This edition of the trial is, like all others, based on A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger, Printer of the New York Weekly Journal, which was edited by James Alexander and printed by the Zenger press in 1736.

Alexander’s is the only authentic version, for he was the sole person close to the affair who undertook to prepare a written text. He was in this, as in so many other ways, the formal apologist for his side. A rival edition would have been logical, and could easily have been produced by the men of the prosecution, but they never saw fit to attempt their own vindication.

Indeed, Attorney General Bradley declined even to participate in publication, withholding his notes and his brief when the Zenger camp asked to see them, refusing any kind of advice, comment, correction, or even objection; obviously because, staggered and humiliated by the acquittal, he was in no mood to help embalm his courtroom defeat in print. It is a pity that he allowed his case to go by default. He could not, of course, have changed the pleading as we find it set down, except possibly for minor points of emphasis or phraseology, but he might have made a more respectable showing than he does in the bare synopses to which the Brief Narrative is reduced from time to time. True, he might have appeared in an even worse light; perhaps he was afraid that that was exactly what his opponents had in mind. Nevertheless, at the very least he would have allowed the public and posterity to view what happened from his angle of vision. He deliberately chose not to do so.

The defense had no inhibitions about publishing a full account of the trial. The cheering and shouting had scarcely died away before Alexander was at work copying out the arguments, arranging notes, gathering information from those who could fill in the gaps for him.

He was the obvious man for the job. Writer, journalist, and editor, he had been schooled in the task of integrating written material and in working up connecting links and explanatory passages as they were needed. Again, not only did he stand near the head of the legal profession, so that he was fully equipped to juggle the problem of libel, the textbook citations, and the technicalities and philosophy of the law (essentials in dealing with any such trial), but he had an unparalleled position at the center of the Zenger turmoil.

No one in New York knew more than James Alexander about how and why Peter Zenger came to be tried before the Supreme Court of the Colony. How could it have been otherwise when the New York Weekly Journal was under fire, and Alexander was the Journal’s editor? He himself had approved, and perhaps written, the “libelous” issues on which the prosecution was based. He himself would have been in the dock as defendant instead of the printer if only the attorney general had been able to get him indicted.

Alexander had been a leader of the Popular party from the beginning of its struggle with Governor Cosby. He had conspired against the Governor, fought him in the Courts and through the press, and used every weapon to hand in an all-out effort to ruin him politically. There was hardly a dissident movement in New York with which Alexander was not allied as adviser or mentor. It was only natural that he should have been one of Zenger’s lawyers, for he understood as few others could just what the administration attack amounted to, and how a counterattack should be developed. It is not difficult to imagine the intelligence and the alertness with which he noted every word that was spoken at the trial. He must have been the perfect spectator if ever there was one.

And all this does not exhaust the depths of his familiarity with the incident. Until his disbarment he had been one of the counsel for the defense, which made it his duty to draw up a brief in preparation for his plea. He fulfilled his duty so well that when he was summarily removed by order of Chief Justice Delancey he was able to hand over to Andrew Hamilton a whole plan of campaign, and Hamilton (brought in unprepared and at the last moment) relied on it substantially throughout the proceedings.

It takes nothing from Hamilton, whose performance remains one of the classical things in the history of American law, that Alexander gave him the lead which he followed with such stunning success—that is, the decision to base Zenger’s defense on the truth of the Journal articles, and on that basis to ask the jury to bring in a verdict of “Not guilty.” Alexander already held that guiding thread in his hand months before Hamilton appeared on the scene. (Not that he invented the idea, but he saw that it was the gambit to play.)

Hamilton’s own record of the trial went into the Brief Narrative, as is indicated by this passage from one of the letters that the Philadelphia barrister wrote to his friend and colleague in New York:

I have at last sent you my draft of Mr. Zenger’s trial.... I have had no time to read it over but once since it was finished. I wrote it by half-sheets and copied it as fast as I wrote. The meaning of all this is to beg you to alter and correct it agreeable to your own mind.[36]

Thus Alexander even edited the text submitted by the defense attorney, and the latter’s acceptance of the result shows how faithfully it reflected the spoken word. Alexander clearly has given us the events of August 4, 1735, almost to the life.

His account had an enormous success in his own time. Lawyers, journalists, and political philosophers felt the impact of the acquittal as something new, either hopeful or foreboding, and there sprang up a market for the text in both America and England. Other editions began to appear to meet the demand, several of them published in London as early as 1738. The eighteenth century, when the problems involved were still fighting issues, was the golden age of Zenger republication. One of these versions, that issued by J. Almon of London in 1765, is generally available today in the form of a reprint prepared by the Work Projects Administration and sponsored by the California State Library for its series of “Occasional Papers” (1940).

The nineteenth century saw two particularly useful editions in T. B. Howell’s State Trials (1816) and in Peleg W. Chandler’s American Criminal Trials (1841), the first following Alexander almost word for word, the second modified and abridged. With the turn of the century Livingston Rutherfurd made available a literal reprint of the Brief Narrative in his John Peter Zenger, His Press, His Trial and a Bibliography of Zenger Imprints (1904). Fifty years later Frank Luther Mott did the same for our generation in Oldtime Comments on Journalism (1954).

The first edition of any text (putting aside the corrupt or otherwise unreliable) always has a presumption in its favor. This is how the author saw his own work; this is the form in which he cast his own thoughts; this is the union of his own logic with his own rhetoric. Nothing else can begin to approach the authority and authenticity of his imprimatur. Consequently it is mandatory for later editors to justify tampering with the text instead of simply reproducing it.

The justification for the version here presented of James Alexander’s A Brief Narrative of the Case and Tryal of John Peter Zenger, Printer of the New York Weekly Journal is that his text of 1736, however fine an achievement for his own time, is not quite so satisfactory after the lapse of two hundred years. Literary conventions have changed too much for so characteristic a piece of eighteenth-century writing to be allowed to remain as it is when modern standards of readability are in question. Moreover, in places it shows signs of haste, or possibly even of another writer at work. An instance is the opening passage, which falls far below Alexander’s best style, and may be by someone else, perhaps Zenger himself. Lastly, there is too much technical law for the lay reader. On all these counts the Brief Narrative needs overhauling for our purposes.

This does not imply any distortion: the bulk of Alexander’s text is here just as it came from Zenger’s press. Most of the pamphlet is still perfectly clear, and it would be pointless to change anything simply for the sake of change. More than that, it is preferable to keep to the original wherever possible in order to catch something of the eighteenth-century atmosphere.

Clarity is the touchstone. Nothing has been allowed to stand that might trouble readers who are not familiar with obsolete usages. The simplest revision is in the spelling, where I use “trial” instead of “tryal,” “jail” instead of “gaol,” “public” instead of “publick,” etc. More important is the change in punctuation. Like most publications of its time, the Brief Narrative shows a plethora of commas, colons, and semicolons, a type of punctuation that tends to produce long, complicated, tedious sentences. There are too many capitals and italics, which today not only irritate the eye but also lose their force by doing too much duty. In certain places the grammar calls for the addition or omission of words.

A comparison of the following passages, the first two from the original, the second pair from my edition of the text, will show exactly what changes these considerations have led to:

As There was but one Printer in the Province of New-York, that printed a publick News Paper, I was in Hopes, if I undertook to publish another, I might make it worth my while; and I soon found my Hopes were not groundless: My first Paper was printed, Nov. 5th, 1733. and I continued printing and publishing of them, I thought to the Satisfaction of every Body, till the January following: when the Chief Justice was pleased to animadvert upon the Doctrine of Libels, in a long Charge given in that Term to the Grand Jury, and afterwards on the third Tuesday of October, 1734. was again pleased to charge the Grand Jury in the following Words. “Gentlemen; I shall conclude....”

Be it remembered, that Richard Bradly, Esq: Attorney General of Our Sovereign Lord the King, for the Province of New-York, who for Our said Lord the King in this Part prosecutes, in his own proper Person comes here into the Court of our said Lord the King, and for our said Lord the King gives the Court here to understand and be informed, That John Peter Zenger, late of the City of New-York, Printer, (being a seditious Person; and a frequent Printer and Publisher of false News and seditious Libels, and wickedly and maliciously devising the Government of Our said Lord the King of this His Majesty’s Province of New-York, under the Administration of His Excellency William Cosby, Esq; Captain General and Governour, in Chief of the said Province, to traduce, scandalize and vilify, and His Excellency the said Governour, and the Ministers and Officers of Our said Lord, the King of and for the said Province to bring into Suspicion and the ill Opinion of the Subjects of Our said Lord the King residing within the Province) the Twenty eighth Day of January, in the seventh Year of the Reign of Our Sovereign Lord George the second, by the Grace of God of Great-Britain, France and Ireland, King Defender of the Faith, &c. at the City of New-York, did falsly, seditiously and scandalously print and publish, and cause to be printed and published, a certain false, malicious, seditious scandalous Libel, entitled The New-York Weekly Journal, containing the freshest Advices, foreign and domestick;

In the present edition, these passages read as follows:

As there was but one printer in the Province of New York who printed a public newspaper, I was in hopes that if I undertook to publish another I might make it worth my while. I soon found my hopes were not groundless. My first paper was printed on November 5, 1733; and I continued printing and publishing them, I thought to the satisfaction of everybody, till the January following, when the Chief Justice was pleased to animadvert upon the doctrine of libels in a long “charge” given in that term to the grand jury. Afterwards, on the third Tuesday of October, 1734, he was again pleased to charge the grand jury in the following words: “Gentlemen, I shall conclude....”

Be it remembered that Richard Bradley, Attorney General of the king for the Province of New York, who prosecutes for the king in this part, in his own proper person comes here into the Court of the king, and for the king gives the Court here to understand and be informed:

That John Peter Zenger, of the City of New York, printer (being a seditious person; and a frequent printer and publisher of false news and seditious libels, both wickedly and maliciously devising the administration of His Excellency William Cosby, Captain General and Governor in Chief, to traduce, scandalize and vilify both His Excellency the Governor and the ministers and officers of the king, and to bring them into suspicion and the ill opinion of the subjects of the king residing within the Province), on the twenty-eighth day of January, in the seventh year of the reign of George the Second, at the City of New York did falsely, seditiously and scandalously print and publish, and cause to be printed and published, a certain false, malicious, seditious, scandalous libel entitled The New York Weekly Journal.

The major departure from Alexander’s text remains to be mentioned, since it is not involved in these passages—namely, the excision of some parts and the summarizing of others. Summaries are used when a faster pace seems advisable, for example at the start, when the preliminary maneuverings of the Governor are described. The excisions concern mainly the technicalities of the law. The long quotations from dusty legal tomes, the appeal to long-past precedents, can be of little interest to any except those trained in the law, and so only those passages have been retained that are necessary to the intelligibility of the arguments. But that in itself means a solid core, enough to show the dialectic of the lawyers moved, how the prosecution set up positions, and how the defense knocked them over.

Four fifths of the Brief Narrative are here—including all the passages-at-arms between Andrew Hamilton on the one side, and Bradley and Delancey on the other, and all of the defense attorney’s splendid peroration on liberty that clinched the acquittal for Peter Zenger.

NOTE: Editorial summaries are enclosed within brackets. Other changes are not indicated, and anyone interested in them should consult the original. In particular, blank lines do not necessarily stand for the deletion of material: they are there mainly for convenience in following the case step by step.