s not affect political
opinions alone, but it extends to all the opinions of men, and it
modifies customs as well as laws. In another part of this work I shall
attempt to determinate the degree of influence which the liberty of
the press has exercised upon civil society in the United States, and to
point out the direction which it has given to the ideas, as well as the
tone which it has imparted to the character and the feelings, of the
Anglo-Americans, but at present I purpose simply to examine the effects
produced by the liberty of the press in the political world.

I confess that I do not entertain that firm and complete attachment to
the liberty of the press which things that are supremely good in their
very nature are wont to excite in the mind; and I approve of it more
from a recollection of the evils it prevents than from a consideration
of the advantages it ensures.

If any one could point out an intermediate and yet a tenable position
between the complete independence and the entire subjection of the
public expression of opinion, I should perhaps be inclined to adopt it;
but the difficulty is to discover this position. If it is your intention
to correct the abuses of unlicensed printing and to restore the use of
orderly language, you may in the first instance try the offender by
a jury; but if the jury acquits him, the opinion which was that of a
single individual becomes the opinion of the country at large. Too much
and too little has therefore hitherto been done. If you proceed, you
must bring the delinquent before a court of permanent judges. But even
here the cause must be heard before it can be decided; and the very
principles which no book would have ventured to avow are blazoned
forth in the pleadings, and what was obscurely hinted at in a single
composition is then repeated in a multitude of other publications.
The language in which a thought is embodied is the mere carcass of the
thought, and not the idea itself; tribunals may condemn the form, but
the sense and spirit of the work is too subtle for their authority. Too
much has still been done to recede, too little to attain your end; you
must therefore proceed. If you establish a censorship of the press, the
tongue of the public speaker will still make itself heard, and you have
only increased the mischief. The powers of thought do not rely, like the
powers of physical strength, upon the number of their mechanical agents,
nor can a host of authors be