England, as may be supposed, has not always enjoyed liberty of the press. It is a conquest of high civilization. It is, however, a remarkable fact, that England owed its transitory but most stringent law of a censorship to her republican government.

On Sept. 20, 1647,3 it was decreed by the republican government in England that no book henceforth be printed without previously being read and permitted by the public censor, all privileges to the contrary notwithstanding. House searches for prohibited books and presses should be made, and the postoffice would dispatch innocent books only. All places where printing-presses may exist should be indicated by authority. Printers, publishers and authors were obliged to give caution-money for their names. No one was permitted to harbor a printer without permission, and no one permitted to sell foreign books without permission. Book-itinerants and balladsingers were imprisoned and whipped. We are all acquainted with Milton's beautiful and searching

united by converse and intercommunion; this is a basis of humanity. If you open letters you seriously invade this primary condition. Men are individuals, and social, destined for civilization and united progress, and the question is not whether they may be dispensed with, but how to govern with them. Governments too frequently act as though the government were the primary condition, and the remaining question only was, how much may be spared by government, to be left for society or individuals. The opposite is

the truth.

2 See Lieber's Letter to Hon. W. C. Preston on International Copyright.

3 The same year, therefore, in which Charles the First was executed.

essay on the liberty of the press against this censorship.

The reader who pays attention to the events of his own days, will remember the law against the press, issued immediately after the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon, which puts the sale of printing and lithographic presses, copying machines, as well as types, under police supervision, and which, in one word, intercepts all public communion.

I suppose it will be hardly necessary to treat, in connection with the liberty of communion, of the "liberty of silence," as a French paper headed an article, when, soon after the coup d'état, it was intimated to a Paris paper, by the police, that its total silence on political matters would not be looked upon by government with favor, should the paper insist on continuing it.

It would be, however, a great mistake to suppose that governments alone interfere with correspondence and free communion. Governments are bodies of men, and all bodies of men act similarly under similar circumstances, if the power is allowed them. All absolutism is the same. I have ever observed, in all countries in which I have lived, that if party struggle rises to factious passion, the different parties endeavor to get hold of the letters of their adversaries. It is therefore of the last importance, both that the secret of letters and the freedom of all communion be legally protected as much as possible, and that every true friend of liberty present the importance of this right in the clearest possible manner to his own mind.

7. The right of locomotion, or of free egress and regress, as well as free motion within the country, is another important individual right and element of liberty.

The strength of governments was generally considered, in the last century, to consist in a large population, large amount of money, that is, specie, within the country, and a large army founded upon both. It was consistent, therefore, that in countries in which individual rights went for little, and the people were considered the mere substratum upon which the state, that is, the government, was erected, emigration was considered with a jealous eye, or wholly prohibited. Nor can it be denied that emigration may present itself in a serious aspect. So many people are leaving Ireland, that it is now common, and not inappropriate, to speak of the Irish exodus; and it has been calculated, upon authentic data, both in Germany and the United States, that for the last few years the German emigrants have carried not far from fifteen millions of Prussian dollars annually into the United States. The amount of emigrating capital will be much greater, if the German emigration should be so much larger than that of pre

4 On the other hand, an immense amount of capital is annually returned, from successful emigrants in the United States, to Ireland and Germany. Persons who have not paid attention to the subject, cannot have any conception how many hard yet gladly earned pounds and thalers are sent from our country to aged parents or toiling sisters and brothers in Europe. A wide-spread and blessed process of affection is thus all the time going on-silent, gladdening, and full of beauty, like the secret and beautifying process of spring.

vious years, as is indicated by many circumstances. But freemen believe that governments are for them, not they for governments, and that it is a precious right of every one to seek that spot on earth where he can best pursue the ends of life, physical and mental, religious, political, and cultural.

If, under peculiar circumstances, a country should find itself forced to prohibit emigration, it would, at any rate, so far as this right goes, be an abridgment of liberty. We can imagine many cases in which emigration should be stopped by changing those circumstances which cause it, but none in which it ought to be simply prohibited. The universal principle of adhesiveness, so strong in all spheres of action, thought and affection, and which forms one of the elementary principles of society and continuity of civilization, is sufficiently strong to keep people where they are, if they possibly can remain; and if they leave an overpeopled country, or one in which they cannot find work or a fair living, they become active producers, and consequently proportionate consumers in the new country, so that the old country will reap its proportionate benefit, provided free exchange be allowed by the latter.

The same applies to the capital removed along with emigration. It becomes more productive, and mankind at large are benefited by it.

Besides, it is but a part of the general question, shall or shall not governments prohibit the efflux of money? It was formerly considered one of the highest problems of statesmanship, even by rulers so wise as Frederic the Second, of Prussia, to prevent

money from flowing out of the country; for wealth was believed to consist in money. Experience has made us wiser. We know that the freest action in this, as in so many other cases, is also the most conducive to general prosperity. It was stated in the journals of the day that Miss Jenny Lind remitted five hundred thousand dollars from the United States to Europe. Suppose this to be true, would they have been benefited had she been forced to leave that sum in this country? Or would we, upon the whole, profit by preventing five million dollars, which, according to the statement of our secretary of state, are now annually sent by our Irish immigrants to Ireland, from leaving our shores? Unquestionably not. But this is not the place for farther pursuing a question of political economy.

The English provided for a free egress and regress as early as in Magna Charta. As to the freest possible locomotion within the country, I am aware that many persons accustomed to Anglican liberty may consider my mentioning it as part of civil liberty somewhat over-minute. If they will direct their attention to countries in which this liberty is not enjoyed in its fullest extent, they will agree that I have good reason for enumerating it. Passports are odious things to Americans and Englishmen, and may they always be so."

5 Hon. Edward Everett's dispatch to Mr. Crampton, on the Island of Cuba, December 1, 1852.

6 The primordial right of locomotion has been discussed by me in Political Ethics, at considerable length.