_The Present Crisis_, therefore, of 1775, must retain the distinction of having been the last book to be condemned to the public fire; and with it a practice which can appeal for its descent to classical Greece and Rome passed at last out of fashion and favour, without any actual legislative abolition. When, in 1795, the great stir was made by Reeve's _Thoughts on English Government_, Sheridan's proposal to have it burnt met with little approval, and it escaped with only a censure. Reeve, president of an association against Republicans and Levellers, like Cowell and Brecknock before him, gave offence by the extreme claims he made for the English monarch. The relation between our two august chambers and the monarchy he compared to that between goodly branches and the tree itself: they were only branches, deriving their origin and nutriment from their common parent; but though they might be lopped off, the tree would remain a tree still. The Houses could give advice and consent, but the Government and its administration in all its parts rested wholly and solely with the King and his nominees. That a book of such sentiments should have escaped burning is doubtless partly due to the panic of Republicanism then raging in England; but it also shows the gradual growth of a sensible indifference to the power of the pen. And when we think of the freedom, almost unchecked, of the literature of the century now closing, of the impunity with which speculation attacks the very roots of all our political and theological traditions, and compare this state of liberty with the servitude of literature in the three preceding centuries, when it rested with archbishop or Commons or Lords not only to commit writings to the flames but to inflict cruelties and indignities on the writers, we cannot but recognise how proportionate to the advance we have made in toleration have been the benefits we have derived from it. Possibly this toleration arose from the gradual discovery that the practical consequences of writings seldom keep pace with the aim of the writer or the fears of authority; that, for instance, neither is property endangered by literary demonstrations of its immorality, nor are churches emptied by criticism. At all events, taking the risk of consequences, we have entered on an era of almost complete literary impunity; the bonfire is as extinct as the pillory; the only fiery ordeal is that of criticism, and dread of the reviewer has taken the place of all fear of the hangman.