The “morning star” of American liberty

The rights we assume for ourselves, men once fought to secure. High among these rights is the freedom to argue against the wisdom and justice of actions taken by political rulers.

This month marks the anniversary of one moment in the struggle for our rights. On Aug. 4, 1735, the trial of John Peter Zenger began in the city of New York. Zenger was accused of “seditious libel” for publishing criticisms of New York’s colonial governor, William Crosby, in The New York Weekly Journal. The newspaper had accused Crosby of violating the people’s liberties and thus of acting like a tyrant.

According to the law as then applied, the truth of Zenger’s published critiques was not considered a legitimate defense against these charges. The prosecuting attorney and the Chief Justice of the court agreed and proceeded in the trial accordingly. Yet Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, made a thoughtful and passionate argument against this reading. In doing so, he articulated broader principles of justice that would ring out across the ensuing centuries of American political thought and law.

Hamilton conceded that government was “a sacred thing.” The prosecuting attorney had argued this point, adding that government protects subjects and that society could not exist without proper rule. However, Hamilton responded that the reverence we should have for government, one grounded in its establishment by God, should not deny men the ability to lodge “just complaints” when they “suffer under a bad administration.” These factors undercut important reasons why government was considered sacred. For bad administration of government often violated principles of a “free government.”

Hamilton went on to describe the principles making up such a government. As Romans 13 affirms, rulers were entrusted with power “for the good of the people.” Hamilton claimed that this good included the protection of their “liberties or properties” against any and all infringement. Acting against the people’s good, trampling on their freedoms, and taking their possessions, violated the very reasons government existed.

Hamilton argued that those representing a truly free people, if abuses against rights took place, “were not obliged by any law to support a governor” in his wrong actions. Instead, “it is a right which all freemen claim, and are entitled to complain when they are hurt,” including doing so publicly before all the people. In fact, he called such a right “natural,” meaning bestowed not by a government but by God through His creation of mankind. Hamilton then argued that, “The loss of liberty to a generous mind is worse than death.” The loss of liberty was a kind of death, a destruction of a rightful part of what it means to be treated as fully human. Such actions of protest thus showed a manly regard for “the blessings of liberty” that affirmed the people’s ability to rightly exercise their freedoms.

The next day, Aug. 5, the trial concluded. The jury, deliberating for a mere ten minutes, returned a verdict of not guilty. This verdict did not accord with the law. It clearly marked an instance of “jury nullification,” with those men acquitting because they thought the law unjust, not because they thought Zenger innocent under the law’s terms. The jury sought to look beyond the written law to affirm a law deeper and, in their opinion, more binding.

In the arguments made by Hamilton, we see precursors to the American political experiment. We see the claim that men possess natural rights that government is obligated to protect. We see an argument that objecting to unjust governments is an act of virtue, not evil. We also see something of an older tradition wherein the prophets of the Old Testament boldly criticized the injustices and impieties of Israel and of neighboring political communities. These men of old protested through declaring a direct revelation of God. Men like Hamilton sought to find God’s revelation in reason and nature, declaring its truths to those in authority.

Gouverneur Morris, an important though lesser-known Founder, called this trial “the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America!” It is the principle underlying the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of speech. You see the fulfillment of this victory later in the framing of the U.S. Constitution. In our own time, we must seek to guard this liberty even while responsibly exercising it. In doing so, we should seek truth. For believers, we know that the search for truth ultimately leads us to God. And that is the truth that sets us free.