AREOPAGITICA; A SPEECH O F M. JOHN MILTON For the Liberty of VNLICENC'D PRINTING, To the PARLIAMENT of ENGLAND. Τ ̓ ουλεύθερον δ ̓ ἐκεῖνο εἴ τις θέλει πόλει Euripid. Hicetid. This is true Liberty when free born men Which he who can, and will, deferv's high praife, What can be jufter in a State than this? Euripid. Hicetid. LONDON, Printed in the Yeare, 1644. PREFACE, By Mr. THOMSON. HERE is no need of a Preface to THE recommend this admirable defence of the best of human rights, to any one who has ever heard of the DIVINE MILTON and it is impoffible to produce better arguments, or to fet them in a more convincing, awakening light. Is it poffible that any Free-born Bris ton, who is capable of thinking, can ever lofe all fenfe of religion and virtue, and of the dignity of human nature to fuch a degree, as to with for that univerfal Ignorance, Darkness, and Barbarity, against against which the abfolute Freedom of the Prefs is the only Prefervative? For what else spreads light, or diffufes knowledge through the world? But it feems, as a sense of the value of health is fometimes loft in the midft of its full enjoyment; fo men, through a habit of liberty, may become infenfible of its ineftimable worth: otherwife would not every one awake, roufe himself, and fay, when the most dear and valuable of all the privileges, that government is defigned to protect, is menaced, "That he will "fooner part with life itself than with "that liberty without which life is not worth the having: that he will sooner "fuffer his eyes to be put out, than his "understanding to be extinguished." |