John Reeves (activist)

John Reeves (20 November 1752 – 7 August 1829), was a legal historian, civil servant, British magistrate, conservative activist, and the first Chief Justice of Newfoundland. In 1792 he founded the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, for the purpose suppressing the "seditious publications" authored by British supporters the French Revolution—most famously, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Because of his counter-revolutionary actions he was regarded by many of his contemporaries as "the saviour of the British state"; in the years after his death, he was warmly remembered as the saviour of ultra-Toryism.

Reeves was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford, being elected in 1778 as a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford. In 1779 he was called to the bar and held the public offices counsel to the Royal Mint; law clerk to the Board of Trade; and superintendent of Aliens. He also served two terms as Chief Justice of Newfoundland and Labrador (in the summers of 1791 and 1792) until returning to England to accept the post of (Receiver of Public Offices)—paymaster to the stipendiary magistrates that had been created under the Middlesex Justices Act of 1792. He was also elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1789 and the next year was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1793 he was appointed as high steward of the Manor and Liberty of Savoy and the King's Printer in 1800.

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