The summer of 1773 marked the fourth time a printer of the South-Carolina Gazette was arrested or threatened with arrest. This time it wasn’t Peter Timothy, though he was likely pulling strings behind the scenes. With his eyes failing, he had turned over the newspaper to his foreman, Thomas Powell, in May of the previous year.
1773 was year four in the war of wills between the elected Commons House of Assembly and the crown-appointed Council. The Council refused to approve any tax bill that reimbursed the treasurer for money sent to John Wilkes, the English hero of constitutional democracy. In a skirmish that July, the Council refused to approve a Commons bill making it a felony to counterfeit currency unless the Commons renewed a tax law that would have raised money without providing reimbursement for the Wilkes grant. The Commons dug in, insisting its “most valuable privilege, the exclusive Right of Originating and Framing all Money Bills” mattered more than the integrity of currency or the credit of the colony.
On Monday August 30, the Gazette printed a dissent from two Council members, who called the attempt to strong-arm the Commons “a Measure so fatal to the Freedom of our Country, We have from a Sense of our Duty to the King, to the Public, and to Ourselves, Thus made our Protest against the Delay to read the Bill making it a Felony to counterfeit the Money of the Provinces in America.”
On Tuesday the Council issued a warrant for Powell’s arrest and ordered him imprisoned for printing the dissent, calling it “a high Breach of Privilege, and Contempt of this House”.
On Wednesday, in a special edition, the Gazette printed a copy of the warrant, followed by a defense of Powell by one of the Council members who signed the dissent. The printer had published at his request, he wrote, and the newspaper had for many years reported on or printed deliberations of Council and Commons without incident. He cited a powerful precedent: “I do not Know of any Instance where a Printer has been punished by the House of Lords in Great-Britain for having only Published a Protest.”
Monday September 6 the Gazette reported that two judges, members of the Commons House, had ordered Powell’s release on Friday. Elsewhere in that issue it “reported” that a statue was planned in London to honor Lord Hillsborough, who had instructed the Council to punish the Commons for the Wilkes grant. The statue would show Hillsborough with a train carried by three leaders of the Massachusetts resistance and he would be “spinning some Scrolls of Paper, representing the American Charters, with the Motto, Massachusetts is my Wash-pot, and South Carolina my Footstool!”
That summer, the Gazette had serialized letters written by a Massachusetts royal governor urging Britain to use more force to crack down on Boston rebels and to restructure that colony’s governing bodies to concentrate power in the hands of “men of estate.” He used such incendiary language as: “Ignorant as they be, yet the heads of a Boston town-meeting influence all publick measures.”
On September 13 the Gazette printed arguments that Powell’s lawyer had used in his defense. He said that the Council acted in absence of any law or precedent, and that they "were not Men of such high consequence as to be allowed the Power of depriving a free Man of his Liberty, for what they should imagine a breach of Privilege.” He called the body “a dead Weight in the Constitution, and ever will be so, as long as [its] Existence is dependent on the Will of a King.” The Powell arrest had ignited a “formidable assault” on British authority.
September 15 the Gazette printed a letter from the president of the Council calling the judges who released Powell “guilty of the most atrocious Contempt.” In the same issue it reported that the Commons House had resolved:
“That PETER TIMOTHY and THOMAS POWELL, Printers, in Charles-Town, be Printers to this House; to print such Proceedings thereof as the House shall direct: And that no other Printer do presume to print the same.”
Timothy’s name reappeared as printer on a redesigned masthead on November 8—apparently he had found a way to muddle through. And apparently spending four days and three nights in the common jail had been too much for Powell. November 23 a notice in a rival paper announced that Powell, “late of Charles Town,” had assigned his debts to a local.
By then Charleston had moved on to the next showdown with the Empire: a shipload of the despised East India Company tea was bearing down on the port. November 29 the Gazette reported: “A Rumour prevails, that there will be a General Meeting of the inhabitants, particularly of the landholders, before the close of the present week—on account of the large importation of Tea hourly expected in the ship London.”
Timothy added, “we do not presume to say that the captain will receive thanks here for having obtained the freight or that either of the merchants to whom the consignment is made will accept the commission.”
On November 28 the first of three tea ships arrived in Boston. The London reached Charleston December 1.