Trove (permanent dinkus in TT’s left-hand favoured blogs column) is a treasure …
Little, it seems, has changed much since this was written in The Colonial Times, Hobart, Tasmania, onn Thursday 26 March 1857:
The freedom of the Press ! Faugh !What do these men know about the freedom of the press, they will be citizens and slaves (as Mr. Cuffey called them), and because the press will not permit the consummation of their vile ambition they revile and condemn it. They echo the very sentiments of the Premier who admits no press to be moral which condemns his vices, no press to be intelligent which disputes his policy, no press to be honest which will not accept his pay and be subservient to his ends. The freedom of the Press ! It is a matter of some concern to the public just now that that freedom rests on other bases than mob-laudation, and is cognizant of higher principles than the prophesies of
Mahomet.
The Cuffey mentioned in this report is the extraordinary William Cuffay, Leader of London Chartist Movement, forerunner to the Labour Party, who was sentenced to transportation to Tasmania for life; dying in a workhouse in Tasmania in 1869.
Read all about this extraordinary man in 100 Great Black Britons, and Peter Fyer’s Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, and in in Spartacus Educational here
As Rob Walls says: “There should be a monument in Hobart to this man.”
