On the Propriety and Expediency of Unlimited Enquiry
I know not a question, within the whole compass of human knowledge, so important as the following; nor any subject more talked of and less understood. The Freedom of the PRESS, is a phrase in every man’s mouth, but few know in what it consists; nor has it yet been determined, whether in the case of Public questions, religious, moral or political, the Press should be subjected to any or to what restrictions.
In the Republic of France, the news-papers that made more free with the characters and measures of the Executive than the latter thought prudent to permit, have been forcibly and repeatedly sup-pressed, and the conductors of them severely and tyrannically punished. The most despotic of the French monarchs, were never guilty of more flagrant violations of the rights of the People, than the Republican Directory in these instances.
