CHAP. XIV.] AND RELIGION. 403 



house. The experience of the world suggests 

 this remark ; for, look where you will, you 

 will see virtue in all the walks of life hand in 

 hand with freedom of discussion, and vice hand 

 in hand with censorships and other laws to 

 cramp the press. England, once so free, so 

 virtuous and so happy, has seen misery and 

 crimes increase and the criminal laws multiply 

 in the exact proportion of the increase of the 

 restraints on the press and of the increase of 

 the severity in punishing what are called libels. 

 And, if this had not taken place it would have 

 been very wonderful. Men who have the hand 

 ling of the public money, and who know that 

 the parliament is such as to be silenced, will be 

 very apt to squander that money; this squan 

 dering causes heavy taxes ; these produce misery 

 amongst the greater number of the people ; this 

 misery produces crimes; to check these new 

 penal laws are passed. Thus it is in England, 

 where new hanging places, new and enlarged 

 jails, prisons on the water, new modes of trans 

 porting, a new species of peace officers, a new 

 species of Justices of the Peace, troops em 

 ployed regularly in aid of the magistrate, and 

 at last, spies and blood-money bands, all pro 

 claim a real revolution in the nature of the go 

 vernment. If the press had continued free, 

 these sad effects of a waste of the public money 



