n buy a press from
publishing the bitterest and most sarcastic reflections on any public
measure, or any public functionary. Yet the very words 'license to
print' have a sound hateful to the ears of Englishmen in every part
of the globe. It is unnecessary to inquire whether this feeling be
reasonable; whether the petitioners who have so strongly pressed this
matter on our consideration would not have shown a better judgment if
they had been content with their practical liberty, and had reserved
their murmurs for practical grievances. The question for us is not what
they ought to do, but what we ought to do; not whether it be wise in
them to complain when they suffer no injury, but whether it be wise in
us to incur odium unaccompanied by the smallest accession of security or
of power.

"One argument only has been urged in defence of the present system. It
is admitted that the Press of Bengal has long been suffered to enjoy
practical liberty, and that nothing but an extreme emergency could
justify the Government in curtailing that liberty. But, it is said, such
an emergency may arise, and the Government ought to retain in its hands
the power of adopting, in that event, the sharp, prompt, and decisive
measures which may be necessary for the preservation of the Empire. But
when we consider with what vast powers, extending over all classes of
people, Parliament has armed the Governor-General in Council, and, in
extreme cases, the Governor-General alone, we shall probably be inclined
to allow little weight to this argument. No Government in the world
is better provided with the means of meeting extraordinary dangers by
extraordinary precautions. Five persons, who may be brought together in
half an hour, whose deliberations are secret, who are not shackled by
any of those forms which elsewhere delay legislative measures, can, in a
single sitting, make a law for stopping every press in India. Possessing
as we do the unquestionable power to interfere, whenever the safety of
the State array require it, with overwhelming rapidity and energy, we
surely ought not, in quiet times, to be constantly keeping the offensive
form and ceremonial of despotism before the eyes of those whom,
nevertheless, we permit to enjoy the substance of freedom."

Eighteen months elapsed; during which the Calcutta Press found occasion
to attack Macaulay with a breadth and ferocity of calumny such as few
public men, in any age or country, have ever endured