mankind have been but slowly and gradually received, and so very late, indeed, do some of them come to maturity, that notwithstanding the attorney general tells you that the very question I am now agitating, is most peculiarly for your consideration, as a jury, under our ancient constitution, yet I must remind both you and him, that your jurisdiction to consider and deal with it at all in judgment, is but a year old. When, before that late period, I ventured to maintain this very right of a jury over the question of libel under the same ancient constitution (I do not mean before my lord, for the matter was gone to rest in the courts, at least long before he came to sit where he does): but when, before a noble and reverend magistrate of the most exalted understanding, and of the most uncorrupted integrity, to give effect to it;* I had occasion to maintain it, he treated me, not with disregard, indeed, for of that his nature was incapable; but he put me aside with indulgence, as you do a child while it is lisping its prattle out of season; and if this cause had been tried then instead of now, the defendant must have been instantly convicted on the proof of the publication, whatever you might have thought of his case. Yet, I have lived to see it resolved, by an almost unanimous vote of the whole parliament of England, that I had all along been in the right. If this be not an awful lesson of caution concerning opinions, where are such lessons to be read?

Gentlemen, I have insisted at great length, upon the origin of government being in the consent of the people, and detailed the authorities which you have heard upon the subject, because I consider it to be not only a support, but, indeed, the only foundation of the liberty of the press. If Mr. Burke be right in his principles of government, I admit that the press, in my sense of its freedom, ought not to be free, nor free in any sense at all; and that all addresses to the people upon the subject of government; and all speculations of amendment, of what kind or nature soever are illegal and criminal. For, if the people have, without possible recall, delegated all their authorities, they have no jurisdiction to act, and therefore none to think, upon such subjects; and it is a libel to arraign government or any of its acts, before those that have no jurisdiction to correct them. But on the other hand, as it is a settled rule in the law of England, that the subject may always address a competent jurisdiction on every matter within it, no legal argument can shake the freedom of the press in my sense of it, if I am supported in my doctrines concerning the great unalienable rights of the people to change or to reform their governments.

Gentlemen, it is because the liberty of the press resolves itself into this great issue, that it has been in every time and country, the last liberty which subjects have been able to wrest from power. Other liberties are held under governments, but the liberty of opinion keeps governments themselves in due subjection to their duties. This has produced the martyrdom of truth in every age, and the world has only purged itself from ignorance with the innocent blood of those who have enlightened it.

Gentlemen, my strength and time are wasted, and I can only make this melancholy history pass like a shadow before you.

I shall begin with the grand type and example. The universal God of nature, the Saviour of mankind, the Fountain of all light, who came to pluck the world from eternal darkness, expired upon a cross, the scoff of infidel scorn; and his blessed apos. tles followed him in the train of martyrs. When he came in the flesh, he might have come like the Mahometan prophet, as a powerful sovereign, and propagated that religion with an unconquerable sword, which even now, after the lapse of ages, is but slowly moving, under the influence of reason, over the face of the earth. But such a process would have been inconsistent with his mission, which was to confound the pride, and to establish the universal

rights of men: he came, therefore, in that lowly state which is represented in the gospel, and preached his consolations to the poor.

When the foundation of this religion was discovered to be invulnerable and immortal, we find political power taking the church into partnership. Thus began the corruptions of religion and civil power, and, hand in hand together, what havock have they not made in the world; ruling by ignorance and the persecution of truth: but this very persecution only hastened the revival of letters and liberty which were to destroy the one and to raise up the other. Nay, you will find, that in the exact proportion that knowledge and learning have been beat down and fettered, they have destroyed the governments that bound them. The court of Star Chamber, the first restriction on the press of England was erected in 1637. From that moment no man could legally write without an imprimatur from the state; but truth and freedom found their way with greater force through secret channels, and the unhappy Charles, unwarned by a free press, was brought in eleven years afterwards to an ignominious death.

When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imaginary, their passions spend themselves in air, like gun powder scattered upon the surface; but, pent up by terrours, they work unseen like subterraneous fires, burst forth in earthquake, and destroy every thing in their course. Let reason be opposed to reason, and argument to argument, and every good government will be safe.

The usurper, Cromwell, pursued the same system of restraint in support of his government, and the end of it speedily happened.

At the restoration of Charles the second, the Star Chamber ordinance of 1637, was worked up into an act of parliament, and was followed during that reign, and the short one that succeeded it, by the most sanguinary prosecutions; but what fact in history is more notorious, than, that this blind and contemptible policy prepared and hastened on the revolution. At that great era these cobwebs were all brushed away : the freedom of the press was regenerated, and the country, ruied by its affections, has since enjoyed a century of tranquillity and glory. Thus I have maintained, by English history, that in proportion as the press has been free, English government has been secure.

The

Gentlemen, I will now support the same important truth by very great authorities. Upon a subject of this kind, resort cannot be had to law cases. ancient law of England knew nothing of such libels; they began and should have ended, with the Star Chamber. What writings are slanderous of individuals, must be looked for where these prosecutions are recorded; but upon general subjects we must go to general writers. If, indeed, I were to refer to obscure authors, I might be answered, that my very authorities were libels, instead of justification or examples; but this cannot be said with effect of great men, whose works are classicks in our language, taught in our schools, and printed under the eye of government.

Gentlemen, I shall begin with the poet Milton, a great authority in all learning. It may be said, indeed, he was a republican, but that would only prove that republicanism is not incompatible with virtue: it may be said too, that the work which I cite was written against previous licensing, which is not contended for to day. But in my opinion, if every work is to be adjudged a libel which is adverse to the wishes of government, or to the opinions of those who may try it, the revival of a licenser would be a security to the publick. For, if I present my book to a magistrate appointed by law, if he reject it, I have only to forbear from the publication, and in the forbearance I am safe; and he, too, is answerable to the law for the abuse of his authority. But upon the argument of to day, a man must print at his peril, without any guide to the principles of judgment, upon which his work may be afterwards prosecuted and condemned. Milton's argument,

therefore applies, and was meant to apply, to every interruption to writing, which, while they oppress the individual, endanger the state.

"We have them not," says Milton, "that can be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity or church, nor by any statute left us by our ancestors, elder or later, nor from the modern custom of any reformed city, or church abroad; but from the most antichristian council, and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever existed. Till then, books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled than the issue of the womb."

"To the pure, all things are pure; not only meats and drink, but all kind of knowledge whether good or evil; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the book, if the will and conscience be not defiled.

"Bad books serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forwarn, and to illustrate. Whereof, what better witness can we expect I should produce, than one of your own now sitting in parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, whose volume of natural and national laws, proves, not only by great authorities brought together, but by exquisite reasons and theorems almost mathematically demonstrative, that all opinions, yea, errour, known, read, and collated, are of main service and assistance toward the speedy attainment of what is truest.

"Opinions and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets, and statutes, and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks.

"Nor is it to the common people less than a reproach; for if we be so jealous over them that we cannot trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them, for a giddy, vicious, and un