to be joined in one sentence of condemnation with the editor of Filmer, was too much.  How deeply Burnet was wounded appeared many years later, when, after his death, his History of his Life and Times was given to the world.  In that work he is ordinarily garrulous even to minuteness about all that concerns himself, and sometimes relates with amusing ingenuousness his own mistakes and the censures which those mistakes brought upon him.  But about the ignominious judgment passed by the House of Commons on his Pastoral Letter he has preserved a most significant silence.397

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour to those who contrived it, produced important and salutary effects.  Before the conduct of the unlucky licenser had been brought under the consideration of Parliament, the Commons had resolved, without any division, and, as far as appears, without any discussion, that the Act which subjected literature to a censorship should be continued.  But the question had now assumed a new aspect; and the continuation of the Act was no longer regarded as a matter of course.  A feeling in favour of the liberty of the press, a feeling not yet, it is true, of wide extent or formidable intensity, began to show itself.  The existing system, it was said, was prejudicial both to commerce and to learning.  Could it be expected that any capitalist would advance the funds necessary for a great literary undertaking, or that any scholar would expend years of toil and research on such an undertaking, while it was possible that, at the last moment, the caprice, the malice, the folly of one man might frustrate the whole design?  And was it certain that the law which so grievously restricted both the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought had really added to the security of the State?  Had not recent experience proved that the licenser might himself be an enemy of their Majesties, or, worse still, an absurd and perverse friend; that he might suppress a book of which it would be for their interest that every house in the country should have a copy, and that he might readily give his sanction to a libel which tended to make them hateful to their people, and which deserved to be torn and burned by the hand of Ketch?  Had the government gained much by establishing a literary police which prevented Englishmen from having the History of the Bloody Circuit, and allowed them, by way of compensation, to read tracts which represented King William and Queen Mary as conquerors?

In that age persons who were not specially interested in a public bill very seldom petitioned Parliament against it or for it.  The only petitions therefore which were at this conjuncture presented to the two Houses against the censorship came from booksellers, bookbinders and printers.398 But the opinion which these classes expressed was certainly not confined to them.