PRESERVE IT. But say to the same nation, even of the very same constitution, it is yours, such as it is, for better or for worse; it is strapped upon your backs, to carry it as beasts of burden, you have no jurisdiction to cast it off. Let this be your position, and you instantly raise up (I appeal to every man's consciousness of his own nature) a spirit of uneasiness and discontent. It is this spirit alone, that has pointed most of the passages arraigned before you.

But let the prudence of Mr. Burke's argument be what it may, the argument itself is untenable. His Majesty undoubtedly was not elected to the throne. No man can be supposed, in the teeth of fact, to have contended for it; - but did not the people of England elect King William, and break the hereditary succession? and does not his Majesty's title grow out of that election? It is one of the charges against the defendant, his having denied the parliament which called the Prince of Orange to the throne to have been a legal convention of the whole people; and is not the very foundation of that charge, that it was such a legal convention, and that it was intended to be so? And if it was so, did not the people then confer the crown upon King William without any regard to hereditary right? Did they not cut off the Prince of Wales, who stood directly in the line of succession, and who had incurred no personal forfeiture? -Did they not give their deliverer an estate in the crown totally new and unprecedented in the law or history of the country?-And, lastly, might they not, by the same authority, have given the royal inheritance to the family of a stranger?-Mr. Justice Blackstone, in his Commentaries, asserts in terms that they might; and ascribes their choice of King William, and the subsequent limitations of the crown, not to want of jurisdiction, but to their true origin, to prudence and discretion in not disturbing a valuable institution farther than public safety and necessity dictated.

Gentlemen, all that I have been stating hitherto, has been only to show, that there is not that novelty in the opinions of the defendant, as to lead you to think he does not bona fide entertain them, much less when connected with the history of his life, which I therefore brought in review before you. But still the great question remains unargued-Had he a right to promuigate these opinions? If he entertained them, I shall argue that he had-And although my arguments upon the liberty of the press, may not to-day be honored with our, or the court's approbation, I shall retire not at all disheartened, consoling myself with the reflection, that a season may arrive for their reception. The most essential liberties of 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 agi tating 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.-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 the noble judge now present, for the matter was gone to rest in the courts, long before he came to sit where he does, but) before a noble and reverend magistrate of the most exalted understanding, and of the most uncorrupted integrity; he treated me, not with contempt 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 governments, and detailed the authorities which you have heard upon the subject, because I consider it to be not only an essential support, but the very 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;-since, if the people have, without possible recall, delegated all their authorities, they have no jurisdiction to act, and therefore none to think or write upon such subjects;and it would be 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; 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 right of the people, to reform or to change their governments

It is because the liberty of the press resolves itself into this great issue, that it has been, in every 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 been only purged 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 Savior 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 Apostles 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 his religion with an unconquerable sword, which even now, after the lapse of ages, is but slowly advancing 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 both of religious and civil power, and, hand in hand together, what havoc 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. Nay, you will find, that in the exact proportion that knowledge and learning have been beat down and fettered, they have destroyed the governments which bound them. The Court of Star Chamber, the first restriction of the press of England, was erected, previous to all the great changes in the constitution. 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 to an ignominious death. When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imaginary, their passions spend themselves in air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface; but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything 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 fol. lowed.

At the restoration of Charles the Second, the Star Chamber Ordinance of 1637, was worked up into an act of parliament, and was followed up during that reign, and the short one that followed it, by the most sanguinary prosecutions:-but what fact in history is more notorious, than that this blind and contemptible policy prepared and hastened the revolution? At that great era these cobwebs were all brushed away :-the freedom of the press was regenerated, and the country, ruled 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.

Gentlemen, the same important truth may be illustrated by great authorities. Upon a subject of this kind, resort cannot be had to law cases. The 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 justifications or examples; but this cannot be said with effect of great men, whose works are classics in our language, -taught in our schools,and repeatedly printed under the eye of government.

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, if every work were to be adjudged a libel, which was adverse to the wishes of government, or to the opinions of those who may compose it, the revival of a licenser would be a security to the public. If I present my book to a magistrate appointed by law, and he rejects it, I have only to forbear from the publication; -in the forbearance I am safe;-and he too is answerable to 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 drinks, but all kinds of knowledge whether good or evil; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.

"Bad books serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn 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, Mr. Selden, 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 ERRORS 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 wool-packs.

"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 ungrounded people; in such a sick and weak state of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licenser? That this is care or love of them, we cannot pretend.

"Those corruptions which it seeks to prevent, break in faster. at doors which cannot be shut. To prevent men thinking and acting for themselves, by restraints on the press, is like to the exploits of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park-gate.

"This obstructing violence meets for the most part with an event, utterly opposite to the end which it drives at; instead of suppressing books, it raises them, and invests them with a reputation: the punishment of wits enhances their authority, saith the Viscount St. Albans; and a forbidden writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the face of them who seek to tread it out."

He then adverts to his visit to the famous Galileo, whom he found and visited in the Inquisition, "for not thinking in astronomy with the Franciscan and Dominican monks." And