nes so servile that they disgusted even Tories, to be
joined in one sentence of condemnation with the editor of Filmer, was
too much. How deeply Burnet was wounded appeared many years later, when,
after his death, his History of his Life and Times was given to the
world. In that work he is ordinarily garrulous even to minuteness
about all that concerns himself, and sometimes relates with amusing
ingenuousness his own mistakes and the censures which those mistakes
brought upon him. But about the ignominious judgment passed by the House
of Commons on his Pastoral Letter he has preserved a most significant
silence. [397]

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour to those who
contrived it, produced important and salutary effects. Before the
conduct of the unlucky licenser had been brought under the consideration
of Parliament, the Commons had resolved, without any division, and, as
far as appears, without any discussion, that the Act which subjected
literature to a censorship should be continued. But the question had
now assumed a new aspect; and the continuation of the Act was no longer
regarded as a matter of course. A feeling in favour of the liberty of
the press, a feeling not yet, it is true, of wide extent or formidable
intensity, began to show itself. The existing system, it was said, was
prejudicial both to commerce and to learning. Could it be expected that
any capitalist would advance the funds necessary for a great literary
undertaking, or that any scholar would expend years of toil and research
on such an undertaking, while it was possible that, at the last moment,
the caprice, the malice, the folly of one man might frustrate the whole
design? And was it certain that the law which so grievously restricted
both the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought had really added
to the security of the State? Had not recent experience proved that the
licenser might himself be an enemy of their Majesties, or, worse still,
an absurd and perverse friend; that he might suppress a book of which it
would be for their interest that every house in the country should have
a copy, and that he might readily give his sanction to a libel which
tended to make them hateful to their people, and which deserved to be
torn and burned by the hand of Ketch? Had the government gained much by
establishing a literary police which prevented Englishmen from
having the History of the Bloody Circuit, and allowed them, by way of
compe