It being a question of law, what are the tests which the courts use in the determination of that question? Those tests, like all the others which the courts have used in the application of criminal law to the case of the individual against whom it is alleged that his act has offended the interests of society, are simple and do not go beyond the actual necessities. Courts in this respect have not forgotten the lessons of history; and of these lessons one which Macaulay’s school boy knows is that under our common law dispensation there has not been, since the abolition of the Courts of Star Chamber and of High Commission, nor will there ever be again, such a spirit in our law as may result, through statute or decision, in the institution of a censorship of the mind in its modes of expression. To use the words of Seabury, _J._, “it is no part of the duty of courts to exercise a censorship over literary productions” (_St. Hubert Guild_ v. _Quinn_, 64 Misc. 336, 340). And it is in that spirit that common law courts have approached any case such as this from the days when the obscene became cognizable by common law courts in the exercise of a jurisdiction which they took over from the Courts Spiritual. (_Rex_ v. _Curl_, 17 How. St. Trials, 153.) It is true that, for a time, during the intellectual ferment in the early part of the Nineteenth Century, the courts, under the inspiration of Lord Eldon _did_ revert to an idea of censorship closely resembling that which Laud advocated in the days of Courts of High Commission; but contemporary opinion of the best minds of the bar, as well as of the public, revolted against this attitude, and the rule thus suggested never became a part of our law. Seabury, _J._, has well traced this as follows: