Now order to inspire terror into the community, and strengthen the ministers of the day. The evil of violent language and blasphemous publications, however, admits of an easy remedy. We have laws sufficiently strong against sedition and tumult; it is only necessary to put them in force. Instead of this, two other methods have been taken; both, in my mind, injudicious, and one extremely dangerous. The first is the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. this is a very proper precaution, when a conspiracy is carried on by a few principal leaders whose imprisonment puts an end to the plot. But it is no remedy at all, when the evil consists in the discontent of some thousands of unemployed manufacturers. Uno avulso non deficit alter the subalterns, in conducting these popular humours, are fully as able and audacious as the chiefs. The other remedy consists in new laws, restraining the right of speaking and writing. Acts of this kind interpose obstacles to public meetings and public newspapers, and serve to discountenance, for a time, by the authority of Parliament, the abuses of liberty which have prevailed. But : U it is manifest, that it is impossible to prevent sedition and blasphemy, unless all freedom of speech and the liberty of the press be extinguished. It is impossible to provide before-hand, by act of Parliament, that all speeches and writings shall keep within the bounds of loyalty and moderation. Therefore, the restraining laws are, except for the moment, inefficient. They are also pernicious; for they admit a principle, which, if pushed to its full extent, authorises a censorship of the press. They are, therefore, in direct opposition to the maxims of the Revolution, which allowed any man to do freely, that which in itself was harmless. Even the Riot Act, which is justly reckoned a law of great severity, imposes no penalty or restraint, except upon persons who are in the actual commission of a riot. Those, indeed, who have lived in latter times, have reason to praise the moderation of the government, which preserved itself from a Pretender and his party, with so little expense to public liberty. It would seem, that we have now gone as far as it is possible to go safely upon the system of restraint. If blasphemy and sedition again alarm the timid, they must be suppressed by the ordinary laws: otherwise we must either admit a censorship, or surrender the present mode of trial by jury. It is to be hoped, that, rather than adopt either of these tyrannical expedients, England would impeach the minister, who gave such atrocious advice to his sovereign. 292 CHAP. XXXI. LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild, free, and humane government; it is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and happy councils have purchased us; liberty, which is the nurse of all great wits. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, and slavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts now more excited to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and argue freely, according to conscience, above all liberties. MILTON. SOME of the foregoing observations may seem to lead to a conclusion that the intense light thrown upon all public affairs, tends rather to increase the irritability, and diminish the power, than to augment the strength and improve the vision, of our organs of sight. Allowing, however the abatement which must be made for the evils produced by an overstraining of attention to political matters, we shall yet find enough of good left to make us cherish the liberty of the press, as the guardian and guide of all other liberties. Before I proceed to give a short view of some of the advantages of the press, let us again recall to our minds, that it is nonsense to talk of its liberty without its licentiousness. Every attempt to curb its licentiousness, otherwise than by the application of law, after an offence committed, must likewise restrain its liberty. To do one without the other, were as difficult as to provide that the sun should bring our flowers and fruits to perfection, but never scorch our faces. Many have a mistaken notion of what the press is. They suppose it to be a regular independent power, like the Crown, or the House of Commons. The press does nothing more than afford a means of expressing, in good and able language, the opinions of large classes |