Gentlemen of the Jury, such judges, with such kings and cabinets, have repeatedly brought the dearest rights of mankind into imminent peril. Sad indeed is the condition of a nation where Thought is not free, where the lips are sewed together, and the press is chained! Yet the evil which has ruined Spain and made an Asia Minor of Papal Italy, once threatened England. Nay, Gentlemen of the Jury, it required the greatest efforts of her noblest sons to vindicate for you and me the right to print, to speak, to think. Milton's "Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing" is one monument of the warfare which lasted from Wicliffe to Thomas Carlyle. But other monuments are the fines and imprisonment, the exile and the beheading of men and women! Words are "sedition," "rebellion," "treason;" nay, even now at least in New England, a true word is a "Misdemeanor," it is "obstructing an officer." At how great cost has our modern liberty of speech been purchased! Answer John Lilburne, answer William Prynn, and Selden, and Eliot, and Hampden, and the other noble men who ----"in the public breach devoted stood, And for their country's cause were prodigal of blood." Answer Fox and Bunyan, and Penn and all the host of Baptists, Puritans, Quakers, martyrs, and confessors--it is by your stripes that we are healed! Healed! are we healed? Ask the court if it be not a "misdemeanor" to say so! A despotic government hates implacably the freedom of the press. In 1680 the Lord Chief Justice of England declared the opinion of the twelve judges "indeed all subscribe that to _print or publish any news-books, or pamphlets of news whatsoever, is illegal; that it is a manifest intent to the breach of the peace_, and they may be proceeded against by law for an illegal thing." "And that is for a public notice to all people, and especially printers and booksellers, that _they ought to print no book or pamphlet of news whatsoever without authority;" "they shall be punished if they do it without authority_, though there is nothing reflecting on the government."[91] Judge Scroggs was right--it was "resisting an officer," at least "obstructing" him in his wickedness. In England, says Lord Campbell, the name and family of Scroggs are both extinct. So much the worse for you and me, Gentlemen. The Scroggses came over to America; they settled in Massachusetts, they thrive famously in Boston; only the name is changed. [Footnote 91: 7 St. Tr. 1127.]