remedies, divorce advertisement, and such matters.  Some newspapers have objected to it, but the right of freedom of the press does not include the right to the use of the mails, and the papers containing the objectionable advertisements may constitutionally be seized or denied delivery, just as convict-made goods may be denied circulation in interstate commerce, by act of Congress, not, of course, of the States.  Mr. Gompers, of the American Federation of Labor, has complained that the injunction of their so-called “unfair list” is an interference with the freedom of the press, and I presume would claim that an injunction against urging, or combining to urge, by oral argument, the members of the various unions throughout the country to boycott a certain person, would be an interference with the right of freedom of speech, and that therefore if the courts did not so decide, the laws should be changed by statute.  This, also, would seem open to the objection of class legislation if extended only to speech or publication in industrial disputes.  It should be noted, however, that the broad principle of freedom of speech by all persons and at all places is first adopted in the American constitutions, freedom of speech in England in its historical principles extending only to freedom of speech in the House of Parliament, and the right of assembly and petition at a public meeting; freedom of the press, however, is the same constitutional principle in both countries, but only extends to the right to publish without previously obtaining the consent of any censor or other authority, and the person publishing still remains responsible for all damages caused by such act.  It is this part of the law which Mr. Gompers would alter, or rather make absolute; so that any notice or threat could be printed and circulated even when a component act of a conspiracy.

By a recent act of Congress the right of freedom of speech does not extend to anarchistic utterances, or speeches or writings aimed against order, the established government, and inciting to assassination or crime.  Such laws are barely constitutional as applied to United States citizens.  The unpopularity of the alien and sedition laws under the administration of John Adams will be remembered.  Since their repeal, no attempt at a law of government libel has been made; very recently, however, where certain gentlemen, mostly holding important government offices, were charged with having made money out of the Panama Canal purchase, the weight and influence of the administration was given to the attempt to indict them and bring them to the courts of the central government at Washington for trial.  This attempt, however, failed in the courts, as, in the Wilkes case, it had failed more than a century before at the bar of public opinion.