Courts of Law did not reject them. Sir Edward Coke had as little suspicion that he was wandering from his object while illuminating, as he fancied, the pages of his Institutes with loose quotations from Virgil, Tacitus, and Tully, as he had in the extraneous paragraph to show the existence of Parliaments among the Israelites, in his Chapter which treats on our high Court of Parliament. A similar inadvertency to the ruling persuasion would have raised a smile in this perspicacious Commentator, where MILTON vouches seriously the quotations of St. Paul from the Heathen Poets to justify himself for his studies in Pagan Learning. But with a fanaticism equivalent to that of the Mahometans, who believe their Koran to be also ordained as a complete moral and civil code for the regulation of human affairs, our Scripture was at that time taken by multitudes for the direction of conduct, and for the government of life in all its various relations, as well secular as religious. The motive for this appeal is therefore easy to be understood. The appeal was powerful when every doubtful case was to be resolved by the application of a text from holy writ. レ Men in those days were so familiarized to walk by this sacred rule, that Waller, the Poet, in objection to the Bill to enforce the burial of the Dead in woollen shrouds, cited to the House of Commons the Evangelist who has recorded that Christ was buried in linen. Since the AREOPAGITICA was written off on the spur of a present occasion, and, as certain, that MILTON could only have drawn from the stores of Knowlege he had already accumulated. Felix tanto argumento ingenium, Accidentally felix tanto ingenio argumentum. called forth, he was more fortunate in his subject than Somers, Locke, and Hoadley were in their refutations of the claim arrogated by our Scottish Dynasty to unconditional submission on the part of the People, and to their own immunity from human jurisdiction. To hinder our Forefathers from embracing the "bowstring maxim" of Passive Obedience, these powerful Vindicators of revolutionary principles entered the lists against Filmer and his disciples, and we must never refuse them the honour eminently their due for having overthrown and brought into lasting contempt the favourite doctrine of James that "Prayers and Tears" were all that GOD permitted Subjects to interpose to the will and pleasure of any one whose brow was encircled with an hereditary Crown. Now that the question of a divine Right of Succession to the Throne is, by the recognition of the Compact between our King and the People, no longer a problem with us, the writings for and against the patriarchal hypothesis have outlived their importance, and remain on the shelf with their dust undisturbed, but by him, who in an abundance of leisure is curious to learn what pleas could have been set up on behalf of this enormous folly. MILTON'S defence of unrestricted Publication may confidently lay claim to a duration of practical utility far more extended. It can never cease to have its value on political considerations, till this natural and constitutional* Right ceases to be an * I say natural and constitutional after Bishop Hayter, who reasons thus: "the Liberty of the Press is connected " with natural Liberty. "The Liberty of the Subject being now generally ad object of jealousy or hatred with those who may bear rule over us. A political millenium, the signs and prognostics of the times in which we live forbid us to believe fast approaching. "mitted to be founded in the Reservations made in that "Compact, which originally cemented Society, supposeth "the use of Speech. "The Men who first gave up their natural Rights for the "benefits of Society, must have stickled hard for the faculty, "which promoted and facilitated the conjunction; and most "certainly, they never entered into a compact, that, if at "any time the gift of Speech should be grossly abused by 66 any number of Men, a whole Nation would submit to be "deprived of the use of it. "Whatever they cannot be supposed to have given up re"mains a natural Right, and is a part of those Rights, which "constitute the Liberty of the Subject. "British Liberty consists in the power of asserting, by Representatives, those natural Rights which were reserved as "the Liberty of the Subject, at the first institution of So"ciety. It would be an act of sedition, as well as an ab 66 surdity, to insinuate that this power is ever likely to be "perverted, to the destruction of any natural Right thus re"served: so close is the alliance between the Liberty of the "Press and the Liberty of a British Subject. "We may judge, from this view of the case, how greatly "those learned Men are mistaken, who deny the constitu❝tional existence of the Liberty of the Press, because the "Press is not co-eval with Magna Charta. The Use and "Liberty of Speech were antecedent to that great Charter of Succeeding advocates for the Freedom of Printing have copied not unfrequently as well as largely from this Oration. Among others, Mathew Tindal writing in 1698 against Mr. Pulteney's Bill to provide, with other restrictions on the Press, that no unlicenced Newspaper should be in circulation*, transcribed from it without scruple, with little alteration and without acknowlegement. It is not unlikely he was apprehensive, that the name of MILTON would have been detrimental to the cause for which he was ably and anxiously contending! for the first Edition of the Prose-works in a collected form, which came out in the same year, bears in the title-page that it was printed at Amsterdam. It was, we must infer from this air of concealment, a Re-publication too obnoxious for a London Bookseller "British Liberties; and Printing is only a more extensive " and improved kind of Speech." An Essay on the Liberty of the Press, chiefly as it respects personal Slander; p. 6. 1754. Hayter was, I believe, one of the present King's Preceptors, and was translated from Norwich to London in 1761. * Tindal's Continuation of Rapin: I. 350.-Ralph: II. 717. |