LETTER XLIV.

Manheim.

Having left orders at Geneva to forward all our letters of a certain date to Manheim, and to direct those which should come afterwards, to Frankfort on the Maine, I had the good fortune to receive yours last night.

I feel as much indignation as you possibly can, against those who endeavour to hurt the peace of families by malignant publications, and I enter fully into Lord ——’s on so unmerited an attack. Yet I should be heartily sorry to see these evils remedied by any restriction on the freedom of the press; because I am every day more and more convinced that its unrestrained productions, the licentious news-papers themselves not excepted, have conveyed to every corner of Great Britain, along with much impertinence and scurrility, such a regard for the constitution, such a sense of the rights of the subject, and such a degree of general knowledge, as never were so universally diffused over any other nation. Such a law as your friend proposes might, no doubt, protect individuals from unjust attacks in print: but it would at the same time remove one great means of clearing their innocence, and making known their wrongs, when injured in a more essential manner. It would limit the right which every Briton has of publicly addressing his countrymen, when he finds himself injured or oppressed by the perversion of law, or the insolence of office.

Examples might be given of men of great integrity being attacked in the most cruel and ungenerous manner by people high in office and guarded by power. Such men had no other means of redress than that of appealing to the candour and good sense of the public, which they used with success. Every man’s observation may suggest to him many kinds of injustice and oppression which the rich, the insidious, or the powerful, can commit in spite of law, or perhaps by the aid of law, against the poor, the unsuspecting, and the friendless.—Many, who can silence conscience and evade law, tremble at the thoughts of their injustice being published; and nothing is, nothing can be, a greater check to the wantonness of power, than the privilege of unfolding private grievances at the bar of the public. For thus the cause of individuals is made a public concern, and the general indignation which their wrongs excite, forms at once one of the severest punishments which can be inflicted on the oppressor, and one of the strongest bulwarks that can be raised in defence of the unprotected.

By this means also the most speedy and effectual alarm is given all over the nation when any great public misconduct happens, or upon any appearance of a design against the constitution; and many evils are detected and prevented, which otherwise might have been unobserved, till they had become too strong for remedy. And though this liberty produces much silly advice, and malignant censors without number, it likewise opens the door to some of a different character, who give useful hints to ministers, which would have been lost without the freedom of anonymous publication.

The temporary and partial disorders, which are the consequences of public freedom, have been greatly exaggerated by some people, and represented as more than equivalent to all the advantages resulting from a free government. But if such persons had opportunities of observing the nature of those evils which spring up in absolute governments, they would soon be convinced of their error.

The greatest evil that can arise from the licentiousness which accompanies civil liberty is, that people may rashly take a dislike to liberty herself, from the teasing impertinence and absurdity of some of her real or affected well-wishers; as a man might become less fond of the company of his best friend, if he found him always attended by a snappish cur, which without provocation was always growling and barking.

But to prove the weakness of such conduct, we have only to call to mind that the stream of licentiousness perhaps never rose higher than it did some years since in England.—And what were the mighty evils that followed?—Many respectable characters were grossly misrepresented in printed publications.—Certain daring scribblers evaded the punishment they deserved:—Many windows were broken, and the chariots of a few members of parliament were bespattered with dirt by the mob.—What are these frivolous disorders when compared to the gloomy regularity produced by despotism; in which men are obliged to the most painful circumspection in all their actions; are afraid to speak their sentiments on the most common occurrences; suspicious of cherishing government spies in their household servants; distrustful of their own relations and most intimate companions, and at all times exposed to the oppression of men in power, and to the insolence of their favourites?—No confusion, in my mind, can be more terrible than the stern disciplined regularity and vaunted police of arbitrary governments, where every heart is depressed by fear, where mankind dare not assume their natural characters, where the free spirit must crouch to the slave in office, where genius must repress her effusions, or, like the Egyptian worshippers, offer them in sacrifice to the calves of power; and where the human mind, always in shackles, shrinks from every generous effort.