It is manifest that such a doctrine was irreconcilable with the interests of any party out of power, whose best hope to regain it is commonly by prepossessing the nation with a bad opinion of their adversaries. Nor would it have been possible for any ministry to stop the torrent of a free press, under the secret guidance of a powerful faction, by a few indictments for libel. They found it generally more expedient and more agreeable to borrow weapons from the same armoury, and retaliate with unsparing invective and calumny. This was first practised (first, I mean, with the avowed countenance of government) by Swift in the _Examiner_, and some of his other writings. And both parties soon went such lengths in this warfare that it became tacitly understood that the public characters of statesmen, and the measures of administration, are the fair topics of pretty severe attacks. Less than this indeed would not have contented the political temper of the nation, gradually and without intermission becoming more democratical, and more capable, as well as more accustomed, to judge of its general interests, and of those to whom they were intrusted. The just limit between political and private censure has been far better drawn in these later times, licentious as we still may justly deem the press, than in an age when courts of justice had not deigned to acknowledge, as they do at present, its theoretical liberty. No writer, except of the most broken reputation, would venture at this day on the malignant calumnies of Swift.