MDMD4: Those Damnable Whig Coffee-Houses

[Dave Monroe]

"'Damme, Sir,-- a Book?  Close it up immediately.'
   "''Tis the Holy Bible, Sir.'
   "'No matter, 'tis Print,-- Print causes Civil Unrest,-- Civil Unrest in 
any Ship at Sea is intolerable.  Coffee as well.  Where are newspapers 
found?  In those damnable Whig Coffee-Houses.  Eh?  A Potion stimulating 
rebellion and immoderate desires.'"  (M&D, Ch. 6, p. 48)

"freshly infus'd Coffee flows ev'ryplace, borne about thro' Rooms front and 
back" (M&D, Ch. 1, p. 6)

To continue, keeping in mind, again, coffee 'n' politics, not to mention the 
press, from, as kai (who I hope is convalescing well, or well enough, at any 
rate) mentioned eralier, Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of 
the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (trans. 
Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989 
[1962]), Ch. 3, "Political Functions of the Public Sphere," Sec. 8, "The 
Model Case of British Development," pp. 57-67 ...

"The elimination of the institution of censorship marked a new stage in the 
development of the public sphere.  It made the influx of rational-critical 
arguments into the press possible and allowed the latter to evolve into an 
instrument with whose aid political decisiosn could be brought before the 
new forum of the public." (p. 58)

"Already in the 1670s the government had found itself compelled to issue 
proclamations that confronted danmgers bred by the coffee-house 
discuissions.  The coffee houses were considered seedbeds of political 
unrest: 'Men have assumed to themsleves a libert, not only in coffee-houses, 
but in other places and meetings, both public and private, to censure and 
defame the proceedings of the State, by speaking evil of things the 
understand not, and endeavouring to create and nourish an universal 
jealousie and dissatisfaction in the minds of all His Majesties good 
subjects.'  Censorship came to an end with the Locensing Act of 1695; the 
Queen several times admonished the members of Parliament to bring censorship 
back, but in vain.  To be sure, the press continued to be subject to the 
strict Law of Libel and to the restrictions connected with numerous 
privileges of Crown and Parliament.  The stamp tax, enacted in 1712, 
resulted in a temporary setback: the journals printed fewer copies and were 
reduced in volume; some disappeared altogether.  Compared to the press in 
the other European states, however, the British press enjoyed unique 
liberties." (p. 59)

And on Habermas's citation above ...

"Cited after C.S. Emden, The People and the Constitution (Oxford, 1956), 33. 
  Similar proclamations were issued in 1674 and 1675.  Hans Speier's 'The 
Historical Development of Public Opinion,' Social Order and the Risks of War 
(New York, 1952), 323ff. establishes the connection between the coffee 
houses and the beginnings of 'public opinion.'" (p. 262, n. 5)

See also ...

http://www-sdss.fnal.gov:8000/~annis/digirati/habermas.html

Which can be found as well at ...

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wjuNMsJ8_F8:www-sdss.fnal.gov:8000/~annis/digirati/habermas.html+&hl=en

Which brings me to ...

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