Writers and story tellers adapt to the latest technology tools very rapidly. From oral stories, cave drawings, quill and ink, printing presses, Fountain pens, manual type writers, Mimeograph, ball point pens, Selectric Typewriters, and word processing. The medium has changed also; human voice, clay tablets, sheepskin, paper, and now all the electronic variety of e-mail, e-readers, and of course blogs.
The medium favored in 1765 was the “pamphlet” it was cheap to produce and could be distributed quickly. And compared to a newspaper a pamphlet allowed the writer to be more detailed. The Stamp Act of March 1765 imposed by British Parliament placed a tax on many items but particularly on paper and paper documents. If you sold a newspaper the individual newspaper required a tax stamp not unlike the tax stamps on tobacco products today. Pamphlets were included in this new tax. Imagine if the US government placed a tax on your e-mail, blog, or each article you chose to download.
The future US citizens did what we would likely do today, with leaders like Patrick Henry calling for protests and civil disobedience to the new levy. In the publishing business some paid the tax, some didn’t and quit printing, and yet others continued to write their opinions, some under pseudonyms. However from that time and medium, in the author’s own words, we have a very good look at the emotions and thoughts of what I call “The Bloggers of 1765.”
One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence John Dickinson posted on his blog:
“When an act injurious to freedom has been once done, and the people bear it, the repetition of it is most likely to meet with submission. For as the mischief of the one was found to be tolerable, they will hope that of the second will prove so too; and they will not regard the infamy of the last, because they are stained with that of the first.”
“Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty: For as violations of the rights of the governed, are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner, as to touch individuals but slightly. Thus they are disregarded…. They regularly increase the first injuries, till at length the inattentive people are compelled to perceive the heaviness of their burdens—They begin to complain and inquire—but too late. They find their oppressors so strengthened by success, and themselves so entangled in examples of express authority on the part of their rulers, and of tacit recognition on their own part, that they are quite confounded: For millions entertain no other idea of the legality of power, than that it is founded on the exercise of power. They voluntarily fasten their chains, by adopting a pusillanimous opinion, “that there will be too much danger in attempting a remedy”—or another opinion no less fatal—“that the government has a right to treat them as it does.””
The Colonies won the battle over the Stamp Act for in just over a year from when it was passed British Parliament overturned the act, too late to ebb the rising tide of discontent and too late to quiet the cries for independence.
David
More of John Dickinson’s posts are can be found here
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=690&Itemid=28
