Plea for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing

THEY, who to states and governors of the commonwealth direct their speech, High Court of Parliament, or, wanting such access in a private condition, write that which they foresee, may advance the public good; I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean endeavor, not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds—some with doubt of what will be the success, others with fear of what will be the censure; some with hope, others with confidence of what they have to speak. And me perhaps each of these dispositions, as the subject was whereon I entered, may have at other times variously affected; and likely might in these foremost expressions now also disclose which of them swayed most, but that the very attempt of this address thus made, and the thought of whom it hath recourse to, hath got the power within me to a passion, far more welcome than incidental to a preface.

John Milton (1608–74)

(1644)

Born in 1608, died in 1674; visited Italy in 1638; began his political writings in 1640; Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth in 1649; became totally blind in 1652; spared at the Restoration under the Indemnity Act; published “Paradise Lost” in 1667.

THEY, who to states and governors of the commonwealth direct their speech, High Court of Parliament, or, wanting such access in a private condition, write that which they foresee, may advance the public good; I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean endeavor, not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds—some with doubt of what will be the success, others with fear of what will be the censure; some with hope, others with confidence of what they have to speak. And me perhaps each of these dispositions, as the subject was whereon I entered, may have at other times variously affected; and likely might in these foremost expressions now also disclose which of them swayed most, but that the very attempt of this address thus made, and the thought of whom it hath recourse to, hath got the power within me to a passion, far more welcome than incidental to a preface.

Which though I stay not to confess ere any ask, I shall be blameless, if it be no other than the joy and gratulation which it brings to all who wish and promote their country’s liberty; whereof this whole discourse proposed will be a certain testimony, if not a trophy. For this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth—that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for. To which if I now manifest by the very sound of this which I shall utter, that we are already in good part arrived, and yet from such a steep disadvantage of tyranny and superstition grounded into our principles as was beyond the manhood of a Roman recovery, it will be attributed first, as is most due, to the strong assistance of God our deliverer, next to your faithful guidance and undaunted wisdom, lords and commons of England. Neither is it in God’s esteem the diminution of His glory, when honorable things are spoken of good men and worthy magistrates; which if I now first should begin to do, after so fair a progress of your laudable deeds, and such a long obligement upon the whole realm to your indefatigable virtues, I might be justly reckoned among the tardiest, and the unwillingest of them that praise ye.

Nevertheless there being three principal things without which all praising is but courtship and flattery: first, when that only is praised which is solidly worth praise; next, when greatest likelihoods are brought that such things are truly and really in those persons to whom they are ascribed; the other, when he who praises, by showing that such his actual persuasion is of whom he writes, can demonstrate that he flatters not. The former two of these I have heretofore endeavored, rescuing the employment from him who went about to impair your merits with a trivial and malignant encomium; the latter as belonging chiefly to mine own acquittal, that whom I so extolled I did not flatter, hath been reserved opportunely to this occasion.

For he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears not to declare as freely what might be done better, gives ye the best covenant of his fidelity; and that his loyalest affection and his hope waits on your proceedings. His highest praising is not flattery, and his plainest advice is a kind of praising. For though I should affirm and hold by argument, that it would fare better with truth, with learning and the commonwealth, if one of your published orders, which I should name, were called in; yet at the same time it could not but much redound to the luster of your mild and equal government, whenas private persons are hereby animated to think ye better pleased with public advice, than other statists have been delighted heretofore with public flattery. And men will then see what difference there is between the magnanimity of a triennial parliament, and that jealous haughtiness of prelates and cabin counselors that usurped of late, whenas they shall observe ye in the midst of your victories and successes more gently brooking written exceptions against a voted order than other courts, which had produced nothing worth memory but the weak ostentation of wealth, would have endured the least signified dislike at any sudden proclamation.

If I should thus far presume upon the meek demeanor of your civil and gentle greatness, lords and commons, as what your published order hath directly said, that to gainsay, I might defend myself with ease, if any should accuse me of being new or insolent, did they but know how much better I find ye esteem it to imitate the old and elegant humanity of Greece, than the barbaric pride of a Hunnish and Norwegian stateliness. And out of those ages, to whose polite wisdom and letters we owe that we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders, I could name him (Note: Isocrates. The work referred to is the one from which Milton obtained his own title, the “Logos Areopagiticus.” ) who from his private house wrote that discourse to the parliament of Athens, that persuades them to change the form of democracy which was then established. Such honor was done in those days to men who professed the study of wisdom and eloquence, not only in their own country, but in other lands, that cities and signiories heard them gladly, and with great respect, if they had aught in public to admonish the state. Thus did Dion Prusæus, a stranger and a private orator, counsel the Rhodians against a former edict; and I abound with other like examples, which to set here would be superfluous.

I know not what should withhold me from presenting ye with a fit instance wherein to show both that love of truth which ye eminently profess, and that uprightness of your judgment which is not wont to be partial to yourselves; by judging over again that order which ye have ordained to regulate printing—that no book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed, unless the same be first approved and licensed by such, or at least one of such, as shall be thereto appointed. For that part which preserves justly every man’s copy to himself, or provides for the poor, I touch not, only to wish they be not made pretenses to abuse and persecute honest and painful men, who offend not in either of these particulars. But that other clause of licensing books, which we thought had died with his brother quadragesimal and matrimonial when the prelates expired, I shall now attend with such a homily, as shall lay before ye, first the inventors of it to be those whom you will be loth to own; next what is to be thought in general of reading, whatever sort the books be; and that this order avails nothing to the suppressing of scandalous, seditious, and libelous books, which were mainly intended to be suppressed. Last that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the stop of Truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that might be yet further made both in religious and civil wisdom.

I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. ’Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.

We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself—slays an immortality rather than a life. But lest I should be condemned of introducing license, while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so much historical, as will serve to show what hath been done by ancient and famous commonwealths against this disorder, till the very time that this project of licensing crept out of the inquisition, was catched up by our prelates, and hath cought some of our presbyters.

We have it not, that can be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity, or church; nor by any statute left us by our ancestors elder or later; nor from the modern custom of any reformed city or church abroad; but from the most antichristian council and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever inquired. Till then books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled than the issue of the womb; no envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man’s intellectual offspring; but if it proved a monster, who denies but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the sea? But that a book, in worse condition than a peccant soul, should be to stand before a jury ere it be born to the world, and undergo yet in darkness the judgment of Radamanth and his colleagues, ere it can pass the ferry backward into light, was never heard before, till that mysterious iniquity, provoked and troubled at the first entrance of Reformation, sought out new limbos and new hells wherein they might include our books also within the number of their damned. And this was the rare morsel so officiously snatched up, and so ill-favoredly imitated by our inquisiturient bishops, and the attendant minorities, their chaplains. That ye like not now these most certain authors of this licensing order, and that all sinister intention was far distant from your thoughts, when ye were importuned the passing it, all men who know the integrity of your actions, and how ye honor Truth, will clear ye readily.

But some will say. What though the inventors were bad, the thing for all that may be good? It may be so; yet if that thing be no such deep invention, but obvious, and easy for any man to light on, and yet best and wisest commonwealths through all ages and occasions have forborne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors of men were the first who took it up, and to no other purpose but to obstruct and hinder the first approach of Reformation, I am of those who believe, it will be a harder alchemy than Lullius (Note: Raymond’s Lully, the famous Spanish alchemist, who became missionary to the Mohammedans in Asia and Africa. ) ever knew, to sublimate any good use out of such an invention. Yet this only is what I request to gain from this reason: that it may be held a dangerous and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it has.

Books are as meats and viands are—some of good, some of evil substance; and yet God, in that unapocryphal vision, said without exception, Rise, Peter, kill and eat, leaving the choice to each man’s discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Whereof what better witness can ye expect I should produce, than one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, Mr. Selden, whose volume of natural and national laws proves, (Note: “De Juri Naturali, etc.” John Selden is best remembered now for his “Table Talk,” which was published thirty-five years after his death. His other works are twenty-six in number. ) not only by great authorities brought together, but by exquisite reasons and theorems almost mathematically demonstrative, that all opinions—yea, errors-known, read, and collated, are of main service and assistance toward the speedy attainment of what is truest. I conceive, therefore, that when God did enlarge the universal diet of man’s body, saving ever the rules of temperance, He then, also, as before, left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of our minds; as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his own leading capacity.

How great a virtue is temperance, how much of moment through the whole life of man! Yet God commits the managing so great a trust, without particular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanor of every grown man. And, therefore, when He Himself tabled the Jews from Heaven, that omer, which was every man’s daily portion of manna, is computed to have been more than might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thrice as many meals. For those actions which enter into a man, rather than issue out of him, and therefore defile not, God uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood of prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser; there were but little work left for preaching, if law and compulsion should grow so fast upon those things which heretofore were governed only by exhortation. Solomon informs us, that much reading is a weariness to the flesh: but neither he nor other inspired author tells us that such or such reading is unlawful; yet certainly had God thought good to limit us herein, it had been much more expedient to have told us what was unlawful than what was wearisome.

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grew up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labor to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil—that is to say, of knowing good by evil. As, therefore, the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.

I can not praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness. Which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with him palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

Seeing, therefore, that those books, and those in great abundance, which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine, can not be suppressed without the fall of learning and of all ability in disputation, and that these books of either sort are most and soonest catching to the learned, from whom to the common people whatever is heretical or dissolute may quickly be conveyed, and that evil manners are as perfectly learnt without books a thousand other ways which can not be stopped, and evil doctrine not with books can propagate, except a teacher guide, which he might also do without writing, and so beyond prohibiting, I am not enabled to unfold, how this cautelous enterprise of licensing can be exempted from the number of vain and impossible attempts. And he who were pleasantly disposed could not well avoid to liken it to the exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate.

Besides another inconvenience, if learned men be the first receivers out of books, and dispreaders both of vice and error, how shall the licensers themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them, or they assume to themselves above all others in the land the grace of infallibility and uncorruptedness? And again if it be true that a wise man, like a good refiner, can gather gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a fool with the best book—yea, or without book; there is no reason that we should deprive a wise man of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain from a fool, that which being restrained will be no hindrance to his folly. For if there should be so much exactness always used to keep that from him which is unfit for his reading, we should in the judgment of Aristotle not only, but of Solomon and of our Savior, not vouchsafe him good precepts, and by consequence not willingly admit him to good books; as being certain that a wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet than a fool will do of sacred Scripture.

’Tis next alleged we must not expose ourselves to temptations without necessity, and next to that, not employ our time in vain things. To both these objections one answer will serve, out of the grounds already laid, that to all men such books are not temptations, nor vanities, but useful drugs and materials wherewith to temper and compose effective and strong medicines, which man’s life can not want. The rest, as children and childish men, who have not the art to qualify and prepare these working minerals, well may be exhorted to forbear, but hindered forcibly they can not be by all the licensing that Sainted Inquisition could ever yet contrive. Which is what I promised to deliver next, That this order of licensing conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed; and hath almost prevented me by being clear already while thus much hath been explaining. See the ingenuity of Truth, who, when she gets a free and willing hand, opens herself faster than the pace of method and discourse can overtake her.

It was the task which I began with, to show that no nation, or well-instituted state, if it valued books at all, did ever use this way of licensing; and it might be answered, that this is a piece of prudence lately discovered. To which I return, that as it was a thing slight and obvious to think on, so if it had been difficult to find out, there wanted not among them long since, who suggested such a course; which they not following, leave us a pattern of their judgment that it was not the not knowing, but the not approving, which was the cause of their not using it.

If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth but what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows, also, and the balconies must be thought on; there are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale; who shall prohibit them—shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads, even to the ballatry and the gamut of every municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman’s Arcadias, and his Monte Mayors.

Next, what more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony: who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting? And what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes that frequent those houses where drunkenness is sold and harbored? Our garments also should be referred to the licensing of some more sober workmasters to see them cut into a less wanton garb. Who shall regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth, male and female together, as is the fashion of this country? Who shall still appoint what shall be discoursed, what presumed, and no further? Lastly, who shall forbid and separate all idle resort, all evil company? These things will be, and must be; but how they shall be least hurtful, how least enticing, herein consists the grave and governing wisdom of a state.

If every action, which is good or evil in man at ripe years, were to be under pittance and prescription, and compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise could be then due to well-doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or continent? Many there be that complain at Divine Providence for suffering Adam to transgress; foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence. Wherefore did he create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin: for, besides that it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing, though some part of it may for a time be withdrawn from some persons, it can not from all, in such a universal thing as books are; and when this is done, yet the sin remains entire. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left; ye can not bereave him of his covetousness. Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye can not make them chaste, that came not thither so: such great care and wisdom is required to the right managing of this point. Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue; for the matter of them both is the same—remove that, and ye remove them both alike.

This justifies the high providence of God, who, though He commands us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out before us, even to a profuseness, all desirable things, and gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety.

Yet though ye should condescend to this, which God forbid, the order still would be but fruitless and defective to that end whereto ye meant it. If to prevent sects and schisms, who is so unread or so uncatechized in story, that hath not heard of many sects refusing books as a hindrance, and preserving their doctrine unmixed for many ages, only by unwritten traditions? The Christian faith, for that was once a schism, is not unknown to have spread all over Asia, ere any Gospel or Epistle was seen in writing. If the amendment of manners be aimed at, look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitional rigor that hath been executed upon books.

Another reason, whereby to make it plain that this order will miss the end it seeks, consider by the quality which ought to be in every licenser. It can not be denied but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birth or death of books, whether they may be wafted into this world or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious; there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what is passable or not, which is also no mean injury. If he be of such worth as behooves him, there can not be a more tedious and unpleasing journey work, a greater lose of time levied upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, ofttimes huge volumes. There is no book that is acceptable unless at certain seasons; but to be enjoined the reading of that at all times, and in a hand scarce legible, whereof three pages would not down at any time in the fairest print, is an imposition which I can not believe how he that values time and his own studies, or is but of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure. In this one thing I crave leave of the present licensers to be pardoned for so thinking; who doubtless took this office up, looking on it through their obedience to the Parliament, whose command perhaps made all things seem easy and unlaborious to them; but that this short trial hath wearied them out already, their own expressions and excuses to them who make so many journeys to solicit their license are testimony enough. Seeing therefore those who now possess the employment by all evident signs wish themselves well rid of it, and that no man of worth, none that is not a plain unthrift of his own hours is ever likely to succeed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary of a press corrector; we may easily foresee what kind of licensers we are to expect hereafter, either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuniary. This is what I had to show, wherein this order can not conduce to that end, whereof it bears the intention.

What advantage is it to be a man over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only escaped the ferula to come under the fescue of an Imprimatur? if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar-lad under his pedagog, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? He who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great argument to think himself reputed in the commonwealth, wherein he was born, for other than a fool or a foreigner. When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends; after all which done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that writ before him. If, in this the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labor of book-writing, and if he be not repulsed or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor’s hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer, it can not be but a dishonor and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning.

And what if the author shall be one so copious of fancy, as to have many things well worth the adding come into his mind after licensing, while the book is yet under the press, which not seldom happens to the best and diligentest writers; and that perhaps a dozen times in one book? The printer dares not go beyond his licensed copy; so often then must the author trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewed, and many a jaunt will be made ere that licenser—for it must be the same man—can either be found, or found at leisure; meanwhile either the press must stand still, which is no small damage, or the author lose his accuratest thoughts, and send the book forth worse than he had made it, which to a diligent writer is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can befall.

Nay, which is more lamentable, if the work of any deceased author, though never so famous in his lifetime, and even to this day, come to their hands for license to be printed, or reprinted, if there be found in his book one sentence of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal and who knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine spirit, yet not suiting with every low decrepit humor of their own, though it were Knox himself, the Reformer of a Kingdom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash: the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the fearfulness or the presumptuous rashness of a perfunctory licenser. And to what an author this violence hath been lately done, and in what book of greatest consequence to be faithfully published, I could now instance, but shall forbear till a more convenient season.

Yet if these things be not resented seriously and timely by them who have the remedy in their power, but that such iron-molds as these shall have authority to gnaw out the choicest periods of exquisitest books, and to commit such a treacherous fraud against the orphan remainders of worthiest men after death, the more sorrow will belong to that hapless race of men, whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Henceforth let no man care to learn, or care to be more than worldly wise; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and slothful, to be a common, steadfast dunce, will be the only pleasant life, and only in request.

And as it is a particular disesteem of every knowing person alive, and most injurious to the written labors and monuments of the dead, so to me it seems an undervaluing and vilifying of the whole nation. I can not set so light by all the invention, the art, the wit, the grave and solid judgment which is in England, as that it can be comprehended in any twenty capacities how good soever, much less that it should not pass except their superintendence be over it, except it be sifted and strained with their strainers, that it should be uncurrent without their manual stamp. Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks. What is it but a servitude like that imposed by the Philistines, not to be allowed the sharpening of our own axes and colters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licensing forges?

Nor is it to the common people less than a reproach; for if we be so jealous over them as that we dare not trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious, and ungrounded people, in such a sick and weak state of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licenser? That this is care or love of them, we can not pretend, whenas, in those popish places where the laity are most hated and despised, the same strictness is used over them. Wisdom we can not call it, because it stops but one breach of license, nor that neither; whenas those corruptions, which it seeks to prevent, break in faster at other doors which can not be shut.

And lest some should persuade ye, lords and commons, that these arguments of learned men’s discouragement at this your order are mere flourishes, and not real, I could recount what I have seen and heard in other countries, where this kind of inquisition tyrannizes; when I have sat among their learned men, for that honor I had, and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning among them was brought; that this was it which damped the glory of Italian wits; that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo (Note: This meeting occurred at Florence in March, 1639. Milton again refers to it in “Paradise Lost.” Galileo was then living in Florence under a sort of commutation of his original sentence of imprisonment.) grown old a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.

And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty. Yet was it beyond my hope that those worthies were then breathing in her air, who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgotten by any revolution of time that this world hath to finish. When that was once begun, it was as little in my fear that, what words of complaint I heard among learned men of other parts uttered against the Inquisition, the same I should hear by as learned men at home uttered in time of Parliament against an order of licensing; and that so generally that, when I had disclosed myself a companion of their discontent. I might say, if without envy, that he whom an honest questorship had endeared to the Sicilians was not more by them importuned against Verres (Note: Cicero’s oration against Verres is in part given in the second volume of these orations. ) than the favorable opinion which I had among many who honor ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded me with entreaties and persuasion, that I would not despair to lay together that which just reason should bring into my mind, toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon learning. That this is not therefore the disburdening of a particular fancy, but the common grievance of all those who had prepared their minds and studies above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others, and from others to entertain it, thus much may satisfy.

And in their name I shall for neither friend nor foe conceal what the general murmur is; that if it come to inquisitioning again and licensing, and that we are so timorous of ourselves, and so suspicious of all men, as to fear each book and the shaking of every leaf, before we know what the contents are; if some who but of late were little better than silenced from preaching shall come now to silence us from reading, except what they please it can not be guessed what is intended by some but a second tyranny over learning: and will soon put it out of controversy, that Bishops and Presbyters are the same to us, both name and thing. That those evils of prelatry, which before from five or six and twenty sees were distributively charged upon the whole people, will now light wholly upon learning, is not obscure to us: whenas now the pastor of a small unlearned parish on the sudden shall be exalted archbishop over a large diocese of books, and yet not remove, but keep his other curé, too, a mystical pluralist. He who but of late cried down the sole ordination of every novice bachelor of art, and denied sole jurisdiction over the simplest parishioner, shall now at home in his private chair assume both these over worthiest and excellentest books and ablest authors that write them.

Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines. without knowing other reason, tho his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.

Nor much better will be the consequence even among the clergy themselves. It is no new thing never heard of before, for a parochial minister, who has his reward and is at his Hercules’ pillars in a warm benefice, to be easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that may rouse up his studies, to finish his circuit in an English Concordance and a topic folio, the gatherings and savings of a sober graduateship, a Harmony and a Catena; treading the constant round of certain common doctrinal heads, attended with the uses, motives, marks, and means, out of which, as out of an alphabet or sol-fa, by forming and transforming, joining and disjoining variously, a little bookcraft, and two hours’ meditation, might furnish him unspeakably to the performance of more than a weekly charge of sermoning: not to reckon up the infinite helps of interlinaries, breviaries, synopses, and other loitering gear. But as for the multitude of sermons ready printed and piled up, on every text that is not difficult, our London trading St. Thomas in his vestry, and add to boot St. Martin and St. Hugh, have not within their hallowed limits more vendible ware of all sorts ready made: so that penury he never need fear of pulpit provision, having where so plenteously to refresh his magazine. But if his rear and flanks be not impaled, if his back door be not secured by the rigid licenser, but that a bold book may now and then issue forth and give the assault to some of his old collections in their trenches, it will concern him then to keep waking, to stand in watch, to set good guards and sentinels about his received opinions, to walk the round and counter-round with his fellow inspectors, fearing lest any of his flock be seduced, who also then would be better instructed, better exercised and disciplined. And God send that the fear of this diligence, which must then be used. do not make us affect the laziness of a licensing Church.

There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open, the incredible loss and detriment that this plot of licensing puts us to; more than if some enemy at sea should stop up all our havens and ports and creeks, it hinders and retards the importation of our richest merchandise, truth; nay, it was first established and put in practice by antichristian malice and mystery on set purpose to extinguish, if it were possible, the light of Reformation, and to settle falsehood, little differing from that policy wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran by the prohibition of printing. ’Tis not denied, but gladly confessed, we are to send our thanks and vows to Heaven, louder than most of nations, for that great measure of truth which we enjoy, especially in those main points between us and the pope, with his appurtenances the prelates; but he who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to a beatific vision, that man by this very opinion, declares that he is yet far short of truth.

Truth indeed came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when He ascended, and His Apostles after Him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mold them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity, forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking. that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint.

We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness. Who can discern those planets that are oft combust, and those stars of brightest magnitude that rise and set with the sun, until the opposite motion of their orbs bring them to such a place in the firmament, where they may be seen evening or morning? The light which we have gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the unfrocking of a priest, the unmitering of a bishop, and the removing him from off the Presbyterian shoulders, that will make us a happy nation. No; if other things as great in the Church, and in the rule of life both economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuingluis and Calvin hath beaconed up to us, that we are stark blind.

Lords and commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point, the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of Learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and ablest judgment have been persuaded that even the school of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning from the old philosophy of this island. And that wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for Cæsar, preferred the natural wits of Britain before the labored studies of the French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from as far as the mountainous borders of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language and our theologic arts.

Yet that which is above all this, the favor and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending toward us. Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her, as out of Zion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wyclif, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther or of Calvin had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbors had been completely ours. But now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence demeaned the matter, we are become hitherto the latest and backwardest scholars, of whom God offered to have made us the teachers. Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in His Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself: what does He then but reveal Himself to His servants, and as His manner is, first to His Englishmen? I say, as His manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of His counsels. and are unworthy.

Behold now this vast city: a city of refuge. the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion cut the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defense of beleaguered Truth. that there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new motions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful laborers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already.

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament of, we rather should rejoice at; should rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reassume the ill-reputed care of their religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity might win all these diligences to join, and unite in one general and brotherly search after Truth, could we but forego this prelatical tradition of crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. I doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should come among us, wise to discern the mold and temper of a people, and how to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage: If such were my Epirots, I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted, to make a Church or kingdom happy.

What should ye do then? should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this city? should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, lords and commons, they who counsel you to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there can not be assigned a truer than your own mild and free and humane government. It is the liberty, lords and commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty which is the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath rarefied and enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven; this is that which hath enfranchised, enlarged and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves.

Ye can not make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that which ye can not be, oppressive, arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye can not suppress that, unless ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may despatch at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to ye, and excite others? Not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt. Although I dispraise not the defense of just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

And now the time in special is, by privilege to write and speak what may help to the further discussing of matters in agitation. The temple of Janus with his two controversial faces might now not unsignificantly be set open. And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.

For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defenses that error uses against her power. Give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound, but then rather she turns herself into all shapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be abjured into her own likeness. Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes than one. What else is all that rank of things indifferent, wherein Truth may be on this side or on the other, without being unlike herself? What but a vain shadow else is the abolition of those ordinances, that handwriting nailed to the crow? What great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a day or regards it not, may do either to the Lord. How many other things might be tolerated in peace, and left to conscience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief stronghold of our hypocrisy to be ever judging one another?

There have been not a few since the beginning of this Parliament, both of the Presbytery and others, who by their unlicensed books, to the contempt of an Imprimatur, first broke that triple ice clung about our hearts, and taught the people to see day: I hope that none of those were the persuaders to renew upon us this bondage which they themselves have wrought so much good by contemning. But if neither the check that Moses gave to young Joshua, nor the countermand which our Savior gave to young John, who was so ready to prohibit those whom he thought unlicensed, be not enough to admonish our elders, how unacceptable to God their testy mood of prohibiting is, if neither their own remembrance what evil hath abounded in the Church by this let of licensing, and what good they themselves have begun by transgressing it, be not enough, but that they will persuade and execute the most Dominican part of the Inquisition over us, and are already with one foot in the stirrup so active at suppressing, it would be no unequal distribution in the first place to suppress the suppressors themselves: whom the change of their condition hath puffed up, more than their late experience of harder times hath made wise.

And as for regulating the Press, let no man think to have the honor of advising ye better than yourselves have done in that order published next before this, “that no book be printed, unless the printer’s and the author’s name, or at least the printer’s, be registered.” Those which otherwise come forth, if they be found mischievous and libelous, the fire and the executioner will be the timeliest and the most effectual remedy that man’s prevention can use. For this authentic Spanish policy of licensing books, if I have said aught, will prove the most unlicensed book itself within a short while; and was the immediate image of a star chamber decree to that purpose made in those very times when that Court did the rest of those her pious works, for which she is now fallen from the stars with Lucifer. Whereby ye may guess what kind of state prudence, what love of the people, what care of religion or good manners there was at the contriving, although with singular hypocrisy it pretended to bind books to their good behavior.

And how it got the upper hand of your precedent order so well constituted before, if we may believe those men whose profession gives them cause to inquire most, it may be doubted there was in it the fraud of some old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of bookselling; who under pretense of the poor in their company not to be defrauded, and the just retaining of each man his several copy, which God forbid should be gainsaid, brought divers glozing colors to the House, which were indeed but colors, and serving to no end except it be to exercise a superiority over their neighbors; men who do not therefore labor in an honest profession to which learning is indebted, that they should be made other men’s vassals. Another end is thought was aimed at by some of them in procuring by petition this order, that, having power in their hands, malignant books might the easier scape abroad, as the event shows.

But of these sophisms and elenchus of merchandise I skill not. This I know, that errors in a good government and in a bad are equally almost incident; for what magistrate may not be misinformed, and much the sooner, if liberty of printing be reduced into the power of a few? But to redress willingly and speedily what hath been erred, and in highest authority to esteem a plain advertisement more than others have done a sumptuous bribe, is a virtue (honored lords and commons) answerable to your highest actions, and whereof none can participate but greatest and wisest men.

Note: The date of this, the most celebrated of Milton’s prose works, is November 24, 1644. In disregard of an ordinance of Parliament of the previous year, Milton in July had published without license his pamphlet concerning “Divorce.” For this he had been attacked and a search had been made for the printers. In consequence of this he wrote the “Areopagitica,” which he described as “a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England.” Abridged. Read more!

On Grievances in the Reign of Charles I.

NEVER Parliament had greater business to dispatch, nor more difficulties to encounter; therefore we have reason to take all advantages of order and address, and hereby we shall not only do our own work, but dispose and enable ourselves for the better satisfaction of his majesty’s desire of supply. The grievances being removed, our affections will carry us with speed and cheerfulness, to give his majesty that which may be sufficient both for his honor and support. Those that in the very first place shall endeavor to redress the grievances, will be found not to hinder, but to be the best furtherers of his majesty’s service. He that takes away weights, doth as much advantage motion, as he that addeth wings.

John Pym (1583?–1643)

(1640)

Born in 1584, died in 1643; entered Parliament in 1621; one of the managers of Buckingham’s impeachment trial in 1626; advocated the Petition of Right in 1628; assisted in the impeachment of Strafford and Laud; one of the five members whose arrest was attempted by Charles I. in 1642.


NEVER Parliament had greater business to dispatch, nor more difficulties to encounter; therefore we have reason to take all advantages of order and address, and hereby we shall not only do our own work, but dispose and enable ourselves for the better satisfaction of his majesty’s desire of supply. The grievances being removed, our affections will carry us with speed and cheerfulness, to give his majesty that which may be sufficient both for his honor and support. Those that in the very first place shall endeavor to redress the grievances, will be found not to hinder, but to be the best furtherers of his majesty’s service. He that takes away weights, doth as much advantage motion, as he that addeth wings.

He [that is, the speaker, Pym] said he would labor to contract those manifold affairs both of the Church and State, which did so earnestly require the wisdom and faithfulness of this house, into a double method of grievances and cures. And because there wanted not some who pretended that these things, wherewith the commonwealth is now grieved, are much for the advantage of the king, and that the redress of them will be to his majesty’s great disadvantage and loss, he doubted not but to make it appear, that in discovering the present great distempers and disorders, and procuring remedy for them, we should be no less serviceable to his majesty, who has summoned us to this great council, than useful to those whom we do here represent. For the better effecting whereof, he propounded three main branches of his discourse: In the first, he would offer them the several heads of some principal grievances, under which the kingdom groaned. In the second, he undertook to prove that the disorders from whence those grievances issued, were as hurtful to the king as to the people. In the third, he would advise such a way of healing, and removing those grievances, as might be equally effectual to maintain the honor and greatness of the king, and to procure the prosperity and contentment of the people.

The greatest liberty of the kingdom is religion; thereby we are freed from spiritual evils, and no impositions are so grievous as those that are laid upon the soul.

The next great liberty is justice, whereby we are preserved from injuries in our persons and estates; from this is derived into the commonwealth, peace, and order, and safety; and when this is interrupted, confusion and danger are ready to overwhelm all.

The third great liberty consists in the power and privilege of parliaments; for this is the fountain of law, the great council of the kingdom, the highest court; this is enabled by the legislative and conciliary power, to prevent evils to come; by the judiciary power, to suppress and remove evils present. If you consider these three great liberties in the order of dignity, this last is inferior to the other two, as means are inferior to the end; but, if you consider them in the order of necessity and use, this may justly claim the first place in our care, because the end can not be obtained without the means; and if we do not preserve this, we can not long hope to enjoy either of the others. Therefore, being to speak of those grievances which lie upon the kingdom, he would observe this order.

The privileges of Parliament were not given for the ornament or advantage of those who are the members of Parliament. They have a real use and efficacy toward that which is the end of parliaments. We are free from suits that we may the more entirely addict ourselves to the public services; we have, therefore, liberty of speech, that our counsels may not be corrupted with fear, or our judgments perverted with self-respects. Those three great faculties and functions of Parliament, the legislative, judiciary, and conciliary power, can not be well exercised without such privileges as these. The wisdom of our laws, the faithfulness of our counsels, the righteousness of our judgments, can hardly be kept pure and untainted if they proceed from distracted and restrained minds.

Then he propounded divers particular points wherein the privileges of Parliament had been broken. First, in restraining the members of the House from speaking. Secondly, in forbidding the Speaker to put any question.

These two were practiced the last day of the last Parliament (and, as was alleged, by his majesty’s command), and both of them trench upon the very life and being of parliaments; for if such a restraining power as this should take root, and be admitted, it will be impossible for us to bring any resolution to perfection in such matters as shall displease those about the king.

Thirdly, by imprisoning divers members of the House, for matters done in Parliament. Fourthly, by indictments, informations, and judgments in ordinary and inferior courts, for speeches and proceedings in parliaments. Fifthly, by the disgraceful order of the king’s bench, whereby some members of this House were enjoined to put in security of their good behavior; and for refusal thereof, were continued in prison divers years, without any particular allegation against them. One of them was freed by death. Others were not dismissed till his majesty had declared his intention to summon the present Parliament. And this he noted not only as a breach of privilege, but as a violation of the common justice of the kingdom. Sixthly, by the sudden and abrupt dissolution of parliaments, contrary to the law and custom.

Often hath it been declared in parliaments, that the Parliament should not be dissolved till the petitions be answered. This (he said) was a great grievance because it doth prevent the redress of other grievances. It were a hard case that a private man should be put to death without being heard. As this representative body of the Commons receives a being by the summons, so it receives a civil death by the dissolution. Is it not a much more heavy doom by which we lose our being, to have this civil death inflicted on us in displeasure, and not to be allowed time and liberty to answer for ourselves? That we should not only die, but have this mark of infamy laid upon us? To be made intestables, disabled to make our wills, to dispose of our business, as this House hath always used to do before adjournments or dissolutions? Yet this hath often been our case! We have not been permitted to pour out our last sighs and groans into the bosom of our dear sovereign. The words of dying men are full of piercing affections; if we might be heard to speak, no doubt we should so fully express our love and faithfulness to our prince, as might take off the false suggestions and aspersions of others; at least we should in our humble supplications recommend some such things to him in the name of his people, as would make for his own honor, and the public good of his kingdom.

Thus he concluded the first sort of grievances, being such as were against the privilege of Parliament, and passed on to the next, concerning religion; all which he conveyed under these four heads. The first, was the great encouragement given to popery, of which he produced these particular evidences. A suspension of all laws against papists, whereby they enjoy a free and almost public exercise of that religion. Those good statutes which were made for restraint of idolatry and superstition, are now a ground of security to them in the practice of both; being used to no other end but to get money into the king’s purse; which as it is clearly against the intentions of the law, so it is full of mischief to the kingdom. By this means a dangerous party is cherished and increased, who are ready to close with any opportunity of disturbing the peace and safety of the state. Yet he did not desire any new laws against popery, or any rigorous courses in the execution of those already in force; he was far from seeking the ruin of their persons or estates, only he wished they might be kept in such a condition as should restrain them from doing hurt.

A second encouragement is, their admission into places of power and trust in the Commonwealth, whereby they get many dependents and adherents, not only of their own, but even of such as make profession to be Protestants.

A third, their freedom of resorting to London and the court, whereby they have opportunity, not only of communicating their counsels and designs, one to another, but of diving into his majesty’s counsels, by the frequent access of those who are active men among them, to the tables and company of great men; and under subtle pretenses and disguises they want not means of cherishing their own projects and of endeavoring to mold and bias the public affairs to the great advantage of that party.

A fourth, that as they have a congregation of cardinals at Rome, to consider of the aptest ways and means of establishing the pope’s authority and religion in England, so they have a nuncio here, to act and dispose that party to the execution of those counsels, and, by the assistance of such cunning and Jesuitical spirits as swarm in this town, to order and manage all actions and events, to the furtherance of that main end.

Having despatched these several points, he proceeded to the third kind of grievances, being such as are against the common justice of the realm, in the liberty of our persons, and propriety of our estates, of which he had many to propound; in doing whereof, he would rather observe the order of time, wherein they were acted, than of consequence; but when he should come to the cure, he should then persuade the House to begin with those which were of most importance, as being now in execution, and very much pressing and exhausting the commonwealth.

Since the breach of the last Parliament, his majesty hath, by a new book of rates, very much increased the burden upon merchandise, and now tonnage and poundage, old and new impositions, are all taken by prerogative, without any grant in Parliament, or authority of law, as we conceive; from whence divers inconveniences and mischiefs are produced. The danger of the precedent, that a judgment in one court, and in one case, is made binding to all the kingdom. Men’s goods are seized, their legal suits are stopped, and justice denied to those that desire to take the benefit of the law. The great sums of money received upon these impositions, intended for the guard of the seas, claimed and defended upon no ground but of public trust, for protection of merchants and defense of the ports, are dispersed to other uses, and a new tax raised for the same purposes.

These burdens are so excessive, that trade is thereby very much hindered, the commodities of our own growth extremely abased, and those imported much enhanced; all which lies not upon the merchant alone, but upon the generality of the subject; and by this means the stock of the kingdom is much diminished, our exportation being less profitable, and our importation more changeable. And if the wars and troubles in the neighbor parts had not brought almost the whole stream of trade into this kingdom, we should have found many more prejudicial effects of these impositions, long before this time, than yet we have done. Especially they have been insupportable to the poor plantations, whither many of his majesty’s subjects have been transported, in divers parts of the Continent and islands of America, in furtherance of a design enlargement of his majesty’s dominions. The adventurers in this noble work have for the most part no other support but tobacco, upon which such a heavy rate is set that the king receives twice as much as the true value of the commodity to the owner. Whereas these great burdens have caused divers merchants to apply themselves to a way of traffic abroad by transporting goods from one country to another, without bringing them home into England. But now it hath been lately endeavored to set an imposition upon this trade, so that the king will have a duty even out of those commodities which never come within his dominions, to the great discouragement of such active and industrious men.

The third general head of civil grievances was, the great inundation of monopolies, whereby heavy burdens are laid, not only upon foreign, but also native commodities. These began in the soap patent. The principal undertakers in this were divers popish recusants, men of estate and quality, such as in likelihood did not only aim at their private gain, but that by this open breach of law, the king and his people might be more fully divided, and the ways of Parliament men more thoroughly obstructed. Among the infinite inconveniences and mischiefs which this did produce, these few may be observed: The impairing the goodness, and enhancing the price of most of the commodities and manufactures of the realm, yea, of those which are of most necessary and common use, as salt, soap, beer, coals, and infinite others.

That, under color of licenses, trades and manufactures are restrained to a few hands, and many of the subjects deprived of their ordinary way of livelihood. That, upon such illegal grants, a great number of persons had been unjustly vexed by pursuivants, imprisonments, attendance upon the council table, forfeiture of goods, and many other ways.

The fourth head of civil grievances was that great and unparalleled grievance of the ship money, which, though it may seem to have more warrant of law than the rest, because there hath a judgment passed for it, yet in truth it is thereby aggravated, if it be considered that the judgment is founded upon the naked opinion of some judges without any written law, without any custom, or authority of law books, yea, without any one precedent for it. Many express laws, many declarations in parliaments, and the constant practice and judgment at all times are against it! Yea, in the very nature of it, it will be found to be disproportionable to the case of “necessity” which is pretended to be the ground of it! Necessity excludes all formalities and solemnities. It is no time then to make levies and taxes to build and prepare ships. Every man’s person, every man’s ships are to be employed for the resisting of an invading enemy. The right on the subject’s part was so clear, and the pretenses against it so weak, that he thought no man would venture his reputation or conscience in the defense of that judgment, being so contrary to the grounds of the law, to the practice of former times, and so inconsistent in itself.

The seventh great civil grievance hath been the military charges laid upon the several counties of the kingdom—sometimes by warrant under his majesty’s signature, sometimes by letters from the council table, and sometimes (such had been the boldness and presumption of some men) by the order of the lord lieutenants, or deputy lieutenant alone. This is a growing evil; still multiplying and increasing from a few particulars to many, from small sums to great. It began first to be practiced as a loan, for supply of coat and conduct money; and for this it hath some countenance from the use in Queen Elizabeth’s time, when the lords of the council did often desire the deputy lieutenants to procure so much money to be laid out in the country as the service did require, with a promise to pay it again in London; for which purpose there was a constant warrant in the exchequer. This was the practice in her time, and in a great part of King James’. But the payments were then so certain, as it was little otherwise than taking up money upon bills of exchange. At this day they follow these precedents in the manner of the demand (for it is with a promise of a repayment), but not in the certainty and readiness of satisfaction.

The first particular brought into a tax (as he thought) was the muster master’s wages, at which many repined; but being for small sums, it began to be generally digested; yet, in the last Parliament, this House was sensible of it, and to avoid the danger of the precedent that the subjects should be forced to make any payments without consent in Parliament they thought upon a bill that might be a rule to the lieutenants what to demand, and to the people what to pay. But the hopes of this bill were dashed in the dissolution of that Parliament. Now of late divers other particulars are growing into practice, which make the grievance much more heavy. Those mentioned were these: 1. Pressing men against their will, and forcing them which are rich or unwilling to serve, to find others in their place. 2. The provision of public magazines for powder, and other munitions, spades and pickaxes. 3. The salary of divers officers besides the muster master. 4. The buying of cart horses and carts, and hiring of carts for carriages.

The next head of civil grievances was comprised in the high court of star chamber, which some think succeeded that which in the parliament rolls is called magnum concilium, and to which parliaments were wont so often to refer those important matters which they had no time to determine. But now this court, which in the late restoration or erection of it in Henry VII.’s time, was especially designed to restrain the oppression of great men, and to remove the obstructions and impediments of the law,—this, which is both a court of counsel and a court of justice, hath been made an instrument of erecting, and defending monopolies and other grievances; to set a face of right upon those things which are unlawful in their own nature, a face of public good upon such as are pernicious in their use and execution. The soap patent and divers other evidences thereof may be given, so well known as not to require a particular relation. And as if this were not enough, this court hath lately intermeddled with the ship money! Divers sheriffs have been questioned for not levying and collecting such sums as their counties have been charged with; and if this beginning be not prevented, the star chamber will become a court of revenue, and it shall be made a crime not to collect or pay such taxes as the State shall require!

The eleventh head of civil grievances was now come to. He said, he was gone very high, yet he must go a little higher. That great and most eminent power of the king, of making edicts and proclamations, which are said to be leges temporis, and by means of which our princes have used to encounter with such sudden and unexpected danger, as would not endure so much delay, as assembling the great council of the kingdom—this, which is one of the most glorious beams of majesty, most rigorous in commanding reverence and subjection, has, to our unspeakable grief, been often exercised of late for the enjoining and maintaining sundry monopolies and other grants—exceeding burdensome and prejudicial to the people.

The twelfth next. Now, altho he was come as high as he could upon earth, yet the presumption of evil men did lead him one step higher—even as high as heaven—as high as the throne of God! It was now (he said) grown common for ambitious and corrupt men of the clergy to abuse the truth of God and the bond of conscience; preaching down the laws and liberties of the kingdom, and pretending Divine authority for an absolute power in the king, to do what he would without persons and goods. This hath been so often published in sermons and printed books, that it is now the highway to preferment!

The thirteenth head of civil grievances he would thus express: The long intermission of parliaments, contrary to the two statutes yet in force, whereby it is appointed there should be parliaments once a year, at the least; and most contrary to the public good of the kingdom, since, this being well remedied, it would generate remedies for all the rest.

Having gone through the several heads of grievances, he came to the second main branch propounded in the beginning: that the disorders from whence these grievances issued were as hurtful to the king as to the people, of which he gave divers reasons.

As to the interruption of the sweet communion which ought to be betwixt the king and his people, in matters of grace and supply. They have need of him by his general pardon—to be secured from projectors and informers, to be freed from absolute laws, from the subtle devices of such as seek to restrain the prerogative to their own private advantage, and the public hurt; and he hath need of them for counsel and support in great and extraordinary occasions. This mutual intercourse, if indeed sustained, would so weave the affections and interests of his subjects into his actions and designs that their wealth and their persons would be his; his own estate would be managed to most advantage; and public undertakings would be prosecuted at the charge and adventure of the subject. The victorious attempts in Queen Elizabeth’s time upon Portugal, Spain, and the Indies, were for the greatest part made upon the subjects’ purses, and not upon the queen’s; tho the honor and profit of the success did most accrue to her.

Those often breaches and discontentments betwixt the king and the people are very apt to diminish his reputation abroad, and disadvantage his treaties and alliances.

The apprehension of the favor and encouragement given to popery hath much weakened his majesty’s party beyond the sea, and impaired that advantage which Queen Elizabeth and his royal father have heretofore made, of being heads of the Protestant union.

The innovations in religion and rigor of ecclesiastical courts have forced a great many of his majesty’s subjects to forsake the land; whereby not only their persons and their posterity, but their wealth and their industry are lost to this kingdom, much to the reduction, also, of his majesty’s customs and subsidies. And, among other inconveniences of such a sort, this was especially to be observed, that divers clothiers, driven out of the country, had set up the manufacture of cloth beyond the seas; whereby this state is like to suffer much by abatement of the price of wools, and by want of employment for the poor; both which likewise tend to his majesty’s particular loss.

The differences and discontents betwixt his majesty and the people at home, have in all likelihood diverted his royal thoughts and counsels from those great opportunities which he might have, not only to weaken the House of Austria, and to restore the palatinate, but to gain himself a higher pitch of power and greatness than any of his ancestors. For it is not unknown how weak, how distracted, how discontented the Spanish colonies are in the West Indies. There are now in those parts in New England, Virginia, and the Caribbean Islands, and in the Bermudas, at least 60,000 able persons of this nation, many of them well armed and their bodies seasoned to that climate, which with a very small charge, might be set down in some advantageous parts of these pleasant, rich, and fruitful countries, and easily make his majesty master of all that treasure, which not only foments the war, but is the great support of popery in all parts of Christendom.

Having thus passed through the two first general branches, he was now come to the third, wherein he was to set down the ways of healing and removing those grievances which consisted of two main branches: first, in declaring the law where it was doubtful; the second, in better provision for the execution of law, where it is clear. But (he said) because he had already spent much time, and begun to find some confusion in his memory, he would refer the particulars to another opportunity, and for the present only move that which was general to all, and which would give weight and advantage to all the particular ways of redress. That is, that we should speedily desire a conference with the lords, and acquaint them with the miserable condition wherein we find the Church and State; and as we have already resolved to join in a religious seeking of God, in a day of fast and humiliation, so to entreat them to concur with us in a parliamentary course of petitioning the king, as there should be occasion, and in searching out the causes and remedies of these many insupportable grievances under which we lie. That so, by the united wisdom and authority of both Houses, such courses may be taken as (through God’s blessing) may advance the honor and greatness of his majesty, and restore and establish the peace and prosperity of the kingdom.

This, he said, we might undertake with comfort and hope of success; for though there be a darkness upon the land, a thick and palpable darkness, like that of Egypt, yet, as in that, the sun had not lost his light, nor the Egyptians their sight (the interruption was only in the medium), so with us, there is still (God be thanked!) light in the sun—wisdom and justice in his majesty—to dispel this darkness; and in us there remains a visual faculty, whereby we are enabled to apprehend, and moved to desire, light. And when we shall be blessed in the enjoying of it, we shall thereby be incited to return his majesty such thanks as may make it shine more clearly in the world, to his own glory, and in the hearts of his people, to their joy and contentment.

Note: Delivered on April 17, 1640, in what is known as the Short Parliament. Abridged. Clarendon describes how, after the King’s address, Pym rose to speak “while men gazed upon each other looking who should begin.” In 1641 Pym’s speech was printed as “a speech delivered in Parliament by J. P., Esq.” As corrected by Pym himself, it is found among the Thomason tracts. Read more!

The Heavenly Footman

IT is an easy matter for a man to run hard for a spurt, for a furlong, for a mile or two: Oh, but to hold out for a hundred, for a thousand, for ten thousand miles!—that man that doth this, he must look to meet with cross, pain, and wearisomeness to the flesh, especially if, as he goeth, he meeteth with briers and quagmires, and other encumbrances that make his journey so much the more painful.

John Bunyan (1628–88)

(1698)

Born in 1628, died 1688; in the army from 1644 to 1646; became a Traveling Preacher in 1657; arrested in 1660 and, except for a brief interval, confined until 1672 in jail, where he wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress”; licensed to preach in 1672, and Pastor at Bedford until his death.



IT is an easy matter for a man to run hard for a spurt, for a furlong, for a mile or two: Oh, but to hold out for a hundred, for a thousand, for ten thousand miles!—that man that doth this, he must look to meet with cross, pain, and wearisomeness to the flesh, especially if, as he goeth, he meeteth with briers and quagmires, and other encumbrances that make his journey so much the more painful.

Nay, do you not see with your eyes daily, that perseverance is a very great part of the Cross? Why else do men so soon grow weary? I could point out a many, that after they had followed the ways of God about a twelvemonth, others it may be two, three, or four (some more, and some less) years, they have been beat out of wind, have taken up their lodging and rest before they have gotten half way to heaven, some in this, some in that sin, and have secretly, nay, sometimes openly, said that the way is too straight, the race too long, the religion too holy—I can not hold out, I can go no further.

One of the great reasons why men and women do so little regard the other world is because they see so little of it; and the reason why they see so little of it is because they have their understanding darkened. And, therefore, saith Paul, “Do not you believers walk as do other Gentiles, even in the vanity of their minds having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance (or foolishness) that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” Walk not as those, run not with them; alas, poor souls, they have their understandings darkened, their hearts blinded, and that is the reason they have such undervaluing thoughts of the Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation of their souls. For when men do come to see the things of another world, what a God, what a Christ, what a heaven, and what an eternal glory there is to be enjoyed; also, when they see that it is possible for them to have a share in it, I tell you it will make them run through thick and thin to enjoy it.

Your self-willed people, nobody knows what to do with them: we used to say, “He will have his own will, do all what you can.” Indeed, to have such a will for heaven is an admirable advantage to a man that undertaketh a race thither; a man that is resolved, and hath his will fixed; saith he, “I will do my best to advantage myself, I will do my worst to hinder my enemies, I will not give out as long as I can stand, I will have it or I will lose my life; tho He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. I will not let thee go except thou bless me.” I will, I will, I will, O this blessed inflamed will for heaven! What is it like? If a man be willing, then any argument shall be matter of encouragement; but if unwilling, then any argument shall give discouragement. This is seen both in saints and sinners; in them that are the children of God, and also those that are the children of the devil. As,

1. The saints of old, they being willing and resolved for heaven, what could stop them? Could fire and fagot, sword or halter, stinking dungeons, whips, bears, bulls, lions, cruel rackings, stoning, starving, nakedness? “And in all these things they were more than conquerors, through Him that loved them,” who had also made them “willing in the day of His power.”

2. See again, on the other side, the children of the devil, because they are not willing, how many shifts and starting-holes they will have. I have married a wife; I have a farm; I shall offend my landlord; I shall offend my master; I shall lose my trading; I shall lose my pride, my pleasures; I shall be mocked and scoffed; therefore I dare not come. I, saith another, will stay till I am older, till my children are out, till I am gotten a little aforehand in the world, till I have done this and that, and the other business: but, alas! The thing is, they are not willing; for were they but soundly willing, these, and a thousand such as these, would hold them no faster than the cords held Samson, when he broke them like burnt flax.

I tell you the will is all; that is one of the chief things which turns the wheel either backward or forward; and God knoweth that full well, and so likewise doth the devil, and therefore they both endeavor very much to strengthen the will of their servants. God, He is for making of His a willing people to serve Him; and the devil, he doth what he can to possess the will and affection of those that are his with love to sin; and therefore when Christ comes close to the matter, indeed, saith He, “You will not come to Me. How often would I have gathered you as a hen doth her chickens, but you would not.” The devil had possessed their wills, and so long he was sure enough of them. Oh, therefore, cry hard to God to inflame thy will for heaven and Christ; thy will, I say, if that be rightly set for heaven, thou wilt not be beat off with discouragements; and this was the reason that when Jacob wrestled with the angel, tho he lost a limb, as it were, and the hollow of his thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him, yet, saith he, “I will not,” mark, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me.”

Get thy will tipped with the heavenly grace, and resolution against all discouragements, and then thou goest full speed for heaven; but if thou falter in thy will, and be not found there, thou wilt run hobbling and halting all the way thou runnest, and also to be sure thou wilt fall short at last. The Lord give thee a will and a courage.

Note: Bunyan’s sermon, “The Heavenly Footman,” was first published in 1698. His writings were collected in 1736, Samuel Wilson being the editor. Another edition in six volumes, prepared by Alexander Hogg, was issued in 1780, another in three volumes by G. Offor in 1853, and another in four volumes by the Rev. H. Stebbins in 1859. Read more!

Speech on the Scaffold

MEN, BRETHREN, AND FATHERS; FRIENDS, COUNTRYMEN, AND STRANGERS:—It may be expected that I should now say some great matters unto you; but the rigor of the season and the infirmities of my age, increased by a close imprisonment of above five months, do not permit me. Moreover, we live in an age that maketh truth pass for treason; I dare not say anything contrary unto it, and the ears of those that are about me will probably be found too tender to hear it. My trial and condemnation sufficiently evidence this.

Algernon Sidney (1622–83)

(1683)

Born in 1622, died in 1683; wounded at the Battle of Marston in 1644; elected to Parliament in 1645; Lieutenant-General of horse in Ireland in 1646; Counselor of State in 1659; lived on the Continent after the Restoration until 1677; falsely arrested and condemned to death for high treason in 1683.


MEN, BRETHREN, AND FATHERS; FRIENDS, COUNTRYMEN, AND STRANGERS:—It may be expected that I should now say some great matters unto you; but the rigor of the season and the infirmities of my age, increased by a close imprisonment of above five months, do not permit me. Moreover, we live in an age that maketh truth pass for treason; I dare not say anything contrary unto it, and the ears of those that are about me will probably be found too tender to hear it. My trial and condemnation sufficiently evidence this.

West, Rumsey, and Keyling, who were brought to prove the plot (Note: The Rye House plot of 1682–83 was a conspiracy to kill Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, afterward James II., and thus may be said to have anticipated the Revolution of 1688. It took its name from a house in Hertfordshire where the conspirators met.) said no more of me than that they knew me not; and some others equally unknown to me had used my name, and that of some others, to give a little reputation unto their designs. The Lord Howard is too infamous by his life, and the many perjuries not to be denied, or rather sworn by himself, to deserve mention; and being a single witness he would be of no value, though he had been of unblemished credit, or had not seen and confessed that the crimes committed by him would be pardoned only for committing more; and even the pardon promised could not be obtained till the drudgery of swearing was over.

This being laid aside, the whole matter is reduced to the papers said to be found in my closet by the king’s officers, without any other proof of their being written by me, than what is taken from suppositions upon the similitude of a hand that is easily counterfeited, and which hath been lately declared in the Lady Carr’s case to be no lawful evidence in criminal causes. But if I had been seen to write them, the matter would not be much altered. They plainly appear to relate unto a large treatise written long since in answer to Filmer’s book, which, by all intelligent men, is thought to be grounded upon wicked principles, equally pernicious unto magistrates and people. If he might publish unto the world his opinion: that all men are born under a necessity derived from the laws of God and nature, to submit unto an absolute kingly government, which could be restrained by no law or oath; and that he that hath the power, whether he came unto it by creation, election, inheritance, usurpation, or any other way, had the right; and none must oppose his will, but the persons and estates of his subjects must be indispensably subject unto it; I know not why I might not have published my opinion to the contrary, without the breach of any law I have yet known. I might as freely as he have declared publicly my thoughts, and the reasons upon which they were grounded; and I am persuaded to believe that God has left nations unto the liberty of setting up such governments as best please themselves.

The magistrates are set up for the good of nations, not nations for the honor and glory of magistrates; that the right and power of magistrates in every country is that which the laws of that country made it to be; that those laws were to be observed, and the oaths taken by them, having the force of a contract between magistrate and people, could not be violated without danger of dissolving the whole fabric; that usurpation could give no right, and the most dangerous of all enemies unto kings were they, who, raising their power to an exorbitant height, allowed unto usurpers all the rights belonging unto it; that such usurpations being seldom compassed without the slaughter of the reigning person, or family, the worst of all villains was thereby rewarded with the most glorious privileges; that if such doctrines were received, they would stir up men to the destruction of princes with more violence than all the passions that have hitherto raged in the hearts of the most unruly; that none could be safe, if such a reward were proposed unto any that could destroy them; that few would be so gentle as to spare even the best, if by their destruction a vile usurper could become God’s anointed and by the most execrable wickedness invest himself with that divine character.

By these means I am brought to this place. The Lord forgive these practices, and avert the evils that threaten the nation from them. The Lord sanctify these my sufferings unto me, and though I fall as a sacrifice unto idols, suffer not idolatry to be established in the land. Bless Thy people and save them. Defend Thy own cause, and defend those who defend it. Stir up such as are faint, direct those that are willing, confirm those that waver, give wisdom and integrity unto all. Order all things so as may most redound unto Thine own glory. Grant that I may die glorifying Thee for all Thy mercies, and that at the last Thou hast permitted me to be singled out as a witness of Thy truth; and even by the confession of my opposers, for that old cause in which I was from my youth engaged (Note: Sidney was only twenty-two years of age at the battle of Marston Moor, where he “charged with much gallantry in the head of my Lord Manchester’s regiment of horse and came off with many wounds, the true badges of his honor.” ) and for which Thou hast often and wonderfully declared Thyself.

Note: Spoken in London on the scaffold, December 7, 1683. Sidney (Algernon) was tried at King’s Bench before the notorious Jeffreys who, says C. H. Firth, “wrangled with the prisoner and browbeat him in his usual fashion.” When Sidney came to the scaffold, Evelyn says, “he told them only that he had made his peace with God; that he came not thither to talk but to die, put a paper into the sheriff’s hands and another into a friend’s; said one prayer as short as a grace, laid down his neck and bid the executioner do his office.” Read more!