printer from his press and imprison him for any length of time, for
publishing what they choose to prohibit, although it maybe ever so
proper for public information? The result is that Government may forbid
any species of writing, true as well as false, to be published; may
inflict the heaviest punishments they can devise for disobedience, and
yet we are very gravely assured that this is the "freedom of the press."

A distinction is very frequently relied on between the freedom and the
licentiousness of the press, which it is proper to examine. This seems
to me to refute every other argument which is used on this subject; it
amounts to an admission that there are some acts of the press which
Congress ought not to have power to restrain, and that by the amendment
they are prohibited to restrain these acts. Nov, to justify any act of
Congress, they ought to show the boundary between what is prohibited and
what is permitted, and that the act is not within the prohibited class.
The Constitution has fixed no such boundary, therefore they can pretend
to no power over the press, without claiming the right of defining what
is freedom and what is licentiousness, and that would be to claim a
right which would defeat the Constitution; for every Congress would have
the same right, and the freedom of the press would fluctuate according
to the will of the legislature. This is, therefore, only a new mode of
claiming absolute power over the press.

It is said there is a common law which makes part of the law of the
United States, which restrained the press more than the act of Congress
has done, and that therefore there is no abridgment of its freedom. What
this common law is I cannot conceive, nor have I seen anybody who could
explain himself when he was talking of it. It certainly is not a common
law of the United States, acquired, as that of England was, by
immemorial usage. The standing of the Government makes this impossible.