Zenger

This should give a chuckle.  Reprint of a  British Historian from 1950, who was trying to explain US politics to the Brits.  He said that you could understand it by who had immigrated where.  New England was all Puritan Calvinists from East Anglia (Southeast) who are stern, untalkative and controlling.  The South was migrants from West England who are ultra-traditional and conservative.  Mid Atlantic states were Midlanders where many ideas mingled.  They were tolerant and loved new stuff.  Then there was New York.  Ill-supported by the Dutch, the colony was like an orphan child.  It had to make money on its own and so smugglers, pirates, hawksters, prostitutes and just about anybody did business there.  New Yorkers didn’t question your beliefs and to this day almost distrust you if you have any beliefs whatsoever (ahem!). 

            New York was home to the first big court case of colonial America.  Here’s background.  British America grew like crazy in the 1700s.  Strictly speaking the colonies were supposed to stick with agriculture and Parliament tended to think of Americans as ill-educated, poor, with one significant crop, tobacco.  But in violation of laws, America was rapidly becoming secretly industrial. Craftsmen were in short supply and could easily go into business for themselves.  Thus Americans never formed guilds or struck employers. An average man ate 10 ounces of meat a day and women had an average of 7 healthy children.  Farms were typically 100 acres, gigantic by Brit standards. And the place was growing like wildfire. 1700 to 1750 had 4% annual economic growth and the population passed 1 million.  If you compared New York to Quebec, French Quebec had been heavily subsidized by France for fur trade.  Yet by 1750 it still had only 60,000 people where the Hudson Valley had over 100,000 who had come from everywhere—Walloons and Flemings, Swedes, Germans, Norwegians, Scots, English Quakers, Irish, and freed slaves.  This milieu was noisy, acrimonious, faction-ridden, and mixed in faiths.  But nearly all agreed that Truth was what Jesus taught.

            In January 1735, John Peter Zenger, a newspaper owner, was locked up for criticizing the governor, William Crosby. Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, brought forward a defense that he had merely told the truth.  That would not have been admitted in English court where criminally libelous talk was defined as anything  that fostered ‘ill will against the government.’  The judge tried to overrule the defense, but the jury demanded to hear it nonetheless, and then found the defendant not guilty by reason of Truth.  This became a harbinger of what critics of society could get away with in America. Two of the jurors were Lutherans; 3, Anglicans, who told a newspaper that their reasoning for Truth was as follows.  When we are claimed as believers in God, He puts his Love in us. And according to I Cor. 13, Love is patient and kind, has no envy or pride, not self-seeking, doesn’t delight in evil but Rejoices in Truth.  They found it an offense to their faith to convict a man who tells the truth.  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Or as Jesus said, “you shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set your free.”