Ask you what provocation I have had?
The strong antipathy of good to bad.
When Truth or Virtue an affront endures,
Th’ affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours.
Mine, as a foe profess’d to false pretence,
Who think a coxcomb’s honour like his sense;
Mine, as a friend to ev’ry worthy mind;
And mine as man, who feel for all mankind.
Fr.
You’re strangely proud.
Po.
So proud, I am no slave:
So impudent, I own myself no knave;
So odd, my country’s ruin makes me grave.
Yes, I am proud: I must be proud to see
Men not afraid of God, afraid of me:
Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne,
Yet touch’d and sham’d by ridicule alone.
O sacred weapon! left for Truth’s defence,
Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!
To all but Heav’n-directed hands deny’d,
The Muse may give thee, but the gods must guide;
Rev’rent I touch thee! but with honest zeal,
To rouse the watchmen of the public weal,
To Virtue’s work provoke the tardy Hall,
And goad the prelate slumb’ring in his stall.
Ye tinsel insects! whom a court maintains,
That count your beauties only by your stains,
Spin all your cobwebs o’er the eye of day,
The Muse’s wing shall brush you all away:
All his Grace preaches, all his Lordship sings,
All that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings.
All, all but Truth, drops dead-born from the Press,
Like the last Gazette, or the last Address.
* * * * * * * * *
Yes, the last pen for Freedom let me draw,
When Truth stands trembling on the edge of Law;
Here, last of Britons! let your names be read:
Are none, none living? let me praise the dead,
And for that cause which made your fathers shine,
Fall by the Votes of their degen’rate line.
Such were the sentiments of that writer, who, more than all the rest put together, has done honour to English literature. Such was the language of the friend and companion of Bolingbroke and Atterbury: of the man, whose writings were the admiration of his day, and the model for succeeding times; of the man, whose acquaintance and friendship were sought by all the statesmen of his time; of a man, whom a queen wished to visit, but whose scrupulous independence declined the intended honour.
Now, can any man show me in any periodical publication of the present day, language more completely divested of squeamishness than this? Does any political writer of this day presume to go beyond what is here exhibited; and what was practised by this accomplished gentleman? To our clamourers we may say as he did to his: “Speak out, and bid us blame no rogues at all; for that is the point, at which, it is evident, the venal writers are aiming. Pope was freely permitted to “strike that Wild,” the famous pick-pocket; but the clamourers wished to prevent him from soaring higher. Here, too, we see an exact similarity: we, too, may take a free range in attacking the poor shoe-less caitiffs, who are brought before the police magistrates, whom, before they are tried, we call rogues, villains, and what else we please, naming them at the same time. Here, against these miserable wretches, we have “freedom of the press enough;” but, if we so much as laugh at those, who “make saints of queens, and gods of kings,” we are branded as conspiring traitors, as men having formed a settled scheme for overturning the monarchical branch of the constitution. In another poem, and that, too, the most admirable of all his admirable works, he has these verses.
A nymph of quality admires our Knight:
He marries, bows at court, and grows polite;
Leaves the dull cits, and joins (to please the fair)
The well-bred cuckolds of St. James’s air;
First for his son a gay commission buys,
Who drinks, whores, fights, and in a duel dies:
His daughter flaunts a Viscount’s tawdry wife;
She bears a coronet and p—x for life.
If any of us were to publish, from our pens, a story like this, it would be produced as a certain proof of our intention, of our settled design, of our deliberate scheme, for overturning the privileged orders, and with them the whole of the establishments of the kingdom. Yet, in the days of Pope, that man would have been laughed to scorn, who should have attempted to set up such a clamour; though despotism was much less prevalent in that day, throughout the whole of Europe, than in the day in which we live. Here is “coarseness” for you! Yet is this poem published now, daily; and is to be sold, and is sold, at every bookseller’s shop in England. Why not suppress these publications? That they have their effect is evident, even from the use I am now making of them. And, a publication is still a publication, whether the book be of ancient or modern date. Why not put down all these publications, with which our printing-offices, and book-shops, and circulating-libraries teem? Why not put them down, and not expose us to the mortification of seeing, and the danger of being led to imitate, the boldness of our celebrated countrymen? Why not put down these works, which are read more in one day, than all the Anti-Jacobin writings that ever were published, or have ever been read; not excepting the Weekly Anti-Jacobin, with which the series began, the writers of which, by-the-bye, affected to imitate Pope, but whose poetry as well as whose prose, after having assisted to ruin the bookseller, have, long since, been consigned over to the trunk-maker; though not destitute of “personality,” or of “filthy” allusion? Why not put down the works of Pope, and Swift, and Gay, and Garth, and Akenside, and Churchill, and scores of others; nay, and of poor Johnson, too, though a dependant and a pensioner; and of Milton, and Locke, and Paley. The list is endless. Why not put them all down? Why not burn them all by the hands of the common hangman, and not expose us to the danger of imbibing, and acting upon, their principles, and, according to our abilities, imitating their writings?
Of the constitution of England the liberty of the press constitutes an essential part. The power, lodged in the crown and its ministers, has been there lodged upon the presumption, upon the implied condition, that the exercise of it shall be open to public, free, and unrestrained, investigation, through the means of the press. It is in this sense, and this sense only, that the phrase “liberty of the press” has any comprehensible political meaning. To utter lies is always a moral offence; to utter them to any one’s injury is, and always has been, an offence punishable by law. If, therefore, the utterer cannot prove the truth of what he has uttered, and if it be proved that his lies have produced even a fair probable injury, he ought to suffer for the offence. But as to opinions; to make men liable to punishment for opinions, is, at once, to say, “Slave! you shall not utter your thoughts.” If the opinion be accompanied with reasons, these are the reasons to be examined; if good, the opinion will, and ought to, have weight with the reader; if bad, or if no reasons at all be given, the opinion is mere wind; it passes for nothing, and can have no effect.
It is an observation that can have escaped no man, that despotic governments have never tolerated free discussions on political matters. The reason is plain; that their