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.