Blackwell Reference Online

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Radical journalist James O'Brien was born in County Longford, Ireland and educated at a progressive school in Lovell Edgeworth and Trinity College, Dublin. After studying law at King's Inns, he removed to England where he was soon drawn into the world of politics. He joined the Radical Reform Association and met the leading radicals of the day, Henry Hunt and William Cobbett . Under the pseudonym Bronterre, he began contributing articles to the Poor Man's Guardian , a popular radical newspaper edited by Henry Hetherington. When Hetherington was imprisoned in the struggle for a free press, O'Brien, who was influenced by the French Revolution , especially the nascent socialist ideas of the Parisian revolutionary Gracchus Babeuf , took over the editorship of the Guardian and began publishing his translations of Babeuf's writings there. He also published an English translation of Philip Buonarotti's account of Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals. Believing that cheap newspapers were a vital weapon in the campaign for political reform and an essential source for the political education of the people, O'Brien also helped Hetherington to produce other unstamped newspapers, including The Destructive and the London Dispatch. In 1837 O'Brien began his own venture: Bronterre's National Reformer , avoiding prosecution by presenting opinion rather than reporting the news. In 1838 ... log in or subscribe to read full text