energy and eloquence by MILTON, in his AREOPAGITICA, written against the Presbyterians, who had contended for the Freedom of the Press, when it was under the control of the episcopal Church; but rising afterward into power, they turned apos tates to their own priciples, and abusing their ascendency in Parliament, procured an Order to be published, June 13, 1643, for restraining the Press, and placing "this formidable engine under the "same control, of which they had lately indignantly "complained*." But, notwithstanding the excellence and authority of MILTON's work, the subsequent restraints on the Press, the great object of the Revolution, namely, the security and extension of Liberty, and the particular tenor of the Act of Toleration, rendered the publication of the other Tracts now reviewed seasonable and pointed. And though Licensers and Imprimaturs have been, since that period, confined to Oxford; yet repeated attempts made to restrain it, and frequent prosecutions of Authours and Publishers, in subsequent and recent times, evince the propriety

* Dr. Symmons's Life of MILTON, p. 213, edit. 1806.

and even necessity of often recalling the public attention to the equity, policy, and wisdom of watching the insidious designs, or resisting the more open attacks of Ministers of State against the Liberty of the Press. It should be also considered, whether the arguments which apply against preventing, do not hold good against punishing, the publications of Opinions, that, with or without reason, may be thought per

nicious?

Dr. Johnson, speaking of MILTON'S AREOPAGITICA, says, "the danger of such unbounded

Liberty (of unlicensed Printing), and the danger "of bounding it, have produced a problem in the "science of Government, which human under66. standing seems unable to solve." Let us then have recourse, replies a judicious Writer, to a divine understanding for the solution of it: "Let "both the tares and the wheat grow together till "the harvest, lest while ye gather up the tares,

ye root up also the wheat with them *." Joshua TOULMIN, D.D. in an Historical View of

*

Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, Esqr. vol. II. p. 551.

the State of the Protestant Dissenters in England, from the Revolution to the Accession of Queen Anne.

In the latter of these years, he also issued from the Press his AREOPAGITICA, or Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing, the most splendid of his Prose-Works in English. William GODWIN ; Lives of Edward and John Philipps.