File:A legal mistake or honest men taken for conspirators. (BM 1868,0808.6719).jpg

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Captions

Captions

The Courier (1792-1840)

Summary[edit]

A legal mistake or honest men taken for conspirators.   (Wikidata search (Cirrus search) Wikidata query (SPARQL)  Create new Wikidata item based on this file)
Artist

Print made by: Charles Williams

Published by: S W Fores
Title
A legal mistake or honest men taken for conspirators.
Description
English: An editor's office, with a printing-press (left) at one end of the room. Scott, the Attorney-General, in legal wig and gown, tries to enter through a door (right); he holds a document: 'Prosecution of Paper for Libeling [Parlia]ment'. A well-dressed man (resembling Tierney) pushes him back, trying to close the door upon him, saying: "You can't come in here! No Editor here I assure You dont know the Man! never saw him in my Life! met a Man Yesterday something like him! What do You think I'd turn Informer, Never read a Paper but when there's bloody News from France, Never any body here but from Manchester or Margate [see BMSat 9189] - No Conspirators here No No No if You dont believe me read the Courier". From his pocket hangs a paper: 'Mem. to Skreen my Friend at the expence of my Character'. Under his right foot is a paper: 'Parliamentary Oath to deliver up all Traitor[s] to make known any [C]onspiracy again[st] the State or his Ma[jesty's] Person . . Swear nev[er]. . . '. Close beside him sits the editor (John Parry), interrupted in the act of writing, as he turns to gape with alarm at the opening door. By the door is a placard, its right margin cut off by the edge of the design: 'Rules to be Obser[ved] in this Printing Offic[e] all Spy's and Infor[mers] to be kept at a prope[r] distanc. viz Outside the door------all Scandalous Paragraphs to be faithfully copied by the Compositor wethe agai[nst] Government or Others'. Two prints also hang on the wall: one of 'Buonaparte', a swaggering soldier leaning on an immense sabre, and one of the King torn and suspended upside down from one corner. On the table are papers inscribed 'Essay to Prove the Defence of a Traitor no Treason', with two bundles of documents labelled 'Correspondence with the Convention' and 'Correspondence with Manchester'. On the floor are neatly tied bundles of papers: a sheet of the 'Courier' duly stamped; 'Paragraphs &c against Government'; 'Private and Family Transactions'; and 'French Puffs and Gasconades'. 15 April 1798
Hand-coloured etching
Depicted people Associated with: Napoléon I, Emperor of the French
Date 1798
date QS:P571,+1798-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 252 millimetres
Width: 349 millimetres
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Prints and Drawings
Accession number
1868,0808.6719
Notes

(Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VII, 1942)

On 4 Apr. the Attorney-General brought in a Bill for the regulation of newspapers, it having been found that prosecutions failed on account of difficulty in identifying proprietor, printer, or publisher, instancing the case of the 'Courier', whose printer was not to be found, while the registered proprietor had severed his connexion with the paper more than a year previously. He produced a parcel of papers found in a neutral vessel going to France with information which, if written by one man to another, would have been treasonous (e.g. mentioning the approaching departure of the West India fleet with inadequate convoy [Quoted in the 'Anti-Jacobin', 23 Apr. 1798, p. 187. 'The outward-bound fleet which has been collecting near six weeks, and is allowed to be the most valuable that ever left our ports, is about to sail under the Convoy of two Frigates! How easy would it be for the French to detach two or three sail of the line from Brest, and give our Commerce an irretrievable blow! Surely the Admiralty . . . .']). Tierney defended the editor of the paper ('Courier') which, Pitt said, 'was giving information and advice to the Directory of France'. 'Parl. Hist.' xxxiii. 1415-21. Before 26 Apr. Dundas had received information from France: 'the Courier is regularly brought over, carried first to the Minister of Marine, ... it is then sent to the Central Bureau, and then the paragraphs allowed to be translated into French papers, which are distributed among the coffee houses.' 'Navy Records Soc., Spencer Papers', ii, 1915, pp. 325-6. The 'Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine', Aug. 1798, published a facsimile of the 'Courier' (for 23 Nov. 1797) directed to the 'Ministre de la Marine, à Paris', with the columns containing a report of Moira's speech (see BMSat 9184) inscribed 'à lire' (cf. BMSat 9240). Eight men were arrested in Manchester on 8 Apr. and brought to London, as part of a Committee of United Irishmen, Englishmen, and Scotchmen. 'Lond. Chron.', 14 Apr., 4 May. See BMSats 8500, 9227, 9240, 9345, 9370, 9434, 9522. Listed by Broadley (attributed to I. Cruikshank).
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1868-0808-6719
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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