Note 10 — Chapter V · “HEARING MY COUNTRY ATTACKED, I BECAME HER DEFENDER THROUGH THICK AND THIN.”

“The Political Progress of Britain; or, An Impartial History of Abuses in the Government of the British Empire, in Europe, Asia, and America. From the Revolution in 1688 to the present time: the whole tending to prove the ruinous Consequences of the popular System of Taxation, War, and Conquest.” It was a little too violent for its purpose; and, although it contained a good deal of truth, the tract was malevolent and unpatriotic, and the author deserved to be prosecuted (from a ministerial point of view).

The preface to the American edition is worth reading, as telling some of the story of the times:—“Advertisement.—The first edition of ‘The Political Progress of Britain’ was published at Edinburgh and London, in autumn, 1792. The sale was lively, and the prospect of future success flattering. The plan was, to give an impartial history of the abuses in government, in a series of pamphlets. But, while the author was preparing for the press a second number, along with a new edition of the first, he was, on the 2nd of January, 1793, apprehended, and with some difficulty made his escape. Two booksellers, who acted as his editors, were prosecuted, and, after a very arbitrary trial, they were condemned, the one to three months, and the other to six months of imprisonment. A revolution will take place in Scotland before the lapse of ten years at farthest, and most likely much sooner. The Scots nation will then certainly think itself bound, by every tie of wisdom, of gratitude, and of justice, to make reparation to these two honest men for the tyranny which they have encountered in the cause of truth. In Britain, authors and editors of pamphlets have long conducted the van of every revolution. They compose a kind of forlorn hope on the skirts of battle; and though they may often want experience, or influence, to marshal the main body, they yet enjoy the honour and the danger of the first rank, in storming the ramparts of oppression.

“The verdict of a packed jury did not alter the opinions of those who had approved of the publications. Five times its original price hath, since its suppression, been offered in Edinburgh for a copy. At London, a new edition was printed by Ridgway and Symonds, two booksellers, confined in Newgate for publishing political writings. They sell the pamphlet, and others of the same tendency, openly in prison. It is next to impossible for despotism to overwhelm the divine art of printing,” &c., &c.

Mr. Callender eventually became a newspaper editor at Richmond, Va., and distinguished himself as an uncompromising opponent of the Federalist administrations.