Francis Bernard was appointed by King George III as the governor of Massachusetts during the Stamp Act protest. Rather than quell the uprise in Boston, he intensified it with his enforcement of trade regulations and dissolution of the Massachusetts assembly because of their support of the Massachusetts Circular Letter (written by Samuel Adams). This letter protested the taxes being forced upon the colonists. It called for the boycott of British goods and the unification of the colonies to find a constitutional solution for the crises they were facing through Parliamentary tyranny. The content of letters Bernard was sending to England were leaked and revealed he was recommending a reduction in power of the Massachusetts legislature.
Dr. Joseph Warren, using the pseudonym “A true Patriot,” boldly challenged Bernard’s treachery through articles in the Boston Gazette. One article ended thusly: “We never can treat good and patriotic Rulers with too great Reverence – But it is certain that Men totally abandoned to Wickedness, can never merit our Regard, be their Stations ever so high. If such Men are by God appointed, The Devil may be the Lord’s anointed.”
Bernard lashed out. The Governor’s Council pronounced the letter to be insulting and profane. They insisted the author be punished and the newspaper owners Benjamin Edes and John Gill reveal the identity of “A true Patriot.” They refused.
Warren responded with another article to the charge of profanity: “My design was to compare wicked men, and especially wicked magistrates to those enemies of mankind, the devils; and to intimate that the devils themselves might boast of divine authority to seduce and ruin mankind, with as much reason and justice as wicked rulers can pretend to derive from God or from His Word a right to oppress, harass, and enslave their fellow creatures. The beneficent Lord of the universe delights in viewing the happiness of all men. And so far as civil government is of divine institution, it was calculated for the greatest good of the whole community; and whenever it ceases to be of general advantage, it ceases to be of divine appointment, and the magistrates in such a community have no claim to that honor which the Divine Legislator has assigned to magistrates of His election…My design was to compare wicked men, and especially wicked magistrates, to those enemies of mankind, the devils; and to intimate that the devils themselves might boast of divine authority to seduce and ruin mankind, with as much reason and justice
as wicked rulers can pretend to derive from God or from His Word a right to oppress, harass, and enslave their fellow creatures. The beneficent Lord of the universe delights in viewing the happiness of all men. And so far as civil government is of divine institution, it was calculated for the greatest good of the whole community; and whenever it ceases to be of general advantage, it ceases to be of divine appointment, and the magistrates in such a community have no claim to that honor which the Divine
Legislator has assigned to magistrates of His election…I shall, at all times, write my sentiments with freedom, and with decency, too—the rules of which I am not altogether unacquainted with. While the press is open, I shall publish whatever I think conducive to general emolument; when it is suppressed, I shall look upon my country as lost and with a steady fortitude, expect to feel the general shock. — True Patriot.”
The Massachusetts House of Representatives declared that the liberty of the press was a great bulwark of the liberty of the people. When the case against Joseph Warren was introduced to the grand jury, they refused to indict the True Patriot.