Page:The Scourge - Volume 5.djvu/47

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Liberty of the press. 35


as we are, with the conviction, that the principles it contains are hostile to every description of civil and religious liberty, inconsistent with the spirit and the practice of the English constitution, and according only with the feelings and the views of the advocates of political tyranny and religious persecution, we should ill discharge our duty to our readers, were we to be restrained from the strenuous fulfilment of its obligations, by any apprehension of offending a powerful and dangerous enemy. If indeed to discuss with freedom the recorded opinions of a judge, be to assault his personal character, and an assault on personal character be in every instance a libel, farewell to the liberties of Englishmen! A future Jefferies may arise to pervert the laws to the purposes of revenge and murder; and who shall dare to accuse him of injustice or cruelty?

His lordship commences his declamation, by an enumeration of the dangers that arise from the prevalence of libels; but as he has forgotten to remind the jurors of the greater dangers to which we are subjected by restricting the liberty of the press, and punishing truth with more severity than falsehood; we take the liberty of stating the evils that are to be apprehended from the general admission of his lordship's doctrines. Let it once be granted that no depravity, however obtrusive or enormous, is the legitimate object of literary castigation; that vice may run its career of shameless iniquity, in triumph and in security, so long as it evades the denunciations of the law; and that the open expression of popular discontent is liable, under every provocation, to be visited with the severest inflictions of legal vengeance: if all this be once admitted in theory, and established in practice, the liberty of Englishmen is but the shadow of a name: the freedom of the press implies only the privilege of writing with the fear of the Attorney General before our eyes; and the rights of political discussion extend no further than is consistent with the views of the court, or the minister. We lament the degraded

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