An important discussion has arisen since the commencement of the war,
bearing upon the interests of the American Press. The Government has
seen fit, at various times, through its authorities, civil and military,
to suppress the circulation and even the publication of journals which,
in its judgment, gave aid and comfort to the enemy, either by disloyal
publications in reference to our affairs, or by encouraging and
laudatory statements concerning the enemy. The various papers of the
country have severally censured or commended the course of the
Government in this matter, and the issue between the Press and the
Authorities has been regarded as of a sufficiently serious nature to
demand a convocation of editors to consider the subject; of which
convention Horace Greeley was chairman. A few remarks on the nature of
the liberty of the press and on its relations to the governing powers
will not, therefore, at this time, be inopportune.

Men are apt, at times, in the excitement of political partisanship, to
forget that the freedom of the press is, like all other social liberty,
relative and not absolute; that it is not license to publish whatsoever
they please, but only that which is _within certain defined limits_
prescribed by the people as the legitimate extent to which expression
through the public prints should be permitted; and that it is because
these limits are regulated by the whole people, for the whole people,
and not by the arbitrary caprice of a single individual or of an
aristocracy, that the press is denominated free. Let it be remembered,
then, as a starting point, that the press is amenable to the people;
that it is controlled and regulated by them, and indebted to them for
whatever measure of freedom it enjoys.

The scope of this liberty is carefully defined by the statutes, as also
the method by which its transgression is to be punished. These