fined, expelled, and doomed to eternal shame. Honesty was the best recommendation to abilities, and abilities to office; places of trust were not held in reversion, and the public honour was not converted into a public jest. Her subjects gave her their hearts, and she freely gave her's in return. Hence she soon made them happy at home, and dreadful abroad. She never patched up a Convention, and she always presided at public treaties. In these blessed times, what cause had the Press to complain? If the Queen ever played the tyrant, it always terminated in the good of her subjects. She treated them as a Parent does her Children, and chastised them only to make them more happy. Ye see then, to have murmured against this reign would be to have murmured against Happiness. To have complained when there was no cause of complaint, would have argued a weakness and a wantonness for which Englishmen are not remarkable. Let our Reformers now step home, and compare the picture of the sixteenth century with our own time: the contrast is rather striking, and may soften even the unfeeling heart of a Minister.

These are the chief of their arguments-But lest these should be found insufficient to carry their favourite Imprimatur into a Law, they have prudently provided a corps de reserve, which, if necessary, may be played upon the enemy as an after-game. It is the interest of tyrannic men to be cunning too, and they are in the right: but it shall not avail them in the present instance. "No man (say they) ought to write what he "would be ashamed to own; therefore no man

ought to write what he would be ashamed "to subscribe. If ye will make us no other "concessions, let every Author put his name "to his Book, Pamphlet, or Paper, and we are "satisfied."

There is an air of candour in this argument which renders it deceitful, and the plausibility with which it bespeaks the attention, makes it the more dangerous. Whether we view it respecting the effect it would necessarily have on polite or on political Learning, it is despotic and dangerous, and subversive of Truth and Ingenuity, of Enquiry and Freedom. Will the timid and youthful Genius, whose modesty is yet unwounded, and whose fears are usually

numerous in in proportion as his abilities are great, venture his name, his reputation, his pride, in a fickle and unfriendly world, whose mercy he has never felt, and whose good nature he has never experienced? Will he lean his fond expectations on that faithless prop, which has often proved deceitful to Genius unsheltered and unpatronized? Undoubtedly he will not. He will rather retreat from that world which he dreads, and languish away his life in obscurity and silence. is thus that Newton, the father of new Systems and Worlds, would have pined away in obscurity, and left the world in darkness; and had not one of his friends, more bold than himself, given his discoveries to the world, he would never have set his name to that divine Philosophy, which has since done honour to human nature, and crowned himself with immortality.

It

But in politics, the mischief of such a mandate would be unbounded. It would be at once gagging the mouth of Truth and fair investigation. Books, Pamphlets, Letters, Essays

all must come forth curbed, bound, and fettered, and guarded with all the caution and quaintness of a lease or a deed of settlement. If an obnoxious truth is to be told to the Public concerning a Minister, and the Authour. is obliged to subscribe it, will not this Minister, assuming all the surly port and pride of power, point his thunder at the unprotected Authour, let slip his dogs of war, and hunt him down through all the quirks and laby rinths of court-law, and state intrigue? What is it, in fact, but showing the Minister where to aim his fury, and giving him a lash wherewith to scourge the obnoxious and the inno-, cent? Will a man for his own sake; or, if he has friends, family, and endearing connections in life, still more for their sake; venture to expose his interest, his property, and perhaps his life, to the mercy of a powerful and revengeful Minister, who probably has all the treasure and laws of the nation in his own gripe? He will not, if he is prudent. Mercy indeed, we are told, is sometimes seen at Court; but she never extends her hand to any but culprits

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of consummate guilt, the felons, the robbers, and murderers, of Newgate.

But what more is necessary to be said? MILTON will finish what I have begun. I entreat the Reader's candour for detaining him so long from the arguments of so enlarged a mind; and it is my excuse, while it is my pride, that I only fight under the shield of so great a name.

Let us hear no more, then, of these illiberal innovations, which would disgrace the ignorance and barbarous rage of the middle ages. If our Ministers have not resolved to reduce us once more to a level with the savages of the North, or with the slaves of the South of Europe, let them never attempt to establish Laws which would shackle every generous power of the Soul, and give the last blow to Learning and Freedom. Shall Britons, nurtured in the soil of Liberty, bred under her wings, our bosoms glowing with all the brilliant principles of her unshackled nature, prepared alike to deeds of Virtue or of Danger; shall we stoop to truckle at a Licenser's levee, and be tamely robbed of those immunities which elevate us above the other nations of the world?—Forbid