Opening the text

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I

General

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I

Literature -- Collections

What should ye do then? should ye suppress all this flowery crop of
knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this
city? should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to
bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but
what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons,
they who counsel ye to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye
suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to
know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking,
there can not be assigned a truer than your own mild and free and
humane government. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your
own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty which is
the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath rarefied and
enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven; this is that
which hath enfranchised, enlarged and lifted up our apprehensions
degrees above themselves.

Ye can not make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly
pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us
so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can
grow ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but
you then must first become that which ye can not be, oppressive,
arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That
our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the
search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue
of your own virtue propagated in us; ye can not suppress that, unless
ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may dispatch
at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to ye,
and excite others? not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and
his four nobles of Danegelt. Altho I dispraise not the defense of
just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me
the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to
conscience, above all liberties.




VI

OF FUGITIVE AND CLOISTERED VIRTUE[83]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

General

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I

Literature -- Collections

What should ye do then? should ye suppress all this flowery crop of
knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this
city? should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to
bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but
what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons,
they who counsel ye to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye
suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to
know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking,
there can not be assigned a truer than your own mild and free and
humane government. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your
own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty which is
the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath rarefied and
enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven; this is that
which hath enfranchised, enlarged and lifted up our apprehensions
degrees above themselves.

Ye can not make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly
pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us
so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can
grow ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but
you then must first become that which ye can not be, oppressive,
arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That
our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the
search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue
of your own virtue propagated in us; ye can not suppress that, unless
ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may dispatch
at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to ye,
and excite others? not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and
his four nobles of Danegelt. Altho I dispraise not the defense of
just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me
the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to
conscience, above all liberties.




VI

OF FUGITIVE AND CLOISTERED VIRTUE[83]

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I

The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I

No reviews yet