Ben Wilcox, “Published by Authority: A Case of Anonymous Authorship in Pre-Revolutionary
Rhode Island,” Tempus, 13.1 (Spring 2012), 1-16.
1
Published by Authority
A Case of Anonymous Authorship in Pre-Revolutionary Rhode Island
Ben Wilcox
On November 30th, 1764, a political pamphlet titled The Rights of Colonies Examined went
on sale in the British colony of Rhode Island.1 Its title page bore no author’s name, and
the sole indicator of any individual contribution to the text was a mysterious signature on
the pamphlet’s final page: P------. The pamphlet’s first copies exhibited cheap and hasty
printing, with confused pagination, scattered misspellings, and an almost indecipherably
small font.2 “Liberty,” the text began, “is the greatest blessing that men enjoy, and slavery
is the heaviest curse that human nature is capable of.”3 In the following pages, Colonies
Examined explored the legal relationship between colonial America and imperial England,
criticizing the increasingly burdensome taxes imposed by the British Parliament in the
wake of the costly French and Indian War. Such arguments were relatively common in the
1760s, as a growing number of colonists voiced frustration at the end of over a century of
British salutary neglect. In its forceful tone and style, the language of Colonies Examined
also resembled that of other pamphlets on sale in colonial publishing houses. Even in
its anonymity4, Colonies Examined was hardly unique; to the contrary, anonymous and
pseudonymous authorship were among the most common devices used by early American
pamphleteers and their British forebears.5
For simplicity’s sake, the remainder of this essay will refer to the pamphlet as Colonies Examined. Textual
citations will refer to the pagination in Volume I of Bernard Bailyn’s Pamphlets of the American Revolution
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965)which includes The Rights of Colonies Examined and is the
authoritative modern edition of the text.
2
I base these observations on the original pamphlets I examined at Houghton Library. Later editions of
Colonies Examined, such as the London edition of 1766, do not contain such egregious errors.
3
Hopkins, 507.
4
This essay construes anonymity in a broad sense, echoing Robert Griffin’s definition of an anonymous
publication as any that “does not give a reference to the legal name of the empirical writer.” See Robert
Griffin, “Anonymity and Authorship.” New Literary History 30.4 (1999), 879-880.
5
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1992), 11.
1
2
Wilcox
What did distinguish Colonies Examined from other political pamphlets on sale
in 1764 was a sentence printed prominently across the center of the title page: “Published
by Authority.” A common feature on eighteenth-century government documents,
legislative records, and judicial paperwork, “Published by Authority” indicated the official
endorsement of the Rhode Island colonial government – and its presence on the cover of
Colonies Examined lent the pamphlet a unique status among the anti-British diatribes that
it otherwise resembled. Today, the author of Colonies Examined is known to be Stephen
Hopkins, a prolific political writer and the long-time governor of the Rhode Island colony
in the 1760s. In fact, Hopkins would have been recognized as the author of Colonies
Examined by a relatively large coterie of politically aware 18th-century Rhode Islanders.6
But Hopkins’ choice to publish his pamphlet under “Authority” rather than under his own
name – or simply as an anonymous pamphlet – was a highly unusual one, both for Hopkins
and for American pamphleteers in general.7 This paper seeks to explain Hopkins’ decision
by situating it in the political context of Rhode Island in the 1760s and within the intellectual
environment of 18th-century pamphlet discourse. In particular, I argue that Hopkins’
authorial representation removed his pamphlet from the factionalism of local Rhode Island
politics and allowed Hopkins’ writing to transcend the impermanence of his own political
position. Furthermore, by speaking on behalf of Rhode Island, rather than simply as Rhode
Island’s sometime governor, Hopkins acquired an authority that encouraged other colonies
to rally around his argument. In demonstrating the nuanced motives behind Hopkins’ use
of anonymity and state authority, this essay contributes to a recent historiography that
seeks more diverse explanations of anonymity. Colonies Examined offers a clear case of
anonymous authorship rooted not in fear, but in the desire to establish broad-reaching
authority in a contentious and unpredictable political environment.
Stephen Hopkins, the son of a rural Rhode Island farmer, rose to political prominence
from unlikely circumstances. An autodidact and trained surveyor, Hopkins first attained an
Personal conversation with Bernard Bailyn. Hopkins would have been recognized as the author by Rhode
Islanders, but would not have been as well-recognized in other colonies and in London. I am indebted to
Professor Bailyn for taking the time to answer my questions about the reception of Colonies Examined.
7
Indeed, Colonies Examined is the only political pamphlet I am aware of that was “Published by Authority.” I
base this assertion on digital searches for the term “Published by Authority” in Eighteenth Century Collections
Online, in 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, and in America’s Historical Newspapers, as well
as an examination of the pamphlets featured in Bailyn’s Pamphlets of the American Revolution.
6
Published By Authority
3
elected position as the town clerk of Chapumiscook in 1731, at the age of twenty-five.8
By the time he reached thirty-five, Hopkins had been elected speaker of the Rhode Island
General Assembly and had established himself as an authority on matters of commerce
and trade.9 In 1754, Hopkins, an early advocate of inter-colonial cooperation in a colony
fiercely jealous of its charter rights, represented Rhode Island at the Albany Conference,
an ill-fated attempt to form a colonial council that would have “jurisdiction over Indian
affairs” and the power to “raise troops and erect forts for defense.”10 Though the Albany
Conference failed, it foreshadowed the enthusiasm for inter-colonial cooperation that
would underlie Hopkins’ later arguments in Colonies Examined, and that would, in part,
motivate the presentation of his pamphlet as speaking on behalf of Rhode Island itself,
rather than merely on behalf of a single Rhode Island politician.
In 1755, Hopkins was elected governor of Rhode Island Colony, and his ascension
marked the beginning of over a decade of ruthless factionalism in Rhode Island politics. The
roots of the Hopkins-Ward Controversy—as this period in Rhode Island’s history has come
to be known—have been the matter of some dispute among historians.11 “Basically,” Paul
Campbell has concluded, “the source of the problem involved the increasing prosperity of
Providence at the expense of Newport. Political allegiances were soon established along
socioeconomic and geographical lines.”12 The result was the degeneration of Rhode Island
politics into a personal feud between Hopkins, head of the Providence faction, and Samuel
Ward of Newport. In an exchange emblematic of the prevailing political rhetoric, Ward
accused Hopkins of using “every art to gain for himself and his Family, Posts of Profit, and
William E. Foster, Stephen Hopkins: A Rhode Island Statesman, 2 vols. (Providence: Sidney S. Rider,
1884) 9-10. Foster remains the definitive biographer of Hopkins. Other sources include Marguerite Appleton,
A Portrait Album of Four Great Rhode Island Leaders (Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1978)
and John F. Millar, “Stephen Hopkins: An Architect of Independence” Newport History 53(1980). The
absence of high-quality recent scholarship on Hopkins is mystifying and deserving of remedy. For conjecture
on why Hopkins is “so little known” to modern historians, see Millar, 32-34.
9
John R. Bartlett, ed., Records of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 10 vols. (Providence:
Providence Press, 1856-65), 21. Hopkins frequently penned essays addressing local commerce in the
Providence Gazette.
10
Robert C. Newbold, The Albany Congress and Plan of Union (New York: Vantage Press, 1755), 123. For
a discussion of the Albany Plan’s unfriendly reception in Rhode Island, see 156-165.
11
See, for example, the discussion of the controversy in Mark E. Thompson, “The Hopkins-Ward Controversy
and the American Revolution in Rhode Island: An Interpretation,” William and Mary Quarterly 16:3(July
1959). Thompson outlines the traditional economic and social interpretations of the development of the
factions, before advancing his own argument that “the Ward-Hopkins controversy was the political struggle
between similar interests in two different sections” of the Colony. Bernard Bailyn goes so far as to describe
the controversy as “devoid of ideological meaning.” See Bailyn, Pamphlets, 501.
12
Paul Campbell, The Rights of Colonies Examined (Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation,
1974), 7.
8
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Wilcox
to make the most of every Employment … such a Man is influenced by other Motives than
those of Love to God and his Country.”13 Bribery and tit-for-tat exchanges became accepted
tactics for Hopkins and Ward as elections grew increasingly bitter. Candidates fought, in
Bernard Bailyn’s words, “with every weapon of publicity, vote-corralling, and wire-pulling
available to eighteenth-century Americans.”14 By 1760, T.W. Bicknell has remarked, a vote
could be bought “for the price of a pig.”15 In a series of hotly contested annual elections,
several of which were decided by just a few dozen votes, Hopkins and Ward traded the
governorship, sometimes losing and regaining the office within a single year.16 Assessing
the situation, which he termed “Rhode Islandism,” with a grim weariness, one Providence
minister concluded that a “Surer method cannot be taken to ruine a people…For these
abominations our land mourns.”17
For all the vitriol spewed over the course of a decade of contested elections, though,
Rhode Islanders remained politically united when non-local issues arose. Rhode Island
voters elected legislators on the basis of localized political divisions, but they expected
their legislators to transcend the particularities of colonial politics when imperial policy
encroached on local liberties.18 Rhode Island’s gubernatorial and legislative elections, in
other words, “reflected only local concerns, not those which might be called colonial or
American.”19 Even as they hurled abuse at each other in pamphlets and newspapers, “the
Ward and Hopkins factions began to develop an overarching consensus on imperial affairs
that they lacked on internal affairs.”20 This remarkable ability to set aside local partisanship
in the name of a unified extra-colonial policy would be the defining characteristic of Rhode
Island as it confronted unexpected changes in British colonial policy in the 1760s.
Rhode Island’s unique coupling of local factionalism and broader unity suggests a
preliminary motivation for Hopkins’ decision to publish Colonies Examined anonymously
and under “Authority.” As Hopkins wrote Colonies Examined in November of 1764,
James N. Arnold, ed., “Hopkins-Ward Letters of 1757,” Narragansett Historical Register, IV (18841885), 43. The letter, dated April 12, accuses Hopkins of nepotism and of accepting bribes.
14
Bailyn, Pamphlets, 501.
15
T.W. Bicknell, History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 4 vols. (New York:
American Historical Society, 1920), 717.
16
For a breakdown of who held the Governorship at what times between 1755 and 1765, see Foster’s Appendix Z, 255.
17
Quoted in David S. Lovejoy, The Rights of Colonies Examined (Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial
Foundation, 1974), 29.
18
Ibid., 3.
19
Ibid., 2.
20
William G. McLoughlin, Rhode Island: A Bicentennial History (New York: Norton & Company, 1978),
82.
13
Published By Authority
5
he was nearing the twenty-third month of his third period21 as governor, and no doubt
recognized that the elections of early 1765 might well remove him from office, as they had
before in 1757 and 1762. (Samuel Ward would, in fact, regain the governorship in 1765.)
Hopkins was, in short, well accustomed by 1764 to the volatility of Rhode Island politics
and to the impermanence of his own office. By publishing his tract anonymously and under
“Authority,” Hopkins ensured that his arguments would not be tied to his own ephemeral
position – or worse, to the name of an incumbent politician who had been voted out of
office – but would instead speak on behalf of the entire colonial government. And crucially,
the political consensus forged around non-local issues like imperial taxation meant that
Hopkins could honestly presume to speak on behalf of both major political factions in
writing Colonies Examined. The authority referenced on the pamphlet’s title page was, in
other words, an authentic authority, bestowed on the text by a bipartisan array of Rhode
Island politicians. Rhode Island’s political factionalism, and the consequent instability of
the governor’s office, thus provided Hopkins with a motivation to publish anonymously,
while the colony-wide consensus around Hopkins’ extra-colonial arguments gave him
a justification to publish under “Authority.” A fuller explanation of Hopkins’ authorial
decision, however, requires a discussion of the sweeping changes in British colonial policy
that occurred in the 1760s.
Stephen Hopkins found himself at the helm of Rhode Island colony during a
moment of profound economic and political turmoil. For over a century, Rhode Island
had benefited from a system of “benign neglect” that essentially created “an experiment
in self-government…with little interference from the mother country.”22 Rhode Islanders
were proud and fiercely protective of their founding charter, which guaranteed them the
same rights and liberties “as if they, and every of them, were borne within the realme
of England.”23 The wide berth granted to Rhode Island was particularly profitable in the
area of commerce, and by 1760 the colony had developed a formidable—and decidedly
illicit—trade regime. In particular, Rhode Island merchants practiced a studied ignorance
of the Molasses Act of 1733, British enforcement of which had been “so lax and lenient”
that traders “felt free to follow their own self-interest in the matter.”24 With England’s
I use the word “period” rather than “term” to emphasize that Hopkins had already been elected and
removed from the governorship twice, and then elected again, when he wrote Colonies Examined. Some of
his previous “periods” as governor included multiple terms.
22
Lovejoy, 5.
23
The Charter of the Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode Island, John Russell Bartlett,
ed., Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England (Providence, 1857),
5.
24
McLoughlin, 85.
21
6
Wilcox
tacit approval, the Rhode Island sugar trade ballooned, and by the time Hopkins, who had
himself invested heavily in the sugar trade,25 became governor, “trade was the principal
source of Rhode Island’s livelihood, and molasses was the staple of that trade.”26
The centrality of illicit commerce to Rhode Island’s wealth meant that Rhode
Islanders responded angrily to the British Ministry’s 1763 announcement that “suppression
of the clandestine and prohibited trade … and the improvement of the revenue” would
become its chief priorities.27 The sudden imposition of duties that had been long ignored
amounted, in the eyes of colonial merchants, to a “reckless disturbance of a perfectly good
economic system.”28 And because Rhode Island was uniquely vulnerable to fluctuations
in the sugar trade, the colony “stood to be the most adversely affected by this change in
imperial policy.”29 In protest, Stephen Hopkins took up his pen and advocated against the
taxes in a two-part newspaper article entitled “An Essay on the Trade of the Northern
Colonies.”30 The article appeared in the Providence Gazette, a newspaper founded in 1762
under the editorship of William Goddard, an ally of Hopkins, who generally used his
printing press as a weapon with which to attack Samuel Ward. In his essay, Hopkins focused
on the specific economic implications of the Molasses Act on Rhode Island commerce.
The Act, he argued, amounted “in effect, to a Prohibition which hath never in any Degree
increased the Royal Revenue.”31 Hopkins presented statistics describing the major trends in
Rhode Island’s commercial activity over the past decade, and proposed, as a compromise,
a duty of one half penny per gallon—a tax that Hopkins concluded would have been
“cheerfully paid by the merchants.”32 Conspicuously absent from Hopkins’ “Essay on
the Trade,” however, is any discussion of parliamentary supremacy, the constitutionality
of taxation, or colonial unification—issues that would play a prominent role in Colonies
Examined. Instead, “Essay on the Trade” functioned merely as a statement of an economic
grievance, largely particular to Rhode Island, which Hopkins hoped that Parliament would
redress. Parliament’s fundamental authority to regulate colonial trade, meanwhile, went
unquestioned.
Foster, 99.
Frederick Barnays Weiner, “Rhode Island Merchants and the Sugar Act,” New England Quarterly, 3(July
1930), 465.
27
Bartlett, ed., Records … Rhode Island, 375.
28
McLoughlin, 85. Confusingly, the re-imposition of the 1733 Molasses Act is sometimes referred to as the
1764 Sugar Act. For simplicity, I refer to the Molasses Act throughout.
29
Campbell, 11.
30
Providence Gazette, January 14 and 21, 1764.
31
Providence Gazette, January 21, 1764.
32
Ibid.
25
26
Published By Authority
7
In spite of Rhode Island’s protestations, however, the Molasses Act was renewed
in April of 1764 and a new period of strict commerce regulation was marked by the arrival
of two imperial warships in Rhode Island’s harbors.33 Frustration over the new sugar duty
was quickly overshadowed, however, by ominous reports from England of an impending
stamp tax. Under Hopkins’ leadership, the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to form a
committee that would decide upon measures “… to procure repeal of the Sugar Act ... and
prevent the levying of a stamp duty … and generally for the prevention of all such taxes,
duties, or impositions … which may be inconsistent with their rights and privileges as
British subjects.”34
Hopkins’ emphasis on defending the “rights and privileges as British subjects”
suggests a shift in rhetoric that would find its full expression in Colonies Examined. Mere
economic grievances were no longer the focus of Hopkins’ anger; instead, the looming
threat of the Stamp Act forced Hopkins to consider more fundamental questions of justice,
of constitutionality, and of parliamentary supremacy. Indeed, this change in argumentative
approach was reflected broadly across the colonies35 – most notably in James Otis’ highly
influential pamphlet The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, which
vociferously attacked the Sugar Act and Stamp Act as not merely economically detrimental
but as violations of “the fundamental principles of law.”36 By September of 1764, Hopkins
was beginning to draft his own arguments against the Stamp Act, rooted in the same type
of rhetoric that Otis had applied from Boston. England’s new colonial policy, he would
soon declare, constituted a “manifest violation of long-enjoyed rights” provided by Rhode
Island’s founding charter.37 But because this new discourse—centered on rights rather than
economics—applied equally to all the colonies, and because the Stamp Act threatened
to impose a severe financial burden on a considerably larger group than sugar merchants
alone, Hopkins found that his audience for anti-British arguments had suddenly expanded.
Unlike his “Essay on the Trade,” which had been written essentially from the standpoint of
a Rhode Island merchant attempting to persuade the British Ministry that its policies were
illogical, Hopkins’ contribution to anti-Stamp Act literature would need to speak to other
colonies as much as it spoke to England.
The duty imposed by the Act, however, was lowered to one half of the original 1733 rate – still considerably
higher than Hopkins’ proposed rate of one half penny.
34
Bartlett, ed., Records … Rhode Island, 403.
35
Campbell, 22.
36
Reprinted in Charles F. Mullett, ed., “Some Political Writings of James Otis,” University of Missouri
Studies, 4(July 1929), 37 – 101.
37
Bailyn, Pamphlets, 511.
33
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When Stephen Hopkins made the decision to publish his Colonies Examined under
“Authority,” he invoked a long legacy of government-approved publishing that had its
roots in late seventeenth-century newspaper printing. Beginning in the 1690s, royally
appointed governors in the colonies were authorized by the Crown to censor and control the
printing and distribution of political news.38 Colonial governments exercised that authority
enthusiastically, as a Boston publisher learned in 1690 when he issued a three-page journal
titled Publick Occurrences. Within four days, the Massachusetts governor had condemned
the document for having been published “without the least Privity or Countenance of
Authority.”39 It was nearly fifteen years before another newspaper was published in colonial
America, and the first to survive its infancy carried the legend “Published by Authority” on
its banner.40 This was, Jeffrey Pasley has observed, “both a seal of approval and a general
truth” since the paper’s publisher, Boston’s postmaster, “allowed officials to vet each issue
before publication.”41 The imprimatur “Published by Authority,” then, had its roots in the
very earliest attempts at freedom of the press in colonial America, and grew to indicate the
very literal approval of a colonial government, which was given broad powers to decide
what was and was not worthy of print.
In the early eighteenth century, however, colonial politicians began to see a relatively
free press as a potential benefit, and the practice of requiring all printed material to be
“Published by Authority” began to wane. By the 1720s royal governors in the colonies
had largely abandoned their efforts to authorize every publication..42 Instead, a selective
freedom of the press emerged, wherein colonial printers could freely criticize the British
monarchy, though criticisms aimed closer to home typically still resulted in punishment.43
In the meantime, the imprimatur “Published by Authority” began to mark official
government documents, rather than simply articles and essays that the colonial government
had deemed worthy of public consumption. By the mid-18th century, “Published by
Authority” appeared with increasing frequency on legislative records, court decisions, and
38
Richard D. Brown, “The Shifting Freedoms of the Press in the Eighteenth Century” in Hugh Amory and
David Hall, eds., A History of The Book in America: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), 367.
39
Clyde Augustus Duniway, The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906), 68-69. Italics mine.
40
I refer here to the Boston News-Letter.
41
Jeffrey L. Pasley, The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 30. James Franklin’s New England Courant, for
example. omitted “Published by Authority” from its masthead when it was first published in 1721.
42
Brown, 386.
43
Pasley, 32.
Published By Authority
9
public notices, but rarely on news or editorial print.44 Printers who earned the right to print
government documents under “Authority” acquired “a substantial source of income”—
and typically protected that privilege by refraining from printing anything that might be
read as controversial by the colonial power structure.45 By the 1760s, then, “Published by
Authority” had come to denote not simply a publication that had passed the scrutiny of the
public censors, but a document that was truly an intellectual, or administrative, product of
the colonial government.
In mid-November, 1764, Stephen Hopkins presented his Colonies Examined to the
Rhode Island General Assembly. After deliberating, the Assembly ordered the pamphlet
printed “in behalf of the Governor and Company of this Colony,” and then went further,
instructing Rhode Island’s trade agent to carry the pamphlet to London and have it
reprinted there. Throughout the process, the Assembly concluded, the agent should work
“in conjunction with the other [colonies’] agents, as they shall think will be most for the
advantage of the colonies.”46 And so it was that Colonies Examined came to be published
under “Authority.” By gaining the approval of the General Assembly to print his pamphlet
as a state document, Hopkins gave it an aura of official objectivity that could not have
been achieved under the name of an individual. By the mid-18th century “Published by
Authority” had come to designate documents that were the official products of government
work – and that represented the government’s unified perspective on an issue. Hopkins’
unique position as the governor of a colony in which the consensus view was one of fierce
anti-British sentiment afforded him the unusual ability to back his arguments with the
official seal of approval of the colonial government.
Marshalling that authority behind his own writing served an important purpose for
Hopkins, as he hoped that Colonies Examined would resonate not just within Rhode Island,
but throughout the colonies and across the Atlantic. After all, Hopkins, who had been an
early supporter of colonial cooperation during the 1754 Albany Conference, saw quite
clearly that an effective opposition to the Stamp Act would require a powerful coalition of
colonies. Publishing under “Authority” permitted Hopkins to speak to other colonies on
behalf of an entire, unified Rhode Island. Hopkins’ rhetoric in Colonies Examined reinforced
his emphasis on colonial cooperation, and contrasted starkly with his language in “An
Essay on the Trade.” Whereas “An Essay on the Trade” grounded itself in the interests of
44
I base this observation on a wide-ranging, though by no means exhaustive, examination of documents
featuring the term “Published by Authority” from the 18th century. As late as the mid-20th century, the seal
“Published by Authority” continued to be a common feature of public documents in several states.
45
Bernard A. Weisberger, The American Newspaperman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 12.
46
Bartlett, ed., Records … Rhode Island, 403.
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Rhode Islanders, or of northern colonists, Colonies Examined repeatedly invoked the rights
of “Americans.” “Surely if the colonies had been fully heard [before the imposition of the
recent duties],” Hopkins argued, “the liberties and properties of the Americans would not
have been so much disregarded.”47 Hopkins’ rhetorical style also reinforced the sense that
it had been written not by an individual, but by a collective and authoritative body. Hopkins
consistently speaks as “we” or “us,” often in the impersonal tone of an objective historian
recounting well-known facts. “Permit us,” Hopkins writes at one point, “to examine what
hath generally been the condition of colonies with respect to freedom.”48 His concluding
paragraphs abandon the pamphlet’s objective tone, but retain a sense of inter-colonial unity
as Hopkins crafts a paean to the earliest colonists:
We finally beg leave to assert that the first planters of these colonies were pious
Christians, were faithful subjects, who, with a fortitude and perseverance little
known and less considered, settled these wild countries, by God’s goodness
and their own amazing labors.49
Hopkins’ rhetoric thus had the dual effect of invoking a sense of unity among the colonies
and of creating the impression that he was speaking on behalf of a collective, unified entity.
Hopkins’ romantic portrayal of the early history of America had the additional effect of
encouraging the sympathies in readers from other colonies. As word of Colonies Examined
spread, it began to sell in Boston and New York, where it was advertised as “Just Published
in Providence—The Rights of Colonies Examined—Published by Authority.”50 The total
absence of authorial ascription in advertisements outside of Rhode Island suggests that
Colonies Examined was, in fact, received precisely as Hopkins had hoped – namely, as a
product of government authority rather than of individual protest.
It is also indicative of the effectiveness of publishing under “Authority” that the
main rebuttal to Hopkins’ pamphlet sought to characterize Colonies Examined not as a state
document but as the product of an incompetent, uneducated politician. The rebuttal, written
by Martin Howard Jr. but published anonymously under the title A Letter from A Gentleman
at Halifax to his Friend in Rhode-Island, operated under the pretense of being a letter from
an informed citizen in Nova Scotia. In reality, Howard was a resident of Newport, but by
imitating a far-off loyalist who nonetheless knew Hopkins’ identity, Hopkins sought to
47
Bailyn, Pamphlets, 520. Emphasis Hopkins’.
Hopkins, 509. I am sensitive to the fact that Hopkins may have been employing the royal we, but Hopkins’
uses of “we” and “us” are ambiguous. At times they seem clearly to refer to a collective body of speakers, at
other times they seem to invoke Hopkins alone.
49
Ibid., 522.
50
The Boston Post-Boy, December 31, 1764.
48
Published By Authority
11
undermine the veil of anonymity that strengthened Hopkins’ position.51 Howard began
by criticizing the grammar of “Mr. H-p---s, your governor,” whom he claimed “does
not know a noun substantive from an adjective…in his profoundly stupid ignorance.”52
Poking fun of Hopkins’ rural upbringing, Howard declared Hopkins a “ragged country
fellow” who hardly deserved the “honor” of a governorship.53 Clearly Howard recognized
the persuasive force of a document published by the colonial government, and sought to
diminish its impact by maligning its author as unauthoritative. Other portions of Letter
from a Gentleman challenged Hopkins’ representativeness of “the general temper and
conduct of the Americans,” and wondered aloud how such “libel” could be “contained in
a pamphlet published by authority.”54 “However false and scandalous it may be,” Howard
wrote revealingly, a pamphlet published by authority would have an influence that “can
never be effaced.”55 Martin Howard’s response to Hopkins thus clearly illustrates that, by
writing with the authority of Rhode Island, rather than merely the authority of an individual
Rhode Islander, Hopkins made a more compelling appeal to other colonies that American
rights as a whole were being infringed upon.
Furthermore, by printing under “Authority” Hopkins channeled the prevailing
understanding of the role of the press as a unifying force for the public against the
overarching powers of a corrupt executive in England. “Colonial Americans,” observes
Richard Buel, viewed the press … as an instrument by which the mass of the people might
seek to compensate for some of the disadvantages they labored under in their struggle
with the executive. Specifically it offered a remedy for the people’s most chronic ailment:
disunity.56
By presenting an argument to the colonies on behalf of a unified Rhode Island,
Hopkins reinforced the ethos of unity that underlay the boom in political pamphleteering
51
Throughout this paper, I have presented Rhode Island as a colony that agreed, above all, on the egregiousness
of British taxation policy. Howard, a local judge and minor politician in Newport, appears initially to be an
exception to that consensus, but his biography ultimately evidences the strength of Rhode Island’s antiCrown sentiment. Howard’s small group of Newport loyalists, often referred to as the “contaminated knot”
or “Newport junta” by Rhode Islanders, was so widely despised that after the publication of Letter from a
Gentleman their effigies were burned in Newport. The next day, Howard and his colleagues fled Rhode Island
for England, never to return. See Bailyn, Pamphlets, 530.
52
Howard, 527.
53
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 11.
54
Howard, 533, 542. Emphasis Howard’s. It apparently did not occur to Howard that it would be strange for
a writer from Halifax to claim to better represent the “general temper” of Americans.
55
Ibid., 542.
56
Richard Buel, “Freedom of the Press in Revolutionary America: The Evolution of Libertarianism, 1760
– 1820” in Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds., The Press and the American Revolution (Worcester:
American Antiquarian Society, 1980), 72.
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that accompanied the American Revolution. Indeed, Hopkins’ very decision to publish
Colonies Examined as a pamphlet, rather than as a newspaper article in the partisan
Providence Gazette, bespoke a desire for a format that would demonstrate unity. The press,
Hopkins realized, was capable of cultivating a sense of unity in different types of groups.
Typically, Hopkins used the Providence Gazette to encourage unity in his own political
faction. In this case, however, given the particulars of his argument and the broad scope
of his audience, a pamphlet offered a medium that fostered unity not only among Rhode
Islanders, but throughout the colonies. In many ways then, Hopkins’ decision to publish
anonymously and under “Authority” was in keeping with an intellectual context that
emphasized unity and a political context that offered Hopkins only an impermanent and
partial authority.
This paper contributes to a movement in studies of authorship that seeks broader,
more nuanced understandings of the historical motivations behind anonymous authorship.
Traditionally, historians have seen anonymity as a refuge from harm or embarrassment,
particularly for authors of controversial political texts. Archer Taylor and Frederic Mother
articulated this viewpoint in 1951, observing that “Very practical considerations touching
life and limb have guided many who wrote…disputed political texts. A disguise saved
them from being drawn into controversy or protected them from physical danger.”57
Considering anonymity in seventeenth-century Germany, Martin Muslow more recently
noted that “it was frequent practice to publish polemical, heterodox, or somewhat explosive
material anonymously or pseudonymously.”58 In such a context, those who “unmasked
radical authors” became “dangerous persecutors.”59 It is not surprising, then, that “the
most familiar anonymous texts of the Enlightenment are those that put their authors at
risk of persecution, whether for libel, sedition, immorality, or irreligion.”60 Meanwhile,
historians of female authorship have traditionally viewed female anonymous authorship
as a “defensive mechanism” against societies trained to expect male authority.61 Yet these
perceptions of anonymity as a purely defensive means by which an author can write
without fear have been challenged, particularly by scholars like Robert Griffen who have
Archer Taylor and Fredric J. Mosher. The Bibliographical History of Anonyma and Pseudonyma (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1951), 82.
58
Martin Muslow, “Practices of Unmasking: Polyhistors, Correspondence, and the Birth of Dictionaries of
Pseudonymity in Seventeenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67:2 (April 2006), 220.
59
Ibid., 243.
60
Mary Terrall, “The Uses of Anonymity in the Age of Reason” in Giulio Biogioli and Peter Galison eds.,
Scientific Authorship, Credit and Intellectual Property in Science (New York: Taylor & Francis Books, 2003),
92.
61
Margaret J. M. Ezell. “Reading Pseudonyms in Seventeenth-Century English Coterie Literature,” Essays
in Literature 21(Spring 1994), 23. Ezell criticizes this traditional view, finding it “static” and “transhistorical.”
57
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13
realized that “the phenomenon of anonymity itself as a centuries-long cultural practice” has
not been analyzed satisfyingly on a broad scale.62 Echoing the arguments of many of his
colleagues, Griffin has warned historians “not to take anonymity as a static practice with a
known and familiar meaning, but to historicize it properly in each case.”63
With that methodology in mind, a number of historians have identified instances
in which anonymous authorship functions not merely as a defense mechanism, but rather
as a tool by which authors establish a greater authority than would have been possible
in publishing under a single name. Mary Terrall, for example, has examined “the uses
of anonymity in the Age of Reason” and has found that “institutions and individuals, in
fact, manipulated authorial invisibility for a variety of purposes.”64 And though anonymity,
Terrall continues,
often correlated with vulnerability on the part of the author, this was by no
means always the case. Writers chose to keep their identities secret for a variety
of reasons related to other aspects of their public status. Ironically enough,
anonymity could become a resource for making and defending reputation.65
Though Terrall goes on to discuss the use of anonymity as a tool for establishing scientific
authority, she could just as easily have been describing Hopkins’ motives in publishing
Colonies Examined anonymously and by “Authority.” As the governor of Rhode Island
colony, Hopkins was not a vulnerable writer resisting unfavorable social norms, nor did
his arguments place him in immediate physical danger. To the contrary, his arguments
were so widely accepted that Hopkins’ principal rival pamphleteer, Martin Howard Jr., fled
the colony for fear of his own safety. Yet, in spite of his popularity and the considerable
appeal of his pamphlet, anonymity still offered Hopkins a “resource” because it allowed
him to transcend his “public status” and link his argument to a broader body politic. As
the governor of Rhode Island, Hopkins held certain authority—but being published under
“Authority” made Colonies Examined the voice of the Rhode Island government, an
Griffin, 883.
Ibid. Current historiographical debates on authorship have their roots in Michel Foucault’s influential
(though now largely discredited) essay “What is an Author?” See Michel Foucault, “What is an Author”
in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald Bouchard (Cornell
UP, 1977), 113-38. For more recent examples of scholars who have sought nuanced and localized
historicizations of authorship, see Roger Chartier, “Foucault’s Chiasmus. Authorship between Science and
Literature in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Biagioli and Galison eds., Scientific Authorship,
Credit and Intellectual Property in Science (2003), pp. 13-31. See also Martha Woodmansee, “The Genius
and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the Author,” Eighteenth-Century
Studies 17 (1984), 425-48. Finally see, more broadly, Harold Love, Attributing Authorship (Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
64
Terrall, 91.
65
Ibid., 92.
62
63
Wilcox
14
authority that no individual could hope to rival. Stephen Hopkins’ Colonies Examined
thus demonstrates the importance of properly historicizing individual cases of anonymous
authorship, and reveals the nuanced motivations, far beyond mere fear, that encouraged
authors like Hopkins to pursue anonymity.
This essay has examined a highly unusual authorial decision in colonial America,
and has sought to explain that decision by situating it in the precise political, intellectual,
and publishing contexts in which it was made. Stephen Hopkins, above all, sought
anonymity and the authority of the state as a remedy for the impermanence of his own
political position. But the ideological content of his argument, and the need for colonial
unity in the face of the Stamp Act, added to the importance of speaking on behalf of Rhode
Island colony rather than simply as its occasional governor. Furthermore, by publishing
under “Authority,” Hopkins contributed to a discourse that increasingly saw value in
colonial unity, since his pamphlet appeared as an official document of Rhode Island colony
but repeatedly invoked the interests of Americans, rather than simply Rhode Islanders.
Finally, by publishing his argument as an independent pamphlet, rather than in the partisan
Providence Gazette that typically housed Hopkins’ writing, Hopkins sought to separate
himself from the factionalism that dominated Rhode Island politics and speak instead
to the “stubborn, pugnacious, and cocksure” assertions of charter rights that unified all
Rhode Islanders.66 In doing so, Hopkins made use of anonymity in a way that was far from
defensive. Instead, anonymity allowed Hopkins to transcend individual authority and attain
a more compelling, permanent, and convincing authorial representation.
66
McLoughlin, 84.
Published By Authority
15
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