In 1701, a treatise by John Asgill on the _Covenant of Eternal Life_ was burned by the order of two Parliaments, English and Irish. In 1702, the famous essay by Defoe, _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, was burned by the hangman under order of Parliament and Defoe was sentenced to three days’ punishment in the pillory, to a ruinous fine, and to a long imprisonment. The trial of Saccheverell brought about the burning, in 1710, of a long series of books, including his own sermons and works by both his supporters and adversaries. In 1707, the Grand Jury of Middlesex made a presentment characterising as a public nuisance the essay by Matthew Tyndale entitled the _Rights of the Christian Church_. Tyndale reflects that this proceeding will further “the wider circulation of one of the best books that have been published in our age among many people that would not otherwise have heard of it.” It was burned by the hangman in 1710. In 1722, the Commons agreed with the resolution of the Peers to have burned at the Royal Exchange the declaration of the Pretender issued as the declaration of James III. In 1763, numbers of the _North Briton_, of John Wilkes, who was then himself a member of the House, were, under an order of the two Houses, condemned to be burned at the Royal Exchange. The author was expelled from the House, but secured, after a long contest, a re-election. A volume issued without name in 1775, under the title of _The present Crisis in regard to America considered_, was burned on the 24th of February of that year and is referred to as the last book which the English Parliament has condemned to the flames. In 1795, Sheridan proposes to have publicly burned a treatise by Reeve entitled _Thoughts on English Government_, but his proposal was not supported. The press law, passed as late as December, 1819, imposed a penalty of transportation on the writers or printers of godless and revolutionary works. This law was repealed in 1837, and the legislation of 1869 finally secured an assured freedom for the press. It is the conclusion of Catholic writers, in summing up the history of what they call the exceptionally fierce and brutal censorship of England, that the responsibility for this rests with the original crime committed by the State against the Church universal; and with the continued and demoralising wrong caused by transferring the control of the Church to the civil authorities. The history of political censorship, or of censorship by the State in England, is a large and complex subject to which in a work like this it is of course, possible only to make reference. In 1877 was printed (privately) in London a catalogue which from the title has been classed with the Indexes: _Index librorum prohibitorum_; being notes bio-, biblio-, and icono-graphical and critical on curious and uncommon books, compiled by Pisanus Fraxi. This is, however, simply a list, probably prepared for commercial purposes, of obscene books.