LIFE OF GOLDSMITH. ix 



tack on the author in one of the public prints. Enraged at this abusive publication, Dr. Gold- 

 smith repaired to the house of the publisher, and, after remonstrating on the malignity of this 

 attack on his character, began to apply his cane to the shoulders of the publisher, who, 

 making a powerful resistance, from being the defensive soon became the offensive combatant. 

 Dr. Kenrick, who was sitting in a private room of the publisher's, hearing a noise in the shop, 

 came in, put an end to the fight, and conveyed the Doctor to a coach. The papers instantly 

 teemed with fresh abuse on the impropriety of the Doctor's attempting to beat a person in 

 his own house, on which, in the Daily Advertiser of Wednesday, March 31, 1773, he inserted 

 the following address. 



' TO THE PUBLIC. 



' Lest it may be supposed that I have been willing to correct in others an abuse of which I 

 have been guilty myself, I beg leave to declare, that, in all my life, I never wrote, or dictated, 

 a single paragraph, letter, or essay, in a newspaper, except a few moral essays, under the 

 character of a Chinese, about ten years ago, in the Ledger; and a letter, to which I signed 

 my name, in the St. James's Chronicle. If the liberty of the press therefore has been abused, 

 I have had no hand in it. 



' I have always considered the press as the protector of our freedom, as a watchful guar- 

 dian, capable of uniting the weak against the encroachments of power. What concerns the 

 public, most properly admits of a public discussion. But of late, the press has turned from 

 defending public interest, to making inroads upon private life; from combating the strong, to 

 overwhelming the feeble. No condition is now too obscure for its abuse, and the protector is 

 become the tyrant of the people. In this manner the freedom of the press is beginning to sow 

 the seeds of its own dissolution; the great must oppose it from principle, and the weak from 

 fear; till, at last, every rank of mankind shall be found to give up its benefits, content with se- 

 curity from its insults. 



' How to put a stop to this licentiousness, by which all are indiscriminately abused, and by 

 which vice consequently escapes in the general censure, I am unable to tell ; all I could wish 

 is, that, as the law gives us no protection against the injury, so it should give calumniators no 

 shelter after having provoked correction. The insults which we receive before the public. 

 by being more open, are the more distressing; by treating them with silent contempt, we do 

 not pay a sufficient deference to the opinion of the world. By recurring to leg:il redress, we 

 too often expose the weakness of the law, which only serves to increase our mortification by 

 failing to relieve us. In short, every man should singly consider himself as a guardian of the 

 liberty of the press, and, as far as his influence can extend, should endeavour to prevent its 

 licentiousness becoming at last the grave of its freedom. 



6 'OLIVER GOLDSMITH.' 



