Christianity no more than himself. This pamphlet-napper and press-pirate hath cruised abroad since he put up for himself, to make a prize of other men's copies, to stuff his own cargo with ill-gotten profit, making his business cheating and usurpation, to defraud all men, and by factious libels to sow sedition amongst the people, and frighten allegiance from the subjects' bosoms. Now I have yourselves and all honest men to be judges, whether of the two be the best intelligence; he having not only stolen from other intelligences, but likewise from mine, to make up his senseless scrawl, as particularly the relation of Mr. Carte the Jesuit, taken in St. James, which he inserted in his for want of -matter, three days after the same was published by me, in a single half-sheet; and this is the whole proceeding of this infallible newsmonger."[1]
In the spring of 168p Harris was arrested for publishing a then famous Appeal from the Country to the City, in which the King was openly criticized. He was tried before Chief Justice Scroggs by the infamous Jeffreys, and what has been preserved of the record shows that the pioneer journalist of America was, even in those times of bullying judges, an independent and courageous soul.
At the trial, his neighbors testified that he was a quiet, peaceable, "fair-conditioned "man, but the Chief Justice over-rode all the testimony, declaring him to be the " worst man in the world "—surely a great distinction in times that knew many evil men—and sent the jury out with an open intimation as to the kind of verdict that was expected from them.
The courtroom was crowded with Harris' sympathizers; that he was not without friends among the jury is
- ↑ Cooke, History of Party, i, 363.
