d, and that mankind are at the expense of supporting it. The
defects of every government and constitution both as to principle and
form, must, on a parity of reasoning, be as open to discussion as the
defects of a law, and it is a duty which every man owes to society to
point them out. When those defects, and the means of remedying them, are
generally seen by a nation, that nation will reform its government or
its constitution in the one case, as the government repealed or reformed
the law in the other. The operation of government is restricted to the
making and the administering of laws; but it is to a nation that the
right of forming or reforming, generating or regenerating constitutions
and governments belong; and consequently those subjects, as subjects
of investigation, are always before a country as a matter of right, and
cannot, without invading the general rights of that country, be made
subjects for prosecution. On this ground I will meet Mr. Burke whenever
he please. It is better that the whole argument should come out than to
seek to stifle it. It was himself that opened the controversy, and he
ought not to desert it.

I do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven years
longer in any of the enlightened countries in Europe. If better reasons
can be shown for them than against them, they will stand; if the
contrary, they will not. Mankind are not now to be told they shall not
think, or they shall not read; and publications that go no farther than
to investigate principles of government, to invite men to reason and to
reflect, and to show the errors and excellences of different systems,
have a right to appear. If they do not excite attention, they are not
worth the trouble of a prosecution; and if they do, the prosecution will
amount to nothing, since it cannot amount to a prohibition of reading.
This would be a sentence on the public, instead of the author, and would
also be the most effectual mode of making or hastening revolution.

On all cases that apply universally to a nation, with respect to systems
of government, a jury of twelve men is not competent to decide. Where
there are no witnesses to be examined, no facts to be proved, and where
the whole matter is before the whole public, and the merits or demerits
of it resting on their opinion; and where there is nothing to be known
in a court, but what every body knows out of it, every twelve men is
equally as good a jury as the other, a