to the common cause. It printed the Declaration of Independence, though basically without comment. Only seven more issues appeared thereafter, essentially to reaffirm traditional Whig principles as exemplified by the texts from which its authors drew.45 It accepted, however reluctantly, a different future, where America could become a haven for the oppressed, separated from Britain, not united with it.46 Indeed, the final issue closed with the men behind The Crisis stating that they themselves had decided to sail for more hospitable American shores.47
Some of the earlier issues of The Crisis garnered American notice and were reprinted in New York, Newport, Philadelphia, and a few other places.48 For modern readers unaware of the transatlantic nature of imperial protest, that by itself may well seem impressive; for those seeking
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a more coordinated, systematic sharing of ideas, its circulation around the empire probably appears fairly hit-or-miss. To be sure, The Crisis did not enjoy the reprint success of Paine’s Common Sense or, earlier, of John Dickinson’s Pennsylvania Farmer Letters. But then the actual influence of writers on readers, appealing as it is among historians to try and prove, is inherently elusive.
Even though The Crisis stood as a publication apart in its acerbic language and combative tone, it should also be considered alongside others that made their rights arguments less intemperately. They were all products of the same philosophical and political traditions. In the world that The Crisis shared with other defenders of English freedoms, fundamental law was real and basic human rights were antecedent to those bestowed by any government. Moreover, all legitimate government was a compact between ruler and ruled, the duties of the ruler being as great as the responsibilities of the ruled. In the British empire the rights of Englishmen extended fully to the colonies, with nothing lost through transatlantic migration. Charters, for colonists, were constitutions, just as they claimed, not mere contracts, revocable by crown decree.49 If British-Americans were obliged, because of British tyranny, to rise in rebellion and eventually turn to revolution, The Crisis accepted that they did what men of conscience had always had the right to do. Ultimately the former colonists would point to their successful revolution as evidence of their exceptionalism, even as proof of their peculiar destiny in the larger world. It is curious if not ironic that a weekly British paper dedicated to saving the empire from itself promoted that very-American state of mind.
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The printed source for this edition of The Crisis comes from the copy that is found in the Bodleian Library. We were able to access an electronic version of the source from the online Eighteenth Century Journals Portal of Adam Matthew Digital, a London-based company that makes many primary-source collections available digitally for the first time. The texts were then converted into a digital manuscript that was used as the basis for typesetting.
Following Liberty Fund practice, we have not altered the texts: we have retained original spelling and punctuation with a few exceptions (we have modernized long esses to s and removed repeated quotation marks at the beginning of each line of the quoted material). We have silently corrected typographical errors that appeared in the original source. The editor has created footnotes to provide the reader with information about people and events that will help put the writings in their historical context and also serve as a complement to the texts themselves. We have kept the footnotes that appeared in The Crisis in their original format (symbols, such as asterisks or daggers); new editorial notes appear beneath The Crisis notes and are indicated by arabic numerals.
For works cited frequently in the footnotes, the following shortened citations have been used:
Blackstone, Commentaries: William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765–1769; orig. ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
Cobbett, Parliamentary History: William Cobbett et al., eds., The Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols. (London: T. C. Hansard, 1806–1820).
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Labaree, Papers of Franklin: Leonard Labaree et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 39 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959—).
Namier and Brooke, House of Commons: Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The House of Commons, 1754–1790, 3 vols. (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1964).
Oxford DNB: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Pickering, Statutes: Danby Pickering, ed., The Statutes at Large, 46 vols. (Cambridge: Joseph Bentham, 1762–1807).
Simmons and Thomas, Proceedings and Debates: R. C. Simmons and P. D. G. Thomas, eds., Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliament Respecting North America, 1754–1783, 6 vols. (White Plains, N.Y.: Kraus International Publications, 1982).6
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THE
CRISIS
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THE
CRISIS
| NUMBER I | To be continued Weekly. |
| FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 1775 1 | [Price Two-pence Halfpenny. |
Potior visa est Periculosa libertas quieto servitio
SALLUST2.
To the People of ENGLAND and AMERICA.
Friends and Fellow Subjects,
IT is with the greatest Propriety I address this Paper to you: It is in your Defence, at this GREAT, this IMPORTANT CRISIS, I take the Pen in hand: A CRISIS big with the Fate of the most glorious Empire known in the Records of Time; and by your FIRMNESS and RESOLUTION ONLY,
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it can be saved from DESTRUCTION: By your FIRMNESS and RESOLUTION, you may preserve to yourselves, your immediate Offspring, and latest Posterity, all the glorious Blessings of FREEDOM, given by Heaven to undeserving Mortals: By your SUPINENESS and PUSSILANIMITY, you will entail on yourselves, your Children, and Millions yet unborn, MISERY and SLAVERY.
It is in your Defence I now stand forth to oppose, the most sanguinary, and despotic Court that ever disgraced a free Country.
It is in your Defence I now unsheath the Sword of Justice, to oppose the most profligate and abandoned Administration, that ever shewed the Weakness, or abused the Confidence of a Prince.
It is in your Defence I now stand forth, with a Firmness and Resolution becoming an Englishman determined to be free, to oppose every ARBITRARY. and every UNCONSTITUTIONAL Act, of a venal and corrupt Majority, smuggled into
