“If all the works he produced were cancelled and forgotten ... yet give one in hand, the treatise for the liberty of unlicensed printing, the _Areopagitica_, and I would boldly maintain, not only that he had satisfied every call which his country could make on the most devoted of her sons, but that he had vindicated their rights and sustained his own reputation in the greatest pen writing in the English language. He wished, as he tells us in this treatise, to deliver the press from the restraints with which it was incumbered, that the power of determining what ought to be published and what suppressed, might no longer be entrusted to captious lawyers or knavish priests, or even grave chancellors and venerable chief justices.... I shall give you, even at the risk of trying your patience, some extracts from this treatise; but first let me tell you, that it establishes in the clearest way, not only that Milton was the fast friend of toleration, but that the charges of being an enemy of all order and of all monarchy, so industriously made against him, are without foundation.... And then he gives expression to this noble sentiment, fit to be engraven in letters of gold. Let statesmen hear it, and tyrants, civil and ecclesiastical, dwell upon it: ‘Although I dispraise not the defence 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’. I cannot bring myself to hurry over this noble tract. I have read it over again and again; I read it years and years ago, and often since, and now again, for the purpose of addressing you; and the oftener I read it, the more I take it to my heart. If such be its effect upon me, as I fondly hope it may be upon many of you”, etc. Notwithstanding this ardent and enthusiastic declaration, we yet think it would be unfair to impute to the learned lecturer every casual expression or even every deliberate opinion set forth in the speech he so much admires. It is, however, clear that he adopts as his own at least the main features of the doctrine enunciated, and the general character of the argument by which it is defended. This doctrine may be explained in two words: unbounded liberty, on the one hand, to publish and to circulate all manner of opinions; unbounded liberty, on the other, to read all manner of books. The State, it is contended, has no right to forbid, or to repress, those publications which are dangerous to the welfare of society; neither has the Church a right to forbid or to repress those publications which are hostile to the spiritual interests of the faithful. These views we believe to be false and pernicious both as regards the power of the State and the power of the Church. It is, however, under the latter aspect alone that we propose to consider the subject.