With the Restoration of Charles II the control of the press was continued by means of the Licensing Act of 1662, passed several times for periods of two years, finally expiring in 1679.[42] This was essentially a republication of the Star Chamber order of 1637, but since the Star Chamber no longer existed the scene was changed from that Court to the Old Bailey. In 1679, at the trial of Henry Carr,[43] indicted for some passages in a weekly paper, the Lord Chief Justice Scroggs declared it criminal at common law to “write on the subject of government, whether in terms of praise or censure, it is not material; for no man has a right to say anything of government.” In 1685, on the accession of James II, the Licensing Act was passed for a period of seven years, and in 1692, (during the reign of William and Mary), it was renewed for one year and the session of the following Parliament. In 1695 the House of Commons refused to again pass it, and in this way the Act expired, never to be renewed, and the press was placed on a footing of equality before the law with all other trades and occupations. And yet, as has been well pointed out by Macaulay,[44] the reasons given by the Parliament for their action did not in any way touch on the question of the rightfulness of a free press, but rather dealt with certain complaints in regard to the provisions of the law and the mode of application. “This paper,” he writes, “completely vindicates the resolution to which the Commons had come. But it proves at the same time that they knew not what they were doing, what a power they were calling into existence. They pointed out concisely, clearly, forcibly, and sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, the absurdities and iniquities of the statute which was about to expire. But all their objections will be found to relate to matters of detail. On the great question of principle, on the question whether the liberty of unlicensed printing be, on the whole, a blessing or a curse to society, not a word is said. The Licensing Act is condemned, not as a thing essentially evil, but on account of the petty grievances, the exactions, the jobs, the commercial restrictions, the domiciliary visits, which were incidental to it. It is pronounced mischievous because it enables the Company of Stationers to extort money from publishers, because it empowers agents of the government to search houses under the authority of general warrants, because it confines the foreign book trade to the port of London, because it detains packages of books at the Custom House till the pages are mildewed. The Commons complain that the amount of the fee which the licensers may demand is not fixed. They complain that it is made penal in an officer of the Customs to open a box of books from abroad, except in the presence of one of the censors of the press. How, it is very sensibly asked, is the officer to know that there are books in the box