fute the base and detestable tenets of Barclay and Filmer. Their
political treatises were false and slavish, and even illegal; for they
were the same for which Dr. Sacheverel was afterwards impeached by the
Parliament; and which he would not have been if it had not been an
offence to maintain and publish such opinions. Yet were not their
falsehoods and errors useful and beneficial? Did they not provoke Locke
to rise in all the majesty and strength of truth and cast down Filmer and
his doctrines into the lowest abyss of contempt, never again to emerge?
See, now, if the government of those days had prosecuted Barclay and
Filmer, and suppressed their books by power instead of leaving them to be
demolished by reasoning, what would have been the consequence? The
mighty mind of Locke would not have been called into action, and the
total refutation and utter explosion of Filmer would not have been
effected. By criminal prosecutions the odious positions would only have
been suppressed for a time, not as they now are, extinguished for ever;
and the base and degrading doctrines of passive obedience and divine
right, which are the stigma of the times in which they prevailed, might
have been the disgrace and reproach of ours.

But supposing that prosecutions for political writings were in any
respect politic, useful, or wise, will they prevent their publication? No
more than your strong and violent revenue laws have been able to suppress
the rise of illicit stills in Ireland and Scotland. Even if by dint of
the terror of prosecutions the press in this city could be reduced to
such awe and subjection, that everything that issued from it was as flat
and unmeaning as the most arbitrary government could desire, its
inhabitants would still gratify their thirst for political discussion and
information. They would compose and print as they distil, in the depth
of deserts and the solitude of mountains, and under the cover of darkness
drop the pamphlets into the houses, or scatter them in the streets, and
the obstacles to circulation will serve only to inflame the desire for
possession. This would be the result of a determination to suppress
everything in the shape of political discussion that did not please the
humour of a set of men in authority, while by far the greater part if not
all those publications which inspire so much apprehension, would if
passed in silence either never be noticed, or read their hour and
forgotten. It i