John Binns (1772–1860), editor, was born in Dublin, Ireland. He moved to London in 1794 and was arrested multiple times for activities associated with his political radicalism. In 1801 Binns immigrated to Pennsylvania and settled in Northumberland with other British political dissenters, including Joseph Priestley and Thomas Cooper. There he established and edited the Republican Argus, 1802–07. In the latter year Binns moved to Philadelphia and established the Democratic Press, a prominent newspaper in state politics that he edited for more than two decades. However, his longstanding, vehement opposition to Andrew Jackson eventually lost him much of his political influence, and he discontinued the publication in 1829. Binns and Benjamin O. Tyler argued publicly in 1818 over the quality and priority of their competing engravings of the Declaration of Independence. Binns served as a Philadelphia alderman, 1822–44. He published a manual for Pennsylvania justices of the peace in 1840 and an autobiographical memoir in 1854. Binns died in Philadelphia (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Binns, Recollections of the Life of John Binns [1854]; Brigham, American Newspapers description begins Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690–1820, 1947, 2 vols. description ends , 2:886, 901; Binns to TJ, 13 Apr. 1804 [DNA: RG 59, MLRPL]; Tyler, Declaration of Independence. A candid statement of Facts, in answer to an unwarrantable denunciation of my publication of the Declaration of American Independence, Made by Mr. John Binns … In his Paper of the 9th and 18th of April, 1818 [Washington, 1818]; Binns, Binns’s Justice. Digest of the Laws and Judicial Decisions of Pennsylvania, touching the authority and duties of Justices of the Peace [1840]; Philadelphia Public Ledger, 18 June 1860).

The unfinished proof of the Binns print of the Declaration of Independence that he sent TJ at this time has not been found. For the final version of the print, see TJ to John Barnes, 23 Mar. 1820, and note.