Hutchinson's Commercial Restraints of Ireland, published in 1779, and reviewing the progress of English misgovernment, proved the correctness of Molyneux' prognostications nearly a century before. "Can the history of any fruitful country on the globe," he asked (and the question may be asked still), "enjoying peace for fourscore years, and not visited by plague or pestilence, produce so many recorded instances of the poverty and wretchedness and of the reiterated want and misery of the lower orders of the people? There is no such example in ancient or modern history."
That a book of such sentiments should have been burnt, as easier so to deal with than to answer, would accord well enough with antecedent probability; but, inasmuch as there is no such record in the Commons' Journals, the probability must remain that Captain Valentine Blake, M.P. for Galway, who, in a letter to the Times of February 14th, 1846, appears to have been the first to assert the fact, erroneously identified the fate of Hutchinson's anonymous work with the then received version of the fate of the work of Molyneux. The rarity of the first edition of the Commercial Restraints may well enough accord with other methods of suppression than burning.
The Present Crisis, therefore, of 1775, must retain the distinction of having been the last book to be condemned to the public fire; and with it a practice which can appeal for its descent to classical Greece and Rome passed at last out of fashion and favour, without any actual legislative abolition. When, in 1795, the great stir was made by Reeve's Thoughts on English Government, Sheridan's proposal to have it burnt met with little approval, and it escaped with only a censure. Reeve, president of an association against Republicans and Levellers, like Cowell and Brecknock before him, gave offence by the extreme claims he made for the English monarch. The relation between our two august chambers and the monarchy he compared to that between goodly branches and the tree itself: they were only branches, deriving their origin and nutriment from their common parent; but though they might be lopped off, the tree would remain a tree still. The Houses could give advice and consent, but the Government and its administration in all its parts rested wholly and solely with the King and his nominees. That a book of such sentiments should have escaped burning is doubtless partly due to the panic of Republicanism then raging in England; but it also shows the gradual growth of a sensible indifference to the power of the pen.
And when we think of the freedom, almost unchecked, of the literature of the century now closing, of the impunity with which speculation attacks the very roots of all our political and theological traditions, and compare this state of liberty with the servitude of literature in the three preceding centuries, when it rested with archbishop or Commons or Lords not only to commit writings to the flames but to inflict cruelties and indignities on the writers, we cannot but recognise how proportionate to the advance we have made in toleration have been the benefits we have derived from it. Possibly this toleration arose from the gradual discovery that the practical consequences of writings seldom keep pace with the aim of the writer or the fears of authority; that, for instance, neither is property endangered by literary demonstrations of its immorality, nor are churches emptied by criticism. At all events, taking the risk of consequences, we have entered on an era of almost complete literary impunity; the bonfire is as extinct as the pillory; the only fiery ordeal is that of criticism, and dread of the reviewer has taken the place of all fear of the hangman.
Whether the change is all gain, or the milder method more effectual than the old one, I would hesitate to affirm. He would be a bold man who would assert any lack of burnworthy books. The older custom had perhaps a certain picturesqueness which was lost with it. It was a bit of old English life, reaching far back into history—a custom that would have been not unworthy of the brush of Hogarth. For all that we cannot regret it. The practice became so common, and lent itself so readily to abuse by its indiscriminate application in the interests of religious bigotry or political partisanship, that the lesson of history is one of warning against it. Such a practice is only defensible or impressive in proportion to the rarity of its use. Applied not oftener than once or twice in a generation, in the case of some work that flagrantly shocked or injured the national conscience, the book-fire might have retained, or might still recover, its place in the economy of well-organised States; and the stigma it failed of by reason of its frequency might still attach to it by reason of its rarity.
If, then, it were possible (as it surely would be) so to regulate and restrict its use that it should serve only as the last expression of the indignation of an offended community instead of the ready weapon of a party or a clique, one can conceive its revival being not without utility. To take an illustration. With the ordinary daily libels of the public press the community as such has no concern; there is no need to grudge them their traditional impunity. But supposing a newspaper, availing itself of an earlier reputation and a wide circulation, to publish as truths, highly damaging to individuals, what it knows or might know to be forgeries, the limit has clearly been overstepped of the bearable liberty of the press; the cause of the injured individual becomes the cause of the injured community, insulted by the unscrupulous advantage that has been taken of its trustfulness and of its inability to judge soundly where all the data for a sound judgment are studiously withheld. Such an action is as much and as flagrant a crime or offence against the community as an act of robbery or murder, which, though primarily an injury to the individual, is primarily avenged as an injury to the State. As such it calls for punishment, nor could any punishment be more appropriate than one which caused the offending newspaper to atone by dishonour for the dishonour it sought to inflict. Condemnation by Parliament to the flames would exactly meet the exigencies of a case so rare and exceptional, and would succeed in inflicting that disgrace of which such a punishment often formerly failed by very reason of its too frequent application.
