upon it you can have no public discussion of a public measure, which
is a point which even those who are most offended with the
licentiousness of the press (and it is very exorbitant, very
provoking) will hardly contend for.

So far as to the first opinion, that the doctrine is right and needs
no alteration. 2nd. The next is, that it is wrong, but that we are
not in a condition to help it. I admit, it is true, that there are
cases of a nature so delicate and complicated, that an Act of
Parliament on the subject may become a matter of great difficulty.
It sometimes cannot define with exactness, because the subject-
matter will not bear an exact definition. It may seem to take away
everything which it does not positively establish, and this might be
inconvenient; or it may seem vice versa to establish everything
which it does not expressly take away. It may be more advisable to
leave such matters to the enlightened discretion of a judge, awed by
a censorial House of Commons. But then it rests upon those who
object to a legislative interposition to prove these inconveniences
in the particular case before them. For it would be a most
dangerous, as it is a most idle and most groundless, conceit to
assume as a general principle, that the rights and liberties of the
subject are impaired by the care and attention of the legislature to
secure them. If so, very ill would the purchase of Magna Charta
have merited the deluge of blood, which was shed in order to have
the body of English privileges defined by a positive written law.
This charter, the inestimable monument of English freedom, so long
the boast and glory of this nation, would have been at once an
instrument of our servitude, and a monument of our folly, if this
principle were true. The thirty four confirmations would have been
only so many repetitions of their absurdity, so many new links in