d freedom of conscience are connected with
freedom of discussion.

On the history of the Licensing Act no preceding writer has thought it
worth while to expend any care or labour. Yet surely the events which
led to the establishment of the liberty of the press in England, and in
all the countries peopled by the English race, may be thought to have
as much interest for the present generation as any of those battles and
sieges of which the most minute details have been carefully recorded.

During the first three years of William's reign scarcely a voice seems
to have been raised against the restrictions which the law imposed on
literature. Those restrictions were in perfect harmony with the theory
of government held by the Tories, and were not, in practice, galling
to the Whigs. Roger Lestrange, who had been licenser under the last two
Kings of the House of Stuart, and who had shown as little tenderness
to Exclusionists and Presbyterians in that character as in his other
character of Observator, was turned out of office at the Revolution, and
was succeeded by a Scotch gentleman, who, on account of his passion for
rare books, and his habit of attending all sales of libraries, was known
in the shops and coffeehouses near Saint Paul's by the name of Catalogue
Fraser. Fraser was a zealous Whig. By Whig authors and publishers he
was extolled as a most impartial and humane man. But the conduct which
obtained their applause drew on him the abuse of the Tories, and was
not altogether pleasing to his official superior Nottingham. [379] No
serious difference however seems to have arisen till the year 1692. In
that year an honest old clergyman named Walker, who had, in the time of
the Commonwealth, been Gauden's curate, wrote a book which convinced
all sensible and dispassionate readers that Gauden, and not Charles the
First, was the author of the Icon Basilike. This book Fraser suffered to
be printed. If he had authorised the publication of a work in which the
Gospel of Saint John or the Epistle to the Romans had been represented
as spurious, the indignation of the High Church party could hardly have
been greater. The question was not literary, but religious. Doubt was
impiety. In truth the Icon was to many fervent Royalists a supplementary
revelation. One of them indeed had gone so far as to propose that
lessons taken out of the inestimable little volume should be read in
the churches. [380] Fraser found it necessary to resign his