Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

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
Χρησόν τι βούλευμ ̓ εἰς μέσον φέρειν, ἔχων.
Καὶ ταῦθ ̓ ὁ χρήζων, λαμπρὸς ἔσθ', ὁ μὴ θέλων,
Σιγᾷ, τί τούτων ἔσιν ἰσαίτερον πόλει ;

Euripid. Hicetid.

This is true Liberty when free born men
Having to advise the public may speak free,

Which he who can, and will, deferv's high praife,
Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;

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 Briton, 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, againft

against which the abfolute Freedom of the Press is the only Prefervative? For what else spreads light, or diffuses knowledge through the world? But it feems, as a sense of the value of health is fometimes loft in the midst of its full enjoyment; fo men, through a habit of liberty, may become infenfible of its ineftimable worth: otherwife would not every one awake, rouse himself, and say, 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 fooner "fuffer his eyes to be put out, than his "understanding to, be extinguished."

We are told in history of a people that, after they had been inured to flavery, were in a panick fear, when their liberty was offered to them. And this terrible effect of flavery ought to make every lover of mankind tremble at the thoughts of any steps or approaches towards the diminution of liberty. "For "without it, as Homer has told us,

men foon ceafe to be men: they foon ❝cease to be rational creatures."

Now without the absolute unbounded freedom of writing and publishing, there is no liberty; no fhadow of it: it is an empty found. For what can Liberty mean, if it does not mean, the Liberty of exercifing, improving, and informing *The Cappadocians.

our

« VorigeDoorgaan »