Philadelphia's only press, seized

What happened

In 1692 the Quakers of Pennsylvania split. George Keith and his followers, the Keithians, drew up a statement of their position, and William Bradford, the only printer in Philadelphia and a Keithian himself, printed it. The Quaker magistrates answered the way governments do. Rothbard tells it: they arrested Bradford and John McComb, who distributed the pamphlet, for printing unlicensed books without the printer's name on them, confiscated Bradford's press and type, and took away McComb's license as a retailer (CiL, p. 488). The press and the cases of type, the only means of printing in the whole province, were carried off and lodged in Samuel Jennings' house. Bradford was tried that year, argued his own case, and the jury could not agree. He said afterward that he was held until Governor Fletcher freed him in April 1693 and ordered the sheriff to give his tools back. Rothbard's point is that a people who had fled persecution in England were now doing the persecuting, and he calls it the first sign that the Quakers were beginning to abandon the principles of individual liberty for the perquisites of power. Bradford got his press back and took it to New York.