Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [106]
The plot emerged from the popular politics of protection for Irish manufactures in the 1780s. 7' A protection bill was massively defeated in Dublin's parliament, and the fury of an outraged patriot press boiled over. "Oh, Ireland!" wailed the Dublin Evening Post. "How are you duped out of liberty in constitution, and freedom in commerce!" Civilization itself had been betrayed. `Are we men, have our intellects been despoiled by our task masters as well as our property?" Tradesmen with English goods were tarred and feathered, and angry apprentices began "houghing" soldiers (cutting their hamstrings), whichwas immediately made a capital offense. The mob broke into Parliament itself. A sympathetic lord mayor delayed responding so long that the nervous administration labeled him "little better than an accomplice."71 The Volunteers Journal whipped up the violence. The morning of the riot, Carey published a caricature showing "Jack Finance" (the chancellor, John Foster) hanging from a gallows, with the rubric that this was the will of Ireland's starving manufacturers. The Commons laughed heartily at the cartoon, but then realized that it looked very like incitement to murder-especially when it was widely reprinted in other papers, getting a far broader circulation (this was standard practice, and the Volunteers Journal was "the most inveterate robber" of all).72 A manhunt was launched. Carey escaped his pursuers once by leaping out of a third-floor window, but he could not elude capture for long, and he inevitably found himself behind bars. Meanwhile, the administration pushed through Parliament a new law regulating the press - the strictest ever proposed in Ireland. The Volunteers Journal responded with another cartoon, this time with the corpse ofJacky Finance lying discarded under the scaffold, too reviled even for burial.73
It seemed that Ireland was descending into rebellion. The Dublin Eve- ningPost-not normally a rabble-rousing organ-issued a chilling political catechism that concluded that the English should be expelled by "two millions of Irishmen in arms." Meanwhile Carey was kept in close confinement for fear a mob might rescue him.There he stayed until mid-May. But when Parliament adjourned the lord mayor suddenly found himself with authority over the prisoner and had Carey freed. No sooner was he out than his paper impugned an alderman whose troops had fired on the crowd, and as "reputed proprietor" Careywas threatened with a charge of high treason. Nowwas the time for a discreet exit. Aweek after the charge was proclaimed, he donned his disguise and slipped away.
Unlike his previous exile, this one was for good. Instead of fomenting a rising at home, Careywould end up becoming the best-known publisher in the new United States of America. There he contributed to a lasting revolution in public culture. For some fortyyears Careywould play a major role in shaping the literary, scientific, and political discourse ofAmerica. In particular, he was instrumental in fostering a civility that defined publishing. It is notorious that for the better part of a century the United States made a virtue of what the British-and eventually the Americans themselves -called piracy. Careywas one of the founders of that practice. As the United States became home to what one historian has called "the world's most prolific book pirates," his firm was the leader. He not only appropriated London books with alacrity, but also produced works in Spanish for the South American market (he had an agent in Gibraltar sending the latest texts), and in German and French too. He reprinted natural history, natural philosophy, and geography, adapting texts and formats forAmerican readers. Among the authors he reproduced were Wollstonecraft, Condorcet, Lavoisier, Goethe, Byron, Edgeworth, Humboldt, Southey, Scott, Say, Hazlitt, the phrenologist Combe, and Mozart. More