And the present moment verifies the prescient conjecture of the philosopher.  Such is the licentiousness of our press, that some, not perhaps the most hostile to the cause of freedom, would not be averse to manacle authors once more with an IMPRIMATUR.  It will not be denied that Erasmus was a friend to the freedom of the press; yet he was so shocked at the licentiousness of Luther’s pen, that there was a time when he considered it necessary to restrain its liberty.  It was then as now.  Erasmus had, indeed, been miserably calumniated, and expected future libels.  I am glad, however, to observe, that he afterwards, on a more impartial investigation, confessed that such a remedy was much more dangerous than the disease.  To restrain the liberty of the press, can only be the interest of the individual, never that of the public; one must be a patriot here:  we must stand in the field with an unshielded breast, since the safety of the people is the supreme law.  There were, in Milton’s days, some who said of this institution, that, although the inventors were bad, the thing, for all that, might be good.  “This may be so,” replies the vehement advocate for “unlicensed printing.”  But as the commonwealths have existed through all ages, and have forborne to use it, he sees no necessity for the invention; and held it as a dangerous and suspicious fruit from the tree which bore it.  The ages of the wisest commonwealths, Milton seems not to have recollected, were not diseased with the popular infection of publications, issuing at all hours, and propagated with a celerity on which the ancients could not calculate.  The learned Dr. James, who has denounced the invention of the Indexes, confesses, however, that it was not unuseful when it restrained the publications of atheistic and immoral works.  But it is our lot to bear with all the consequent evils, that we may preserve the good inviolate; since, as the profound Hume has declared, “The LIBERTY OF BRITAIN IS GONE FOR EVER, when such attempts shall succeed.”

A constitutional sovereign will consider the freedom of the press as the sole organ of the feelings of the people.  Calumniators he will leave to the fate of calumny; a fate similar to those who, having overcharged their arms with the fellest intentions, find that the death which they intended for others, in bursting, only annihilates themselves.

OF ANAGRAMS AND ECHO VERSES.

The “true” modern critics on our elder writers are apt to thunder their anathemas on innocent heads:  little versed in the eras of our literature, and the fashions of our wit, popular criticism must submit to be guided by the literary historian.