What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

“ENGLISH LIBERTIES, Or, The free-born Subject’s Inheritance.”

Like the issue of the Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy published the previous day, the May 21, 1774, edition of the Providence Gazette devoted much less space to advertising than in most issues.  News items, especially those concerning the Boston Port Act, accounted for almost all the content, leaving room for six brief advertisements in the final column on the third page and two in the bottom right corner on the last page.  The “Substance of the DEBATES on the BOSTON PORT-BILL” filled the entire front page and spilled over onto the next.  Other news from London, followed by updates from Philadelphia and Boston followed.  Updates from Boston continued on the third page, eventually giving way to coverage of a “Town-Meeting held a Providence, on the 17th Day of May.”  A speech delivered in Parliament in opposition to the Boston Port Act and calling for the “immediate REPEAL OF THE TEA DUTY” comprised most of the final page.  John Carter, the printer, included a brief note about the paucity of advertising in that issue: “To make Room for the interesting Advices in this Day’s Gazette, we are obliged to omit several Advertisements.”

Carter did not choose to omit his own advertisement about publishing “ENGLISH LIBERTIES, Or, The free-born Subject’s Inheritance” by subscription.  For a year and a half, the printer had circulated subscription papers, advertised in the Providence Gazette and other newspapers published in New England, and encouraged colonizers to reserve copies of a book that became even more timely as the imperial crisis intensified.  The Boston Port Act served as an advertisement for the volume, as did the speech warning against its passage and other news that Carter included in the May 21 edition of the Providence Gazette.  Coverage of the recent town meeting in Providence included resolutions that the residents “will heartily join with the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, and the other Colonies, in such Measures as shall be generally agreed on by the Colonies, for the protecting and securing their invaluable Natural Rights and Privileges.”  Furthermore, the resolutions called on the “Committee of Correspondence of this Town … to assure the Town of Boston, that we consider ourselves greatly interested in the present alarming Conduct of the British Parliament towards them.”  They went on to recommend a “Stoppage of all Trade” until the repeal of the Boston Port Act, using commerce as political leverage.

Carter’s advertisement for English Liberties did not merely appear in proximity to all this news.  He very intentionally gave it a privileged position.  It appeared on the final page, immediately after the speech against the Boston Port Act, the news item seamlessly leading into the advertisement for a book that provided justification for colonizers demanding their rights.  Yet its placement on the page had even more significance considering the methods for producing eighteenth-century newspapers.  Like other newspapers, the Providence Gazette consisted of four pages created by printing two pages on each side of a broadsheet and folding it in half.  That meant that printers typically set the type and printed the first and last pages before the second and third pages.  That Carter’s advertisement for English Liberties ran in the bottom right corner of the fourth page indicates that he gave it priority over all other advertisements.  Considering the other news flowing into his printing office, he did not know how much space he might have for advertisements on the second and third pages, so he made sure that his advertisement appeared on the first side of the broadsheet that went to press.  It turned out that he had room for half a column of advertising on the third page, but Carter did not wait to find out whether that would be the case.  Like many other printers, he simultaneously used current events to sell books and pamphlets about political philosophy and he published those items to influence current events.