Other related topics at:
Authority/Government/State
1,026. Authority; Censorship;
Freedom
Regarding Arepagitica, a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the
Liberty of unlicensed Printing: "The danger of such
unbounded liberty and the danger of bounding it have produced a
problem in the science of Government, which human understanding
seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but
what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must
always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations
may propagate his projects, there can be no settlement; if every
murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no
peace; and if every skeptick in theology may teach his follies,
there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to
punish the authours; for it is yet allowed that every society
may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions,
which that society shall think pernicious: but this punishment,
though it may crush the authour, promotes the book; and it seems
not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained,
because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to
sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a
thief."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
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