Mr. Justice Best.—No, I don’t insist upon it. But, Mr. Cooper, can you deceive yourself so much as to think this has anything to do with the question? I shall tell the jury to pay no attention to it.
Mr. Cooper.—Your Lordship will make any observations your condescension may lead you to make, as well on this as on any other part of the defence. I believe the course which I wish to take was taken on a similar occasion by a man who united the soundest and correctest judgment with the brightest imagination—I mean Lord Erskine—he—
Mr. Justice Best.—I knew him for thirty odd years at the bar, and I never in all my life knew him address himself to points such as these—that is all I can say. I know what is due to the liberty of the bar, and I shall cherish a love for its freedom to the latest hour of my life.
Mr. Cooper.—If your lordship refuses me—
Mr. Justice Best.—No, I don’t refuse you.
Mr. Cooper.—I think it necessary to my case. The preamble is—(gentlemen, I am sorry to detain you, but I have a most important duty to discharge. If in addressing you, I am taking a course which I ought not, I assure you it is an error of judgment and not of design. I declare most sincerely, that I am addressing to you arguments
which I should attend to if they were addressed to myself in such a case. His Lordship will have a right to make what observations he pleases, and of course I offer this and every other argument to you liable to the honour he may confer upon me of condescending to notice anything I have said or may say. You, gentlemen, will, I know, regard my observations or arguments solely as you think them forcible or weak; if they are the former you will attend to them, if the latter reject them. And with this observation I shall now proceed to read to you the preamble to the Act of the Legislative Assembly of Virginia.)
“It is time enough for the rightful purposes of Civil Government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order, and that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, and that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate: errors ceasing to be dangerous, when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
Thus, you see, by an Act of the Legislature of that country, passed by those who had all the knowledge of history before their eyes, and ample experience in their own times, I am fully supported in the position that prosecutions of this kind are not only useless but hurtful. By free argument and debate errors cease to be dangerous, if they are not exploded; but attempts to stifle even errors by power and punishment, provoke a stubborn adherence to them, and awake an eager spirit of propagation. If erroneous positions are published, meet them by argument, and refutation must ensue. If falsehood uses the press to promulge her doctrines, let truth oppose her with the same weapon. Let the press answer the
press, and what is there to fear? Shall I be told that the propensity of human nature is so base and evil that it will listen to falsehood and turn a deaf ear to truth? To assert so is not only scandalous to human nature, but impious towards the Creator. We are placed here imperfect indeed, and erring; but still with preponderance of virtue over vice. The Deity has sent us from his hands with qualities fitting us for civil society: it is our natural state; and we know that civil society is sapped by vice and supported by virtue: if, therefore, our disposition to good did not redound over the evil a state of society could not be maintained. It would indeed be an impiety little short of blasphemy to the great Being who has created us, to say, that mankind at large are eagerly inclined to what is vicious, but turn with aversion from what is moral and good. Yet this, whatever they may avow, must be the opinion of those who say that good doctrine from the press cannot be left with safety to oppose bad.