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but likewife by the relation which the facts bear to its, the state's,-own inftinctive principle of felf-preservation. For every depofitory of the fupreme power must presume itself rightful and as the fource of law not legally to be endangered. A form of government may indeed, in reality, be moft pernicious to the governed, and the highest moral honour may await the patriot who risks his life in order by its fubverfion to introduce a better and juster constitution; but it would be abfurd to blame the law by which his life is declared forfeit. It were to expect, that by an involved contradiction the law fhould allow itself not to be law, by allowing the state, of which it is a part, not to be a state. For, as Hooker has well obferved, the law of men's actions is one, if they be respected only as men; and another, when they are confidered as parts of a body politic.*

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But though every government subsisting in law, – for pure lawless defpotism grounding itself wholly on terror precludes all confideration of dutythough every government fubfifting in law must, and ought to, regard itself as the life of the body politic, of which it is the head, and consequently must punish every attempt against itself as an act of affault or murder, that is, fedition or treafon; yet still it ought fo to fecure the life as not to prevent the conditions of its growth, and of that adaptation to circumstances, without which its very

* Eccl. Pol. I. xvi. 6.-Ed.

life becomes infecure. In the application, therefore, of these principles to the public communication of opinions by the most efficient mean,we have to decide, whether confiftently with them there should be any liberty of the press; and if this be answered in the affirmative, what shall be declared abuses of that liberty, and made punishable as fuch; and in what way the general law fhall be applied to each particular case.

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First, then, ought there to be any liberty of the press? I do not here mean, whether it should be permitted to print books at all; for this effay has little chance of being read in Turkey, and in any other part of Europe it cannot be supposed questionable—but whether by the appointment of a censorship the government should take upon itself the responsibility of each particular publication. In governments purely monarchical,- that is, oligarchies under one head-the balance of advantage and disadvantage from this monopoly of the prefs will undoubtedly be affected by the general state of information; though after reading Milton's 'Speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing we shall probably be inclined to believe, that the beft argument in favour of licensing under any

l'on

* Il y a un voile qui doit toujours couvrir tout ce que peut dire et tout ce qu'on peut croire du droit des peuples et de celui des princes, qui ne s'accordent jamais fi bien ensemble que dans le filence. Mém. du Card. de Retz.

How fevere a fatire where it can be justly applied! how falfe and calumnious if meant as a general maxim !

constitution is that, which fuppofing the ruler to have a different interest from that of his country, and even from himself as a reasonable and moral creature, grounds itself on the incompatibility of knowledge with folly, oppreffion, and degradation. What our prophetic Harrington faid of religious, applies equally to literary, toleration :—“ If it be said that in France there is liberty of confcience in part, it is also plain that while the hierarchy is standing, this liberty is falling, and that if ever it comes to pull down the hierarchy, it pulls down that monarchy alfo: wherefore the monarchy or hierarchy will be beforehand with it, if they see their true intereft."*-On the other hand, their is no flight danger from general ignorance: and the only choice, which Providence has graciously left to a vicious government, is either to fall by the people, if they are suffered to become enlightened, or with them, if they are kept enslaved and igno

rant.

The nature of our conftitution, fince the Revolution, the state of our literature, and the wide diffufion, if not of intellectual, yet of literary, power, and the almoft univerfal intereft in the productions of literature, have fet the question at reft relatively to the British prefs. However great the advantages of previous examination might be under other circumstances, in this country it would be both impracticable and inefficient. I need only fuggeft

* Syft. of Politics, vi. 10.-Ed.

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in broken fentences the prodigious number of licenfers that would be requifite-the variety of their attainments, and inafmuch as the fcheme must be made confiftent with our religious freedom-the ludicrous variety of their principles and creeds their number being fo great, and each appointed cenfor being himself a man of letters, quis cuftodiet ipfos cuftodes? If these numerous licenfers hold their offices for life, and independently of the ministry pro tempore, a new, heterogeneous, and alarming power is introduced, which can never be affimilated to the conftitutional powers already existing if they are removable at pleasure, that which is heretical and feditious in 1809, may become orthodox and loyal in 1810; - and what man, whose attainments and moral respectability gave him even an endurable claim to this awful truft, would accept a fituation at once fo invidious and fo precarious? And what inftitution can retain any useful influence in fo free a nation when its abuses have made it contemptible? Laftly, and which of itself would fuffice to justify the rejection of fuch a plan-unless all proportion between crime and punishment were abandoned, what penalties could the law attach to the affumption of a liberty, which it had denied, more severe than those which it now attaches to the abuse of the liberty, which it grants? In all those instances at least, which it would be most the inclinationperhaps the duty-of the state to prevent, namely, in feditious and incendiary publications,—(whether

actually fuch, or only such as the existing government chose so to denominate, makes no difference in the argument)- the publisher, who hazards the punishment now affigned to feditious publications, would affuredly hazard the penalties of unlicensed ones, especially as the very practice of licenfing would naturally diminish the attention to the contents of the works published, the chance of impunity therefore be so much greater, and the artifice of prefixing an unauthorised license so likely to escape detection. It is a fact, that in many of the former German ftates in which literature flourifhed, notwithstanding the establishment of cenfors or licensers, three fourths of the books printed were unlicensed even those, the contents of which were unobjectionable, and where the fole motive for evading the law, must have been either the pride and delicacy of the author, or the indolence of the bookfeller. So difficult was the detection, fo various the means of evafion, and worse than all, from the nature of the law and the affront it offers to the pride of human nature, such was the merit attached to the breach of it-a merit commencing perhaps with Luther's Bible, and other prohibited works of fimilar great minds, published with no diffimilar purpose, and thence by many an intermediate link of affociation finally connected with books, of the very titles of which a good man would wish to remain ignorant. The interdictory catalogues of the Romish hierarchy always present to my fancy the mufter-rolls of the