6 very causes which have filled enlightened thinkers with admiration for this liberty, have provoked the intolerance of rulers. It was nobly said by Erskine, that 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." The church has persecuted freedom of thought in religion: the state has repressed it in politics. Everywhere authority has resented discussion, as hostile to its own sovereign rights. Hence, in states otherwise free, liberty of opinion has been the last political privilege which the people have acquired. When the art of printing had developed thought, and multiplied the means of discussion, the press was subjected, throughout Europe, to a rigorous censorship. First, the church attempted to prescribe the bounds of human thought and knowledge; and next, the state assumed the same presumptuous office. No writings were suf Censorship of the press. Τοὐλεύθερον δ ̓ ἐκεῖνο εἴ τις θέλει πόλει For this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth,-that let no man in the world expect but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.'-Milton's Areopagitica, Works, iv. 396: Ed. 1851. 'Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue, freely according to conscience, above all liberties.'-Ibid., 442. Erskine's speech for Paine. fered to be published without the imprimatur of the licenser; and the printing of unlicensed works was visited with the severest punishments. Tracts, flying-sheets, and news After the reformation in England the crown assumed the right which the church had previously exercised, of prohibiting the printing of all works 'but such as should be first seen and allowed.' The censorship of the press became part of the prerogative; and printing was further restrained by patents and monopolies. Queen Elizabeth interdicted printing save in London, Oxford, and Cambridge.' But the minds of men had been too deeply stirred to submit to ignorance and lethargy. They thirsted after knowledge; and it reached papers. them through the subtle agency of the press. The theological controversies of the sixteenth century, and the political conflicts of the seventeenth, gave birth to new forms of literature. The heavy folio, written for the learned, was succeeded by the tract and flying sheet,-to be read by the multitude. At length, the printed sheet, continued periodically, assumed the shape of a news-letter or newspaper. The first example of a newspaper is to be found late in the reign of James I.,2—a period Stuarts. most inauspicious for the press. Political discussion was silenced by the licenser, the Star Chamber, the dungeon, the pillory, mutilation, and The press under the State Tr., i. 1263. 2 The Weekly Newes, May 23rd, 1622, printed for Nicholas Bourne and Thomas Archer. The English Mercurie, 1588, in the British Museum, once believed to be the first English newspaper, has since been proved a fabrication.-Letter to Mr. Panizzi by T. Watts, of the British Museum, 1839; Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, 14th Ed., i. 173; Hunt's Fourth Estate, i. 33. branding. Nothing marked more deeply the tyrannical spirit of the two first Stuarts than their barbarous persecutions of authors, printers, and the importers of prohibited books: nothing illustrated more signally the love of freedom, than the heroic courage and constancy with which those persecutions were borne. The fall of the Star Chamber1 augured well for the liberty of the press; and the great The comstruggle which ensued, let loose the fervid monwealth. thoughts and passions of society in political discussion. Tracts and newspapers entered hotly into the contest between the Court and the Parliament.2 The Parliament, however, while it used the press as an instrument of party, did not affect a spirit of toleration. It passed severe orders and ordinances in restraint of printing; and would have silenced all royalist and prelatical writers. In war none of the enemy's weapons were likely to be respected; yet John Milton, looking beyond the narrow bounds of party to the great interests of truth, ventured to brand its suppression by the licenser, as the slaying of an immortality rather than a life.' 4 3 The restoration brought renewed trials upon the 1 February 1641. 2 Upwards of 30,000 political pamphlets and newspapers were issued from the press between 1640 and the restoration. They were collected by Mr. Thomasson, and are now in the British Museum, bound up in 2,000 volumes.-Knight's Old Printer and Modern Press, 199: Disraeli's Cur. of Literature, i. 175. Orders June 14th, 1642: Aug. 26th, 1642; Husband's Ord., 591; Ordinance, June, 1643; Parl. Hist., iii. 131; Ordinance, Sept. 30th, 1647; Parl. Hist., iii. 780; Rushworth, ii. 957, &c.; Further Ordinances, 1649 and 1652; Scobell, i. 44, 134; ii. 88, 230. Areopagitica; a Speech for Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, Works, iv. 400; Ed. 1851. press. The Licensing Act placed the entire control of printing in the government. In the nar The press after the restoration. man. 2 row spirit of Elizabeth, printing was confined to London, York, and the universities, and the was number of master printers were limited to twenty. The severe provisions of this act were used with terrible vindictiveness. Authors and printers of obnoxious works were hung, quartered and mutilated, exposed in the pillory and flogged, or fined and imprisoned, according to the temper of their judges: their productions were burned by the common hangFreedom of opinion was under interdict: even news could not be published without license. Nay, when the Licensing Act had been suffered to expire for a while, the twelve judges, under Chief Justice Scroggs, declared it to be criminal, at common law, to publish any public news, whether true or false, without the king's license. Nor was this monstrous opinion judicially condemned, until the better times of that constitutional judge, Lord Camden. A monopoly in news being created, the public were left to seek intelligence in the official summary of the 'London Gazette.' The press, debased and enslaved, took refuge in the licentious ribaldry of that age. James II. and his infamous judges carried the Licensing Act into effect with 5 13 & 14 Chas. II. c. 33. 2 St. Tr., vi. 514. The sentence upon John Twyn, a poor printer, was one of revolting brutality; St. Tr., vi. 659; Keach's case, pillory, Ib., 710; Cases of Harris, Smith, Curtis, Carr, and Cellier, Ib., vii. 926-1043, 1111, 1183. 3 Carr's Case, 1680; State Trials, vii. 929. 4 Entinck v. Carrington, St. Tr., xix. 1071. See Macaulay's Hist., i. 365, for a good account of the newspapers of this period. of Licensing free press barbarous severity. But the revolution brought indulgence even to the Jacobite press; and when the Commons, a few years later, refused to re- Expiration new the Licensing Act,' a censorship of the Act, 1695. press was for ever renounced by the law of England. Henceforth the freedom of the press was theoretically established. Every writing could Theory of be freely published: but at the peril of a recognised. rigorous execution of the libel laws. The administration of justice was indeed improved. Scroggs and Jeffreys were no more: but the law of libel was undefined; and the traditions of the Star Chamber had been accepted as the rule of Westminster Hall. To speak ill of the government was a crime. Censure of ministers was a reflection upon the king himself.2 Hence the first aim and use of free discussion was prohibited by law. But no sooner had the press escaped from the grasp of the licenser, than it began to give promise of its future energies. Newspapers were multiplied: news and gossip freely circulated among the people.3 the reign of With the reign of Anne opened a new era in the history of the press. Newspapers then as- The press in sumed their present form, combining in- Anne. telligence with political discussion; and began to be published daily. This reign was also marked by the higher intellectual character of its periodical 1 See Macaulay's Hist., iii. 656; iv. 540. 2 See the law as laid down by Ch. J. Holt, St. Tr., xiv. 1103. 3 Macaulay's Hist., iv. 604. 4 Hallam's Const. Hist., ii. 331, 460. 5 Disraeli's Cur. of Literature, i. 178; Nichols' Lit. Anecd., iv.80. The Daily Courant was the first daily paper, in 1709.-Hunt's Fourth Estate, i. 175. |