialme, a merchant bookseller, to bring into this realm _some few
copies_ of every such sort of books, upon this condition only, that they
be first brought to me, and so delivered only to such persons whom we
deem most meet men to have the reading of them." At this time it must
have been an affair of considerable delicacy and difficulty to obtain a
quotation, without first hastening to Lambeth Palace, there to be
questioned!
Printing and literature, during the long reign of Elizabeth, in spite of
all these Star-chamber edicts, amazingly increased; there seemed to be a
swell from all the presses. Of 175 stationers, 140 had taken their
freedom since this queen's accession. "So much had printing and learning
come in request under the Reformation," observes our historical
antiquary Strype. And such was the proud exultation of the great printer
John Day, that when he compared the darkness of the preceding period
with what this publisher of Fox's mighty tomes of Martyrology deemed its
purer enlightenment, he never printed his name without this pithy
insinuation to the reader, "Arise, for it is DAY!" Books not only
multiplied, but unquestionably it was at this period that first appeared
the art of aiding these ephemeral productions of the press which
supplied the wants of numerous readers. The rights of authors had
hitherto derived a partial existence in privilege conceded by the royal
patron, but it was now that they first gathered the fuller harvests of
public favour. We shall shortly find a notice among the book-trade of
what is termed "copyright."[11]
If the freedom of the press had been wholly wrested from the printers,
it was not the sole grievance in the present state of our literature,
for another custom had been assumed which hung on the royal
prerogative--that of granting letters patent, or privileged licenses,
under the broad seal to individuals, to deal in a specific class of
books, to the exclusion of every other publisher. Possibly the same
secret motive which had contrived the absolute control of the press,
suggested the grants of these privileges. One enjoyed the privilege of
printing Bibles; another all law-books; another grammars; another
"almanacks and prognostications;" and another, ballads and books in
prose and metre. These privileges assuredly increased the patronage of
the great, and the dispensations of these favours were doubtless often
abused. A singing man had the license for printing music-books, which he
extended to that of being the sole vendor of all ruled paper, on the
plea that where there were ruled lines, musical notes might be pricked
down; and a private gentleman, who was neither printer nor stationer,
had the privilege of printing grammars and other things, which he farmed
out for a considerable annual revenue, by which means these books were
necessarily enhanced in price.
Such monopolies, which entered into the erroneous policy of that age,
and the corrupt practices of patronage, long continued a source of
discontent among the generality. This was now a period when the spirit
of the times raised up men who would urge their independent rights. A
struggle ensued between the monopolists and the excluded, who clamoured
for the freedom of the trade. "Unruly printers" not only resisted when
their own houses were besieged by "the searchers" of the stationers, but
openly persisted in printing any "lawful books" they chose, in defiance
of any royal privilege. A busy lawyer had been feed, who questioned this
stretch of the prerogative. But the patriotism or the despair of these
"unruly printers" led to the Clink or to Ludgate--to imprisonment or to
bankruptcy! The day had not yet arrived when civil freedom, though
youthful and bold, with impunity could "kick against the pricks" of the
prerogative. It is curious here to discover that the aggrieved had even
formed "a trade-union" for contributions to defend suits at law against
the privileged; and when they were reminded that this mode only
aggravated their troubles, and were asked by the sleek monopolists what
they would gain if all were in common, which, as the privileged assumed,
"would make havoc for one man to undo another," that is, those who were
patentless would undo the patentees--these Cains, in the bitterness of
their hearts, fiercely replied to their more favoured brothers, "We
should make you beggars like ourselves!"[12]
Amid these clamours in the commonwealth of literature, the patentees
became alarmed at the danger of having their patents revoked. The
booksellers had become the more prosperous race, and some of these,
combining with the Stationers' Company, opposed the privileged few. The
advocates for the freedom of the trade advanced a proposition too tender
to be handled by the Doctor of Civil Law, who was chosen for the
arbitrator. At once these boldly impugned the prerogative royal itself
in its exercise of granting privileges to printers, which they declared
was against law; and however they might more successfully urge, that the
better policy for the public was to admit of competition, and moderating
of prices by this freedom of publication, they add, "So, too, let every
man print what 'lawful book' he choose, without any exceptions, even
'any book of which the copies thereof had been _bought of the authors_
for their money.'" Here we find the first notice of "copyright," and the
very inadequate notions yet entertained of its nature.
The plea of the patentees more skilfully addressed the Doctor of Civil
Law by their assumption of the irrefragable rights of the royal
prerogative. Their own privileges they maintained by the custom, as they
showed that "all princes in Christendom had granted privileges for
printing, sometimes for a term of years, or for life; that ancient books
bore this inscription, _Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum_; that the
queen's progenitors had exercised this right, and would any dare to
lessen her majesty's prerogative?" All infringers had ever been
punished. They further urged, that the good of the commonwealth required
that printing should be in the hands of known men, being an art most
dangerous and pernicious if it were not straitened and restrained by
politic order of the prince or magistrates. With truer arguments they
alleged that many useful books were now published unprofitable to the
patentees, who had no other means of repaying themselves but by the sale
of other books restricted to them by the protection of their privileges;
and finally, they declared that the public were incurring some danger
that good books might not be printed at all if privileges were revoked,
for _the first printer was at charge for the author's pains and other
extraordinary cost_; but should any succeeding printer who had "_the
copy gratis_" sell cheaper on better paper, and with notes and
additions, it would put an end to the sale of the original edition; and
they pithily conclude with the old wisdom, that "It is easier to amend
than to invent." Here again we see specified the cost of "copyright" in
the publication of a new book.
This attempt to open the freedom of the trade, which occurred about
1583, the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Elizabeth, at length was not
wholly unsuccessful; the monopolists conceded certain advantages,[13]
and about twenty years subsequently, towards the end of that queen's
reign, when the craft of authorship, adapting its wares to the fashion
of the day, was practised by a whole race of popular writers, the
booksellers became almost the sole publishers of books, employing the
printers in their single capacity.[14]
In this war against books, the severe decree of the Star Chamber, 1586,
was renewed with stricter prohibitions, and more penal severity by a
decree of the Star Chamber, under Charles the First, in 1637. Printing
and printers were now placed under the supervision of the great officers
of state; law-books were to be judiciously approved by the lord
chief-justice; historical works were to be submitted to the secretaries
of state; heraldry was left to the lord marshal; divinity, physic,
philosophy, and poetry, were to be sanctioned by the Archbishop of
Canterbury or the Bishop of London. Two copies of every work were to be
preserved in custody, to prevent any alterations being made in the
published volumes, which would be detected on their comparison.
Admirable preparatory and preventive measures! Here would ensue a
general purgation of every atom in the human system, occasioning
obstructions to the doctrines and discipline of the Church of England,
and the state of government. The aim of all these decrees and
proclamations was to abridge the number of printers, and to invigorate
the absolute power conferred on the Stationers' Company, who had long
delivered themselves, bound hand and foot, to the government, for the
servile possession of their privileges. Printers were still limited to
twenty, as in the reign of Elizabeth, and only four letter-founders
allowed. Every printed book on paper was to bear the impress of the
printer's name, on pain of corporal punishment. They held books in such
terror, that even those which had formerly been licensed, were not
allowed to be reprinted, without being "reviewed," as they express it,
and re-watched by placing on guard this double sentinel. There are some
extraordinary clauses which betray the feeble infancy of the rude policy
of that day. The decree tells us that "printing in corners without
license had been usually done by journeymen out of work," and to provide
against this source of inquietude, it compels the printers to employ all
journeymen out of employ, "though the printer should be able to do his
own work without these journeymen;" and in the same spirit of
compulsion, it ordains that all such unemployed shall be obliged to work
whenever called on.[15] Masters and men were equally amenable to fines
impossible to be paid, and penal pains almost too horrible to endure,
short of life, but not of ruin: a dark, a merciless, a mocking tribunal
where the judges sate the prosecutors, and whose unwritten laws hung on
their own lips; and where to discharge any accused person as innocent
was looked on as a reproach of their negligence, or an imputation of
their sagacity.
Did the severity of these decrees produce the evils they encountered, or
was it the existence of the evils which provoked the issue of these
edicts? Did the terrific executions eradicate the political mischief?
There was no free press in Elizabeth's reign, and yet libels abounded!
The government compulsively contracted the press by their twenty
stationary printers; and behold! moveable presses, whose ubiquity was
astonishing as their ceaseless working. An invisible printer
mysteriously scattered his publications here and there, during the
contest of the Mar-prelate faction with the bishops; and the libels of
the Jesuit Parsons, and others of the Roman party, were as rife against
her majesty and her minister. The same occurred when the Star-chamber
was guided by the genius of Laud; the altar was raised, and the
sacerdotal knife struck! but the groans of the immolated victims were a
shout of triumph. A clear demonstration that nothing is really gained by
the temporary suppressions which power may enforce; the sealed book
circulates till it is hoarded, and the author pilloried, mutilated, or
hanged, obtains a popularity, which often his own genius afforded him no
chance to acquire.
The secret design of all these entangling edicts was to hold the
printers in passive obedience to the government, whatever that
government might be; for each separate government, though acting on
opposite principles, manifested a remarkable uniformity in their
proceedings with the press. In the arbitrary days of Charles the Second,
an extraordinary, if not an audacious, attempt was made to wrest the art
of printing out of the hands of its professors, and to place the press
wholly at the disposal of the sovereign. This usurping doctrine was
founded on a startling plea. As our monarchs had granted privileges to
the earliest printers, and, from the introduction of the art into
England, had never ceased their patronage or their control, it was
inferred, that our kings had never yielded _the royal prerogative of
printing_ any more than they had that of _coining_. The "mystery" of
printing, in the style of the lawyers, was "a flower of the crown!"--the
exercise of the prerogative; and therefore every printer in England must
be a sworn servant of the crown. At such a period we are not surprised
to find an express treatise put forth to demonstrate to his sacred
majesty, that "printing belonged to him, in his public and private
capacity, as supreme _magistrate_ and as _proprietor_;" in reality there
was to be but one printer for all England, and that printer the king!
This was giving at once the most elevated and the most degraded notions
of "the divine art," which this servile assumer describes can "not only
bereave the king of his good name, but of the very hearts of his
people."[16]
We observe the lamentations of these advocates of arbitrary power over
the freedom of the press, or, as such maintained, the confusion produced
"by the exorbitant and unlawful exercise of printing in modern times."
They appeal to the miseries and calamities not only recently witnessed
in our own country, but in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and
Switzerland. Wherever they track a footstep of the liberty of the press,
they pause to discover its accompanying calamity. One of these writers,
to convey an adequate notion of the spread and political influence of
the press, has thrown out a very excitable remark:--"Had this art been
known in the time of the grand profession of the Donatist and Arian
heresy, it would have drowned the world in a second deluge of blood and
confusion, to its utter destruction long time since." A stroke of church
history which might suggest a whole volume!
The interests of the printers had coincided with the designs of
government, in limiting the number of presses; for the policy of their
narrow confederacy was, the fewer printers the more printing! But the
interests of the booksellers were quite opposite; they were for
encouraging supernumerary printers, and overstocking the
printing-offices with journeymen, and by this means they succeeded in
bringing the printers down to their price or their purpose; and it is
insinuated, on the Machiavelian principle, that the number being greater
than could live honestly by the trade, one-half must be knaves, or
starve. And it seems that "knaves" were in greater requisition by the
publishers of "the unlawful," or, as these were afterwards called on the
establishment of a licenser of the press, "the unlicensed books," who
revelled in their seductive profits.[17]
Among the effusions of the political Literature of the egregious Sir
ROGER L'ESTRANGE, versed in the arcana of the publishing system of his
day, I discover a project which terminated in renewing the office of the
Licenser of Books, in his own person; the only pitiful preferment the
Restoration brought the clamorous Loyalist. Our literary knight
addressed Charles the Second, to impress on his Majesty the urgency of
an immediate regulation of the press; "this great business of the press
being now engrossed by Oliver's creatures, and the _honest_ printers
being impoverished by the late times."
This project to regulate the press by L'Estrange, chiefly turned on the
dexterous management of the printers. He calculated, for four thousand
pounds, to buy up the presses of the poor printers, who were willing to
be reimbursed, and look to better trades. The bolder project was to
emancipate the printers from the tyranny of the booksellers, by which
means they would no longer be necessitated to print whatever their
masters ordered. The printers at this moment had menaced to separate
themselves from the stationers, with a view of their own.
The printers had been gradually deprived of any shares in new
publications; they had been thrown out of all copyright, and probably
had grown somewhat jealous of their prosperous masters; the printers
complained that they were nothing else than slaves to the booksellers.
They called for an independent company of "the mystery," and reverting
to the custom of the early printers, they desired to have their own
presses under their own management, and to print only the copies of
which they themselves were the proprietors.
The future licenser of the press, who was throwing his net to haul in
all these fish at a cast, took advantage of this project, which at once
was levelled at the freedom of the trade, and the freedom of the press.
Printers solely working on their own copies, would indeed check "the
ungovernable ambition of the booksellers," by diminishing their
copyrights; while those "unhappy printers" would be relieved, who at
present have no other work than what "the great dealers in treasonous or
seditious books" furnished them. All these were but the ostensible
motives, for the real object designed was that the printers should
become the creatures of the patronage of government, and, by the
diminution of their number, the contracted circle would be the more
easily managed.
Such were the systematic struggles of our governments in the revival of
the severe acts for the regulation of printing at various periods. It
was long assumed that printing was not a free trade, but always to
remain under regulation.
When Dr. Johnson, labouring under the pressure of his ancient notions,
contending with the clear perception of his sceptical sagacity, once
stood awed before the sublime effusion of Milton's "Areopagitica," he
hazarded this opinion, for by balancing his notions it cannot be
accepted as a decision: "The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the
danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of
government which human understanding seems unable to solve."
And whatever either the advocates or the adversaries of the freedom of
the press may allege, this problem in the science of government remains
as insoluble at this day as at any former period--a truth demonstrated
by a circumstance which has repeatedly occurred in our own political
history. The noble treatise of Milton for a free press had not the
slightest influence on that very parliament whose members had long
suffered from its oppression. The Catholics clamoured for a free press
under Charles the Second, but the same act operating against them under
James the Second, from the use of the press by the Protestant party--the
liberty of the press was then condemned as exorbitant and intolerable.
The advocates of a free press thus become its adversaries whenever they
themselves form the ruling power. Orators for the freedom of the press
suddenly send forth outcries against its abuses; but as those, whoever
the party may be, who are in place, are called the government, it always
happens that the opposition, whatever may be their principles, must
submit to the risk of being deemed seditious libellers.