Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/789

 780

HISTORY OF PRINTING.

1793, Aug. 6. Richard Peart and William Belcher,* booksellers, at Birmingham, were tried and convicted at the Warwick assizes, of selling the Address to the Addressers. Mr. Bel- cher was also indicted for selling the second «irt of the Rights of Man and the Jockey Club. They were sentenced each to three months' im- prisonment; to find sureties for their good be- haviour for two years, themselves in £100 each, and two sureties in £50 each.

1793, Aug. 10. Daniel Holt, printer of the Newark Herald, was tried at the assizes held at Nottingham, and found guilty of selling Paine's Address to the Addressers ; and of publishing an Address to the tradesmen, meclianics, and other inhabitants of the toum of Newark, on the subject of parliamentary reform. For the first offence he was sentenced to pay a fine of £50, and to be imprisoned in Newgate "for the space of two years : for Uie second offence, to pay a further sum of £60, and a further imprisonment of two years in the same jail, and afterwards to find security for his good behaviour, himself in £200, and two others in £150. Mr. Holt published, A Vindica- turn of the conduct and prtneiples of the printer

of the Blots <n Birmtngham, on Ike nth, I6M, l6th, and nth iaf of July, 1791 ^ ,
 * Mr. Belcher was the author of An AutheHtie Acemmt

The natioD wan dUgrBced by a wanton and unprovoked seriea of tomnltii and outnges, -which, for the apace of four days, spread terror and alarm throogh the populous town of Birmingham and the adjacent counties. In most of the larger towns of Great Britain, associations were fonmed for the celebration of the French ref olation on the l4th July i but the opposite party were not indifferent spectators of these proceedings ; the most scandalous and inflammatory iosinuationa were conveyed in newspapers and pamphlets, stigmatizing the friends of freedom as de- termined republicans, and leprcsenting the act of Joining in a convivial meeting on the odioos I4th Jnly, as an at- tempt to overturn the British constitution in church and state. A few days previous to the meeting in commemo- ration of the French revolution at Birmingham, six copies o^tbe most inflamma(ory and seditious hand bill, propos- iti^ the French revolution as a model to the English, and exciting them to rebellion, were left in a public house by some person unknown. As the contents of this hand bill found a qoiclt and general circulatibn, they occasioned a ferment in the town. The magistrates offered a reward of one hundred guineas for discoverinR the author, printer, or publisher of the obnoxious paper ; and the fHends of the meeting intended for the fourteenth, published at the same time an advertisement explicitiy denying the senti- ments and doctrines of the seditious hand bill, and dis- avowing all connection with its author or publisher. The views and intenUons of the meeting havinf:, however, been grossly'raisrepresented, and the (gentlemen concerned suspecting the seditions hand biU to be an artifice pro- jected by their adversaries, thought It most advisable to relinquish the scheme : and accordingly notice was given to that effect : hut, at the pressing instance of several per- sona dissatisfied with tliis determination, the intention was revived, and the company met at the appointed time to the number of between eighty and ninets'. The house was surrt>unded by a tumultuous crowd, who testified their disapproliation by hisses and groans, and by the shout of Church and King, which became the watch-word on this occasion. The mob immediately after set on fire and destroyed two meeting-houses of the dissenters, and from thence proceeded to the house of Dr. Priestley, a dissent- ing minister, which, with his library and valuable philo- sophical apparatus, manuscripts and papers, the mob en- tirely deslToyed ; and in like manner ttiey continaed for three ensuing days to burn the houses and valuable effects of Messrs. Ryland, Russell, Hutton, and others who resided near Birmingham. Of these infatuated rioters seventeen were tried and five were found guilty ; one of whom was reprieved, and four executed : thus terminated a scene that dishonoured the national history. The amoont of damage* awarded by the Jury at the Worcester assizes, was, for the Birmingham sufferers, ^s,t<M, and at Warwick jf IS,86S.

of the Newark Herald : on affeal to the jvHiee of the people of England, on the remUt ef two recent and extraordinary prosecutions for libel. By Daniel Holt, printer of the Newark Herald. 8vo. 3s. 6d. Symonds, London. Mr. Holt's ad- dress to his fellow-townsmen of Newark, breathes the genuine spirit of political martyrdom. — " Pursued as I have been," says Mr. Holt, in his prefatory address, " by the furious, unceasing, and vindictive malice of a numerous herd of associated political assassins, and doomed to an almost unexampled imprisonment, by the unie- lenting hand of legal severity, I throw myself on the humanity, benevolence, and candour of the British nation, as the last and only tribunal to which I can appeal, and lirom whicn I fully ex- pect impartiality, justice, andpiotection.'' He thus concludes, page 92. " The persecutions I have already had the honour to experience, are, and ever will be, my pride and exultation, as they have been occasioned by an attachment to that best of all causes, the cause of all mankind — THE cadse of freedom." Mr. Erskinc wrs counsel for the defendant, and addressed the jury with great zeal and ingenuity. Lord Kenyon also spoke with becoming libeiality on the subject of anti-ministerial parties, which ne by no means wished to extinguish ; because, said he, " they keep ministers on their guard, in their conduct : * adding, " A great political character, who held a high situation in this country, but is now dead, used to say, that ministers were the better for being now and then a little pepper'd a»d salted." In Mr. Holt's appendix, there are copies of the duke of Richmond's famous Letter to Colonei Sharman, and of his memorable bill for a par- liamentary reform; also an abstract from the New Annual Eeguter for 1782, of Mr. Piu's speech on the same side of that most important question ; with some other pertinent extracts; all contributing to render Mr. Holt's book an enter- taining miscellany. Mr. Holt died Jan. 29, 1797, of consumption, brought on by his long confine- ment in Newgate, at the early age of thirty -three years, and was buried in the old church yard of Newark. He was a man of superior talents, and of the strictest integrity and benevolence.

1793. Sq>t. 9. The Indian Observer. A periodical paper projected and conducted by Hugh Boyd,* esq., and published weekly at Madras, in a newspaper, entitled the Hircarrah. It terminated with the fifty-third number, on Sept. 9, 1794. The Indian Observer was reprint- ed in London, by subscription, in 1798.

1793, Nov 6. Died, John Murrav, an ac- tive, well-informed, and successful bookseller of London. He was a native of Edinburgh ; and for some time was an oificer in the honourable corps of marines, under the patronage of sir George Yonge, hart. His first commencement as a bookseller is thus given by himself, in a letter to his friend William Falconer, the ingenious author of the Shiptvreck, who was then at Dover, and by whom some lines addressed to Mr. Mur-

« Mr. Boyd is one, among many, to whom the letters of Junius have been ascribed.

LjOOQ IC