_The liberty of the press is a subject of the greatest importance, and in which every individual is as much concerned as he is in any other part of liberty._ _New York Weekly Journal_ November 12, 1733 THE TRIAL OF Peter Zenger EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY Vincent Buranelli [Illustration: Publisher Logo] _Washington Square New York University Press 1957_ © 1957 by New York University Press, Inc. Library of Congress catalogue card number: 57-6370 Manufactured in the United States of America [Illustration: Front page of New-York Weekly Journal] Numb. XVI. THE New-York Weekly JOURNAL. _Containing the freshest Advices, Foreign, and Domestick._ _MUNDAY_ February 18, 1733. Mr. _Zenger_; _I beg you will give the following Sentiments of_ CATO, _a Place in your_ weekly Journal, _and you’ll oblige one of your Subscribers_. Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom, and no such Thing as public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech, which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know. This sacred Privilege is so essential to free Governnments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to publick Traytors. This secret was so well known, to the Court of King _Charles_ the First, that his wicked Ministry procured a Proclamation to forbid the People to talk of Parliaments, which those Traytors had laid aside. To assert the undoubted Right of the Subject, and defend his Majesty’s legal Prerogative, was called Disaffection, and punished as Sedition. That Men ought to speak well of their Governours, is true, while their Governours deserve to be well Spoken of, but to do publick Mischief without Hearing of it is only the Prerogative and Felicity of Tyranny a free People will be shewing that they are so, by their Freedom of Speech.