Why don’t we keep in with serpents and wolves on this foot? Animals much more innocent and less mischievous to the public than some Governors have proved. A Governor turns rogue, does a thousand things for which a small rogue would have deserved a halter; and because it is difficult if not impracticable to obtain relief against him, therefore it is prudent to keep in with him and join in the roguery; and that on the principle of self-preservation. That is, a Governor does all he can to chain you, and it being difficult to prevent him, it is prudent in you (in order to preserve your liberty) to help him put them on and to rivet them fast. No people in the world have contended for liberty with more boldness and greater success than the Dutch; are more tenacious in retaining it; or more jealous of any attempts upon it; yet in their plantations they seem to be lost to all the sense of it, and a fellow that is but one degree removed from an idiot shall, with a full-mouthed “Sacrament, Donder and Blixum!” govern as he pleases, dispose of them and their properties at his discretion, and their magistrates will keep in with him at any rate, and think his favor no mean purchase for the loss of their liberty. There have been Nicholsons, Cornburys, Coots, Barringtons, Edens, Lowthers, Georges, Parks, Douglases, and many more, as very Bashaws as ever were sent out from Constantinople; and there have not been wanting under each of their administrations persons, the dregs and scandals of human nature, who have kept in with them and used their endeavors to enslave their fellow-subjects, and persuaded others to do so.[18] This was political independence with a vengeance. Never before had an American newspaper dared to treat an officer of the crown so. Other periodicals depended on official sanction to keep them going, or at least never strayed too far from the line laid down for them. The _Journal_ had no sanction and toed no line. It was, depending on one’s political sympathies, either an outrageous innovation or else simply an unfamiliar experiment. In either case it needed to be legitimized in the eyes of its readers. VII. Freedom of the Press That was why Alexander, as editor, pushed the issue of freedom of the press so hard. New Yorkers who had been unaware of that freedom would come upon it every time they opened “Zenger’s paper.” Side by side they would find stories about the misdemeanors of the Governor and essays defending and defining a free press, an ingenious interplay of practice and theory, a journalistic dialectic shifting between independent news reporting and the theory that justifies such reporting. Under Alexander’s editing hand the contributors both pilloried their enemy in the executive mansion and claimed the right to do so.