© 1957 by New York University Press, Inc.
Library of Congress catalogue card number: 57-6370
Manufactured in the United States of America
Front page of New-York Weekly Journal
Numb. XVI.
THE
New-York Weekly JOURNAL.
Containing the freshest Advices, Foreign, and Domestick.
MUNDAY February 18, 1733.
Mr. Zenger;
I beg you will give the following Sentiments of CATO, a Place in your weekly Journal, and you’ll oblige one of your Subscribers.
Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom, and no such Thing as public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech, which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.
This sacred Privilege is so essential to free Governnments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to publick Traytors.
This secret was so well known, to the Court of King Charles the First, that his wicked Ministry procured a Proclamation to forbid the People to talk of Parliaments, which those Traytors had laid aside.
To assert the undoubted Right of the Subject, and defend his Majesty’s legal Prerogative, was called Disaffection, and punished as Sedition.
That Men ought to speak well of their Governours, is true, while their Governours deserve to be well Spoken of, but to do publick Mischief without Hearing of it is only the Prerogative and Felicity of Tyranny a free People will be shewing that they are so, by their Freedom of Speech.
The Administration of Government, is nothing else but the Attendance of the Trustees of the People upon the Interest, and Affairs of the People. And it is the Part and Business of the People, for whose Sake alone all publick Matters are or ought to be transacted, to see whether they be well or ill transacted; so it is the Interest, and ought to be the Ambition of all honest Magistrates, to have their Deeds openly examined and publickly scanned.
Freedom of Speech is ever the Symptom as well as the Effect of good Government. In old Rome all was left to the Judgment and Pleasure of the People, who examined the public Proceedings with such Discretion, and censured those who administred them with such Equity and Mildness, that in the Space of three Hundred Years, not five public Ministers suffered unjustly. Indeed whenever the Commons proceeded to Violence, the great ones had been the Agressors.
Guilt only dreads Liberty of Speech, which drags it out of its Lurking Holes and exposes its Deformity and horror to to[sic] Day light; the best Princes have ever incouraged and promoted freedom of Speech they know that upright Measures would defend themselves and that all upright Men would defend them. Tacitus speaking of the Reign of good Princes says with extasy; A blessed Time, when you might think what you would, and Speak what you Thought.
I doubt not but old Spencer and his Son who were the chief Ministers and Betrayers of Edward the Second would have been glad to have stopt the Mouths of all the honest Men in England. They dreaded to be called Traytors because they were Traytors. And I dare say Queen Elizabeths
