kind that have any Christianity, or fear of
Heaven or Hell, to bestir themselves, to rid the nation of
such caterpillars, such monsters of villany as those are!"

Of course the packed jury found him guilty; he was fined L10,000.[90]

[Footnote 90: 7 St. Tr. 1333.]

Gentlemen of the Jury, such judges, with such kings and cabinets, have
repeatedly brought the dearest rights of mankind into imminent peril.
Sad indeed is the condition of a nation where Thought is not free,
where the lips are sewed together, and the press is chained! Yet the
evil which has ruined Spain and made an Asia Minor of Papal Italy,
once threatened England. Nay, Gentlemen of the Jury, it required the
greatest efforts of her noblest sons to vindicate for you and me the
right to print, to speak, to think. Milton's "Speech for the Liberty
of unlicensed Printing" is one monument of the warfare which lasted
from Wicliffe to Thomas Carlyle. But other monuments are the fines and
imprisonment, the exile and the beheading of men and women! Words are
"sedition," "rebellion," "treason;" nay, even now at least in New
England, a true word is a "Misdemeanor," it is "obstructing an
officer." At how great cost has our modern liberty of speech been
purchased! Answer John Lilburne, answer William Prynn, and Selden, and
Eliot, and Hampden, and the other noble men who

----"in the public breach devoted stood,
And for their country's cause were prodigal of blood."

Answer Fox and Bunyan, and Penn and all the host of Baptists,
Puritans, Quakers, martyrs, and confessors--it is by your stripes that
we are healed! Healed! are we healed? Ask the court if it be not a
"misdemeanor" to say so!

A despotic government hates implacably the freedom of the press. In
1680 the Lord Chief Justice of England declared the opinion of the
twelve judges "indeed all subscribe that to _print or publish any
news-books, or pamphlets of news whatsoever, is illegal; that it is a
manifest intent to the breach of the peace_, and they may be proceeded
against by law for an illegal thing." "And that is for a public notice
to all people, and especially printers and booksellers, that _they
ought to print no book or pamphlet of news whatsoever without
authority;" "they shall be punished if they do it without authority_,
though there is nothing reflecting on the government."[91] Judge
Scroggs was right--it was "resisting an officer," at least
"obstructing" him in his wickedness.