Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The eighteenth century was a great age of pamphleteering. Subjects were legion and authors innumerable. Every question of substance – and many of none – attracted writers to such a degree that in the world of politics one is tempted to establish the scale of pamphleteering as one of the yardsticks against which the importance of an issue should be measured. The American revolution fully conforms to this criterion, for during a twenty-year period beginning in 1763 it stimulated the publication of well over a thousand pamphlets in England alone. A good number of those pamphlets originated in America and their subsequent reappearance in England was a matter of considerable significance; some were written by Americans resident in London. This paper will examine the mechanics by which American revolutionary tracts were published and distributed in England, and their circulation among the radicals who proved themselves to be the patriots' best English friends during the difficult years of the revolution. They included among others Thomas Hollis, John Wilkes, Major John Cartwright and Granville Sharp; the Dissenting ministers Richard Price and Joseph Priestley, and one of the most brilliant women of her generation, Catharine Macaulay. Such an examination is not only an integral component in the analysis of the English side of the revolution; it also serves as a useful case-study in the mechanics and function of political propaganda.
1 The terms ‘patriot’, ‘revolutionary’ ‘loyalist’ and ‘conservative’ and their derivatives are used for convenience in a descriptive sense. The word ‘radical’ is anachronistic but is widely employed and remains the most useful term available. The term England and its derivatives refer to England; they exclude Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
2 For a bibliography of pamphlets printed in America between 1764 and 4 July 1776, see Adams, Thomas R., American Independece (Providence, R.I., 1965)Google Scholar. This invaluable study includes the various editions and printings in England but omits those pamphlets concerned with the debate over episcopacy. For an analysis of the significance of the pamphlets in their American context, see Bailyn, Bernard, Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)Google Scholar and The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).Google Scholar
3 Mr Adams is preparing a full bibliography of British pamphlets relating to the revolution; it will be published under the title The American Controversy: a Bibliographical Study of the British Pamphlets Concerning the American Dispute, 1763–1783. His preliminary check list has been of very great help in preparing this article.
4 For the role of Benjamin Franklin as a publicist see Crane, Verner W., Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press, 1759–1775 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1950); for Arthur Lee, see Alvin R. Riggs, ‘Arthur Lee and the Radical Whigs’ (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1967) especially Chapter 1.Google Scholar
5 Problems of definition make it impractical to be precise in enumeration. The overall figure of seventy-five excludes pamphlets that were outside the broad context of the patriot-loyalist debate, publications of colonial agents in England such as William Bollan, and the pamphlets written by loyalists after they arrived in England. It includes a number of official and quasi-official public documents. Mr Adams estimates that approximately seven hundred British pamphlets were devoted entirely or almost entirely to the American issue; his more restricted definition of a pamphlet produces a somewhat lower figure for reprintings in England.
6 Adams, , American Independence, pp. 2–3. In all there were four printings by and others in 1766.Google Scholar
7 The Declaration of Independence was not printed on its own in pamphlet form England, though it was reprinted in the.newspapers, in various collections of public papers, and as a broadsheet.
8 An Appeal to the World (London, 1769)Google Scholar, title page; Lovejoy, David S., Rhode Island Politics in the American Revolution (Providence, R.I., 1958)Google Scholar, p. 73. Crane, Franklin's Letters, pp. xIix, 121–2; Riggs, ‘Arthur Lee’, pp. gn., 62–3. According to the Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter), copies of the address were distributed free to Englishmen who had received copies of American editions of the pamphlet (Adams, , American Independence, p. 91).Google Scholar
9 Richard Champion to the duke of Portland, 14 August 1775, Portland MSS, PWF 2713, Nottingham University.
10 Butterfield, L. H., ‘The American Interests of the Firm of E. and C. Dilly, With Their Letters to Benjamin Rush, 1770–1795’, The Papers of The Bibliographical Society of America, XLV (1951), 296Google Scholar; Edward Dilly to John Dickinson, 28 Jan. 1775, Dickinson Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia; The Constitutions of the Several Independent States (London, 1783), title page.Google Scholar
11 Almon, John, Memoirs of a Late Eminent Bookseller London, 1790, p. 92.Google Scholar
12 Gegenheimer, Albert Frank, William Smith (Philadelphia, 1943), p. 169. Perhaps Smith's sermon was sent by Dickinson in response to Dilly's request.Google Scholar
13 Thomas Hollis, MS Diary, vi, fo. 169, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
14 Hollis, Diary, III, 27, 28, 62, 116. For Hollis's part in resisting the establishment of a bishopric in America, see Bridenbaugh, Carl, Mitre and Sceptre (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, esp. pp. 194–202 and 282–3. Caroline Robbins first pointed to Hollis's importance in the distribution of radical literature in the colonies and American tracts in England in her articles ‘The Strenuous Whig, Thomas Hollis of Lincoln's Inn’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser, vii (1950), 430–41Google Scholar, and ‘Library of Liberty: Assembled for Harvard College by Thomas Hollis of Lincoln's Inn’, Harvard Library Bulletin, v (1951), 5-–23.Google Scholar
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16 Hernlund, Patricia, ‘William Strahan's Ledgers: Standard Charges for Printing, 1738–1785’, Studies in Bibliography, xx (1967), 104Google Scholar. Cf. Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader (Chicago, 1957), p. 50.Google Scholar
17 Strahan Papers, British Library, Add. MSS 48,415, fo. 63. The account also lists the printings and costs of other tracts published between 1779 and 1784.
18 Ibid. Add. MSS 48,803A, fos. 47, 79, 83; 48, 801, fos. 40, 61.
19 Ibid. Add. MSS 48, 815, fo. 33.
20 Sir William M eredith to Thomas Cadell, 23 July 1774, MS 948, fo. 11, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Ultimately the pamphlet went through five editions; possibly the total printing ran to around a thousand copies.
21 Richard Price to William Adams, 14Aug. 1776, D6/F100, Gloucestershire Record Office, Gloucester. Cadell's judgement was vindicated. The first edition sold out in a couple of days or so, a second was in the press by 14 February, and by the beginning of March the tract was already in its sixth edition. It was also being printed in much larger quantities than was usual; within a few months sixty thousand copies had been issued in fourteen editions in London and other places besides (Joseph Priestley to Franklin, 13 Feb. 1776, Franklin Papers, iv, 79, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Price to Adams, 14 Feb. 1776, Glos. R.O. D6/F140; Cone, Carl B., Torchbearer of Freedom: The Influence of Richard Price on Eighteenth Century Thought [Lexington, Ky., 1952], pp. 77–8)Google Scholar. On the other hand, Cadell had been unable to sell more than 400 copies of ‘Mr Glover's pamphlet’, nor more than 500 of James Macpherson's Rights of Great Britain Asserted, even though it was in the sixth of its ten London editions, because the government was distributing thousands of copies (Price to Adams, 14 Aug. 1776). For further instances of 500-copy print runs see [T. P. Andrews] to Almon, 16 Apr. 1776 (B.L. Add. MSS 20,733, fo. 6), and Joseph Johnson's comment that he printed about five or six hundred copies of Barlow, Joel's Letter to the National Convention of France (Morning Chronicle, 30 Oct. 1794).Google Scholar
22 Almon was reputed to have made a profit of £10,000 by pamphlets, selling (Christie, Ian R., Wilkes, Wyvill and Reform [London, 1962], p. 18)Google Scholar. Cf. Adams, Thomas R., ‘The British Pamphlets of the American Revolution for 1774: A Progress Report’, Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, LXXXI (1969), 34. Cadell, who published Price's Civil Liberty, also printed John Lind's Answer to the Declaration of The American Congress, Macpherson's tract and other anti-American pamphlets.Google Scholar
23 Adams, ‘Progress Report’, p. 39.
24 Hollis, Diary, III, 28, 62, 116; Hollis subsidized publication of the Short Narrative the amount of three guineas.
25 Ibid. iv, 57, 58, 151, 152; v, 170, 171, 237; vi, 1, 154, 169. Hollis's diary contains other references to his publishing activities on behalf of the colonies.
26 I owe the former suggestion to Mr Adams.
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28 Charles Dilly to Benjamin Rush, 26 June 1783, Butterfield, ‘American Interests’, 314. In contrast to the experience of earlier years, the English market for American publications after the revolution was extremely difficult. Dilly had to tell Rush in 1786 that he was very doubtful as to whether his proposed memoir on the revolution in Pennsylvania would sell in England (Dilly to Rush, 2 Dec. 1786, ibid. p. 327) and other American authors had similar difficulties (cf. John Adams to Mercy Warren, 25 Dec. 1787, ‘Warren-Adams Letters’, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, LXXIII [1925], 301).Google Scholar
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31 Adams, John to Dwight, Timothy, 4 April 1786, Adams Papers (Microfilm edition), Reel 113, Massachusetts Historical Society, which possesses the originals.Google Scholar
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33 The normality of private distribution can be amply demonstrated. T. P. Andrews, an obscure pamphleteer, informed Almon that he was not anxious to make a profit on his tract but hoped that it would be pretty much read if it were published immediately (Add. MSS 20,733, fo 6). Frequently English tracts on the revolution were circulated in this manner. Sir William Meredith instructed his publisher to send copies of his Letter to the Earl of Chatham on the Quebec Bill to ‘the chancellor’, Lord Mansfield, the duke of Grafton, and two copies to his brother-in-law the Hon. Frederick Vane, M.P.; ten years later Richard Price sent a copy of the early edition of his Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, of which few copies were printed, to the leading parliamentary reformer Christopher Wyvill. In between times tracts and papers on American affairs circulated widely. Price sent Joseph Priestley an early copy of Civil Liberty, and Priestley passed one to Franklin. Granville Sharp initially printed only a few copies of his Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature because he intended it primarily for private distribution; for his part he received Capel Lofft's View of the Several Schemes with Respect to America and John Cartwright's Memorial of Common Sense direct from their respective authors. On the other side of the argument the government distributed thousands of copies of anti-American pamphlets and Josiah Wedgwood, the potter, was astounded to receive by special messenger from a neighbour six copies of John Wesley's ill-named tract A Calm Address to Our American Colonies (Meredith to Cadell, 24 July 1774; Price to Christopher Wyvill, 6 Jan. 1785; Wyvill Papers ZFW 7/2/48/6, North Yorkshire Record Office, Northallerton; Priestley to Caleb Rotheram, 9 Feb. 1776, Rutt, John Towill, The Life and Correspondence of Joseph Priestley [2 vols.; London 1831], 1, 289–90Google Scholar; to Franklin, , 13 Feb. 1776Google Scholar; Monthly Review, LIII [08 1775], 180Google Scholar; MS note on the title pages of the copies in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I., and the Hough ton Library respectively; Wedgwood, Josiah to Bentley, Thomas, 5 Nov. 1775, Wedgwood Papers, Microfilm edition, ed. Anne Finer. [The Wedgwood Papers are now at the University of Keele.]).Google Scholar
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42 Ibid. vi, fos. 57, 64, 70. Andrew Eliot had succeeded Mayhew as Hollis's correspondent after the latter's death in 1766.
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