The Watchman was a short-lived periodical established and edited by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796. The first number was promised for 5 February 1796 but actually appeared on 1 March. Published by Coleridge himself, it was printed at Bristol by Nathaniel Biggs,[1] and appeared every eight days to avoid tax.[2] Publication ceased with the tenth number (published 13 May 1796).[3] The publication contained essays, poems, news stories, reports on Parliamentary debates, and book reviews.[4]
The volumes all contain explicitly political material such as the ‘Introductory Essay’, (a history of ‘the diffusion of truth’); the ‘Essay on Fasts’, (attacking the alliance of church and state power); two anti-Godwinian items, ‘Modern Patriotism’ and ‘To Gaius Gracchus’; ‘To the Editor of the Watchman’ (reporting the trials of friends of freedom John Gale Jones and John Binns); and an extract from Coleridge’s lecture ‘On the Slave Trade’.[5] [6]