9. At the same time it must be confessed that when an error, however flagrant and pestilential, has ceased to shock and scandalize the general body of the commonwealth; when the people listen to the doctrine without indignation, and their worst sentence upon it pronounces it merely "queer," there is little hope of legal restraints there enduring long or effecting much. Penalties for the expression of opinion are available only so far as they tally with the common feeling of the country. When public opinion ceases to bear them out, it is better not to enforce them: for that were but to provoke resentment and make martyrs. No regulations can be maintained except in a congenial atmosphere. Allowance too must be made for the danger of driving the evil to burrow underground. 10. The censorship of opinions even in a model State would vary in method according to men and times. The censorship of the Press in particular might be either by _Imprimatur_ required before printing, or by liability to prosecution after. The _Imprimatur_ might be either for all books, or only for a certain class. It might be either obligatory, or merely matter of counsel, to obtain it. We are not to adopt promiscuously all the praiseworthy institutions of our forefathers. _Readings_.--Cardinal Newman, _Letter to Duke of Norfolk_, § 5; _The Month_ for June, 1883, pp. 200, seqq. * * * * * APPENDIX Of the precepts of Natural Law, some are more simple and of wider extension; others are derivative, complex, and extend to fewer cases. It is a question of more and less, and no hard and fast line of demarcation can be drawn between them. The former however are called _primary_, the latter _secondary_ precepts. Again, the nature of man is the same in all men and at all periods of history for its essential elements, but admits of wide, accidental variation and declension for the worse. Thirdly, it is clear that Natural Law is a law good and suitable for human nature to observe. Starting from these three axioms, we apply the reasoning of St. Thomas, 1a 2æ, q. 96, art. 2, not to human law alone, of which he is speaking, but to sundry secondary precepts of Natural Law. These are his words: