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The Protester (periodical)

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


The Protester
Masthead reading “THE PROTESTER. On Behalf of the People.” dated 2 June 1753
EditorJames Ralph[1]
CategoriesPolitics
FrequencyWeekly
PublisherJ. Bouquet
First issue2 June 1753[2][3]
Final issue10 November 1753[1][3]
CountryKingdom of Great Britain
Based inLondon (Paternoster Row)[4]
LanguageEnglish

Search The Protester (periodical) on Amazon.

The Protester was a short-lived British political weekly published in 1753.[5][3][1] It was associated with the Bedford Whigs and took a critical stance towards the Pelham ministry.[6] Political writer James Ralph served as editor and principal contributor under the pseudonym “Issachar Barebone, one of the People.”[1][7]

The title is sometimes misspelled “The Protestor” in later secondary literature; contemporary issues and library/union-catalog records consistently use “The Protester.”[8]

History

Launch and publication

The Protester ran weekly from 2 June to 10 November 1753, printed for J. Bouquet in Paternoster Row.[2][1][3] Edited by James Ralph, the essays appeared under his pseudonym “Issachar Barebone,” and the opening number called for an “intelligent and disinterested opposition.”[1][9] Funding came from an opposition circle headed by the Duke of Cumberland and including MP and Jamaican planter William Beckford and the 4th Duke of Bedford.[9] The run was numbered Nos. I–XXIV, issued as a sheet-and-a-half folio, and later reprinted in one octavo volume; it also campaigned against the Jewish Naturalization Act within Bedford-Whig politics.[1][6]

Background and legal precautions

Ahead of publication, when he first contracted to write the paper, Ralph asked whether he would be “secur’d and protected against all law prosecution” and was assured he would be “thoroughly protected … by those who would own him in both Houses”.[10][11] On 8 May 1753 George Bubb Dodington professed to have suggested an annual payment for Ralph to Lord Barnard;[11] before the first issue appeared, Henry Pelham declined to pension Ralph.[12]

Ralph’s caution had roots in 1749: on 11 May 1749, while working on The Remembrancer, he was taken into custody over a published report of a House of Commons debate and then discharged.[13] In November 1749 the paper was silenced and its printer “taken up for his paper”, after which Ralph withdrew from London for a time under Dodington’s protection.[11][14]

Editorial programme

The opening number (No. 1, 2 June 1753) posed a Hobbesian question, asking whether the polity resembled the frontispiece of Leviathan—“a community united under and directed by one superior intelligence”—or “a shapeless, helpless, heartless body”.[15] In its early numbers the paper set out a theory of opposition: popular interposition should be exercised periodically to preserve constitutional rights even without immediate abuses; one issue declared that “a Spirit of Opposition has been the Guardian Spirit of our Constitution, from the first Hour of its Establishment.”[16][17] It treated liberty of the press as a fundamental privilege and linked regulation of the stage to the same principle, urged vigilance by “every Lover of Truth and Liberty,” and opposed a peacetime standing army in favour of a militia.[18]

The second issue (No. 2, 9 June 1753) framed “the great disorder of the nation” as “a suppression, if not an extinction, of morality and the shame of doing ill”; a later analysis situates this within a Bedfordite “authoritarian whig” emphasis on hierarchy and discipline as checks on disorder.[19] The paper assigned primary responsibility for constitutional “usurpations” to the Parliament and, in jeremiad fashion, catalogued recurring abuses—press restraints, suspensions of habeas corpus, and the expansion of places and pensions—as signs of decay.[20] As the year wore on it also acknowledged the difficulty of justifying active opposition when “there is no Principle to agitate Mens Minds.”[21][22]

Escalation, negotiations, and closure

As the run progressed, its attacks on the ministry sharpened.[12] By 20 July Henry Pelham wrote to the Duke of Newcastle that Ralph’s attacks “gave [him] not the least concern” and that “the less notice is taken of him the better”.[23]

Pressure to settle the matter was renewed in July,[11] and on 3 November the terms were set for a Treasury pension of £300 per annum with £200 down—arranged via Lord Hartington after an introduction by David Garrick—on condition that Ralph withdraw from political writing; Pelham’s objections were overruled by the Duke of Newcastle.[11][12]

On 10 November the paper closed—“Convinced … that I have … been blowing on a Dead Coal … I … lay down the Bellows.”[12][22] That month Ralph told the Duke of Bedford he feared prosecution, returned £150 of a £200 advance, and had “laid down [his] pen”.[12] Subsequent payments were made at Michaelmas and Lady Day.[11]

Reception and influence

Contemporary Whig papers disparaged the series, while Bedford sympathisers welcomed its attacks on administration policy.[1] Its rhetoric and polemical method anticipate Ralph’s later political pamphleteering.[6]

In an early notice to Bedford, Richard Rigby praised the opening number as “an extremely good preface to a political paper,” wishing success to the “tribe of the Barebones.”[9]

The pseudonym “Issachar Barebone” is first attested in The Protester, where the persona links the name to Praise-God Barebone and Commonwealth-era populism.[24] By August 1753 the name also appeared beyond the paper, for example on a satirical print credited to “Issachar Barebone junr.”[25][26]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Burn 1865, pp. 80–81.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ralph 1753, No. 1 title page.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Crane & Kaye 1927, p. 93.
  4. ↑ Ralph 1753, imprint.
  5. ↑ Ralph 1753, title page.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Okie 1991, p. 157.
  7. ↑ Ralph 1753, No. 1, concluding paragraph.
  8. ↑ Ralph 1753, masthead.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Kenny 1940, p. 226.
  10. ↑ Dodington 1784, p. 218.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 McKinsey 1973, p. 76.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Kenny 1940, p. 227.
  13. ↑ Dodington 1784, p. 79.
  14. ↑ Kenny 1940, p. 225.
  15. ↑ Kinkel 2013, p. 1460.
  16. ↑ McKinsey 1973, p. 72.
  17. ↑ Ralph 1753, No. 3, p=15.
  18. ↑ McKinsey 1973, pp. 72–73.
  19. ↑ Kinkel 2013, p. 1458.
  20. ↑ McKinsey 1973, p. 74.
  21. ↑ Ralph 1753, No. 19, p=109.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 McKinsey 1973, p. 75.
  23. ↑ Harris 1993, p. 37.
  24. ↑ Ralph 1753, No. 1, p=9.
  25. ↑ Solomons 1908, p. 218.
  26. ↑ Stephens 1877, No. 3205.

Sources

  • Burn, Jacob Henry (1865). Catalogue of a Collection of Early Newspapers and Essayists, formed by the late John Thomas Hope, Esq., and presented to the Bodleian Library (PDF). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 15 August 2025. Search this book on
  • Harris, Robert (1993). A Patriot Press: National Politics and the London Press in the 1740s. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Search this book on
  • Okie, Laird (1991). Augustan Historical Writing: Historiography in England, 1688–1750. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. p. 157. Search this book on

External links


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