Now, gentlemen, not only am I not without the corroboration of this enactment of the Legislature of Virginia for my humble opinions, but the Act of Virginia is itself not without the very highest human sanction, as I shall show you by a passage which I am about to cite from the work of a man, with whom, in my mind, the writings of all other men are but as the ill-timed uninformed prattlings of children—a man from whom to differ in opinion is but another phrase to be wrong. Need I, after this, name him? for was there ever more than one man who could be identified with such a description? I mean Locke, the great champion of civil freedom. In this work on government he says—
“Perhaps it will be said, that the people being ignorant and always discontented, to lay the foundations of government in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humour of the people, is to expose it to certain ruin, and no government will be able long to subsist if the people may set up a new legislature whenever they take offence at the old. To this I answer, quite the contrary, people are not so easy got out of their old forms as some are apt to suggest; they are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed to, and if there be any original defects or adventitious ones introduced by time or corruption, it is not an easy thing to be changed, even where all the world sees there is an opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people to quit their old constitutions has in the many revolutions which have been seen in this kingdom still kept us to, or, after some intervals of fruitless attempts, still brought us back again to our old legislature of King, Lords and Commons.”
Such is the opinion of this greatest of men, formed on the most consummate wisdom, enriched by observation, during times which afforded no small degree of experience. Upon his authority, then, that men are not to be excited to sudden discontent, and passion for hasty change, I assert, that there is no danger to be apprehended from the freest political discussions; and consequently no need of their condemnation by a jury’s verdict of Guilty.
Milton, too, the greatest of poets, and hardly less a politician, was of the same sentiment as to the firmness of the people, and thought it might safely be left to them to read what they pleased, and to their reason and discretion, what to object and what to adopt, without any other interference. It is his Areopagitica, in which he contends for unlicensed printing—an oration addressed
from his closet to the Parliament of England, and which has been cited by Lord Mansfield himself, on the bench. His words are—“Nor is it to the common people less than a reproach; for if we be so jealous of them that we cannot trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious and ungrounded people? That this is care or love of them we cannot pretend.”
Such are the sentiments of Milton, in that noble effort of united argument and eloquence, which I should not fear to hold up against the most splendid orations of antiquity.
Having thus, I submit, made good my position, that political papers, whatever their description, can produce no mischief, and that there is no need to prosecute them; I will now show you, that not only can publications, containing false opinions, do no mischief, but that they actually produce benefit, and that therefore not they, but the prosecutions, which would check, and stifle them are injurious. Is it meant to be contended that error is stronger than truth; folly more powerful than reason, and irreligion than religion? No man, in his senses, will maintain such propositions. On the contrary, error has always been dispersed before reason, and infidelity by religion. The appearance of error and falsehood has always roused Truth to rise to the work of refutation. Even the sublime truths of religion have never been so completely demonstrated, and conviction and faith have never been so firmly fixed in the minds of men as by those books of controversy which have been drawn forth by attacks upon Christianity; and which, but for the publications denying the authenticity of the religion, would never have been in existence; but, invaluable as they are, the world must have wanted them. As to political
writings, is it not notorious, that the very best expositions of the nature of civil society and government, are solely to be ascribed to the conflicts of reason with the false and loathsome doctrines of passive obedience and divine indefeasible right, which found their way into the world by the freedom of publication? Even that great work, the treatise of Locke on Government, itself, which is justly regarded as the political Bible (I mean no irreverence) of Englishmen, would never have seen the light, but that it was written to refute the base and detestable tenets of Barclay and Filmer. Their political treatises were false and slavish, and even illegal; for they were the same for which Dr. Sacheverel was afterwards impeached by the Parliament; and which he would not have been if it had not been an offence to maintain and publish such opinions. Yet were not their falsehoods and errors useful and beneficial? Did they not provoke Locke to rise in all the majesty and strength of truth and cast down Filmer and his doctrines into the lowest abyss of contempt, never again to emerge? See, now, if the government of those days had prosecuted Barclay and Filmer, and suppressed their books by power instead of leaving them to be demolished by reasoning, what would have been the consequence? The mighty mind of Locke would not have been called into action, and the total refutation and utter explosion of Filmer would not have been effected. By criminal prosecutions the odious positions would only have been suppressed for a time, not as they now are, extinguished for ever; and the base and degrading doctrines of passive obedience and divine right, which are the stigma of the times in which they prevailed, might have been the disgrace and reproach of ours.
But supposing that prosecutions for political writings
were in any respect politic, useful, or wise, will they prevent their publication? No more than your strong and violent revenue laws have been able to suppress the rise of illicit stills in Ireland and Scotland. Even if by dint of the terror of prosecutions the press in this city could be reduced to such awe and subjection, that everything that issued from it was as flat and unmeaning as the most arbitrary government could desire, its inhabitants would still gratify their thirst for political discussion and information. They would compose and print as they distil, in the depth of deserts and the solitude of mountains, and under the cover of darkness drop the pamphlets into the houses, or scatter them in the streets, and the obstacles to circulation will serve only to inflame the desire for possession. This would be the result of a determination to suppress everything in the shape of political discussion that did not please the humour of a set of men in authority, while by far the greater part if not all those publications which inspire so much apprehension, would if passed in silence either never be noticed, or read their hour and forgotten. It is these public trials that give them importance and notoriety. They would not draw an eye but for the glare thrown on them by these luminous prosecutions. These indictments (though I would not willingly be ludicrous on so serious an occasion) force into my mind the course once adopted with regard to houses of ill-fame, by the Society for the Suppression of Vice. They paid men who were fixed before the doors of such houses with huge paper lanterns, on which there was painted in large illuminated letters, “This is a house of bad fame.” But, instead of causing a desertion of the houses, they operated as an advertisement and an allurement, and increased the numbers who resorted