If the tree of liberty has been watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants, it has also drawn nourishment from the ink of scribblers. Dating from Tom Paine and the Committees of Correspondence, American freedom has owed much to the private pamphleteer who tilts his pen at the machinery of established discourse. By their nature, such writers are a liberating influence; dissent is their vocation. They are beyond the pale of orthodoxy and determined to have their say against it.
It is possible, of course, to cite unsavory one-man publications which have no beneficial effect to recommend them—the normal run of crackpots who produce outside the going circuits of communication and rail at the community which denies them facilities and an audience. The pamphleteer, as here conceived, is of a different breed. He is distinguished precisely by the fact that, although deprived of normal facilities, he does succeed in finding an audience. It is the demand for his services which is striking, which testifies to the fact that orthodoxy has lost touch with its constituents. The pamphleteer fills the gap between what the Establishment thinks people ought to read and what they in fact want to read.
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