much tenderness can arise for an offender of this kind, I am at a loss
to discover, nor am I able to conceive any argument that can be produced
for exempting from punishment the printer of a paper, which has been
already determined, by the vote of the house, to be a scandalous libel,
tending to promote sedition.

It has been, indeed, agreed, that there are contained in the paper some
true positions, and some passages innocent, at least, and perhaps
rational and seasonable. But this, sir, is nothing more than to say,
that the paper, flagitious as it is, might have been swelled to a
greater degree of impudence and scurrility; that what is already too
heinous to be borne, might, by greater virulence, become more enormous.

If no wickedness, sir, is to be checked till it has attained the
greatest height at which it can possibly arrive, our courts of criminal
judicature may be shut up as useless; and if a few innocent paragraphs
will palliate a libel, treason may be written and dispersed without
danger or restraint; for what libel was ever so crowded with sedition,
that a few periods might not have been selected, which, upon this
principle, might have secured it from censure.

The danger of discouraging intelligence from being offered at the door
of our house, does not alarm me with any apprehensions of disadvantage
to the nation; for I have not so mean an opinion of the wisdom of this
assembly, as to imagine that they can receive any assistance from the
informations of their officious instructors, who ought, in my opinion,
sir, rather to be taught by some senatorial censure to know their own
station, than to be encouraged to neglect their proper employments, for
the sake of directing their governours.

When bills, sir, are depending, by which either the interest of the
nation, or of particular men, may be thought to be endangered, it is,
indeed, the incontestable right of every Briton to offer his petition at
the bar of the house, and to deliver the reasons upon which it is
founded. This is a privilege of an unalienable kind, and which is never
to be infringed or denied; and this may always be supported without
countenancing anonymous intelligence, or receiving such papers as the
authors of them are afraid or ashamed to own, and which they, therefore,
employ meaner hands to distribute.

Of this kind, sir, undoubtedly, is the paper now under our
consideration, of which I am far from imagining that it was drawn up by
th