of domestic privacy. That if flattery be the
only music to his ear, or the only balm to his
heart; if he sickened when it was withheld,
or turned pale when denied him; or if power,
like the dagger of Macbeth, should invite his
willing imagination to grasp it, the indigna-
tion of the people ought immediately to mark
him, and hurl him from their councils and
their confidence forever. That if this abso-
lute freedom of inquiry may be, in any man-
ner, abridged, or impaired by those who ad-
minister the government, the nature of it will
be instantly changed from a federal union of
representative democracies, in which the
people of the several States are the sovereign,
and the administrators of the government,
their agents, to a consolidated oligarchy,
aristocracy, or monarchy, according to the
prevailing caprice of the constituted authorities,
or of those who may usurp them. That
where absolute freedom of discussion is pro-
hibited, or restrained, responsibility vanishes.
That any attempt to prohibit, or restrain that
freedom, many well be construed to proceed
from conscious guilt. That the people of
America have always manifested a most
jealous sensibility on the subject of this in-
estimable right, and have ever regarded it as
a fundamental principle in their government,
and carefully engrafted in the Constitution.
That this sentiment was generated in the
American mind by an abhorrence of the
maxims and principles of that government
which they had shaken off, and a detestation
of the abominable persecutions, and extra-
judicial dogmas, of the still odious court of
star-chamber; whose tyrannical proceedings
and persecutions, among other motives of the
like nature, prompted and impelled our an-
cestors to fly from the pestilential government
of their native country, to seek an asylum
here; where they might enjoy, and their pos-
terity establish, and transmit' to all future
generations, freedom, unshackled, unlimited,
undefined. That in our time we have vindi-
cated, fought for, and established that free-
dom by our arms, and made it the solid and
immovable basis and foundation both of the
State and Federal' Government. That no-
thing could more clearly evince the inesti-
mable value that the American people have
set upon the liberty of the press, than their
uniting it in the same sentence, and even in
the same member of a sentence, with the
rights of conscience and the freedom of
speech. And since Congress are equally pro-
hibited from making any law abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press, they boldly
challenged their adversaries to point out the
constitutional distinction, between those two
inodes of disunion, or inquiry. If the un-
restrained freedom of the press?, said they, be
not guaranteed by the Constitution, neither
is that of speech. If on the contrary the un-
restrained freedom of speech is guaranteed,
so also, is that of the press. If then the |
genius of our Federal Constitution has vested
the people of the United States, not only with
a censorial power, but even with the sov-
ereignty itself; if magistrates are, indeed,
their agents; if they are responsible for their
acts of agency; if the people may not only
censure whom they disapprove, but reject
whom they may find unworthy; if approba-
tion or censure, election or rejection, ought
to be the result of inquiry, scrutiny, and ma-
ture deliberation; why, said they, is the ex-
ercise of this censorial power, this sovereign
right, this necessary inquiry, and scrutiny to
be confined to freedom of speech? Is it be-
cause this mode of discussion better answers
the purposes of the censorial power? Surely
not. The best speech cannot be beard by
any great number of persona. The best
speech may be misunderstood, misrepresented,
and imperfectly remembered try those who
are present. To all the rest of mankind, it is
as if it had never been. The best speech
must also be short for the investigation of
any subject of an intricate nature, or even a
plain one, if it be of more than ordinary
length. The best speech then must be alto-
gether inadequate to the due exercise of the
censorial power, by the people. The only
adequate supplementary aid for these defects,
is the absolute freedom of the press. A free-
dom unlimited as the human mind; viewing
all thing", penetrating the recesses of the
human heart, unfolding the motives of human
action?, and estimating all things by one in-
valuable standard, truth, applanding all who
deserve well; censuring the undeserving;
and condemning the unworthy, according to
the measure of their demerits."
That was the argument that was used by
the people who opposed the alien and sedi-
tion laws which brought forth the Virginia
and Kentucky resolutions, and brought the
people of the United States at that early period
of their history, to scrutinize and examine
the true foundation of the Federal Govern-
ment, and the relations which that govern-
ment bore lo the States, the people of which
laid given it existence and birth; and which
brought about a revolution that swept from
power those that passed ana sustained me alien
and sedition laws and erected upon their
foundation the great party of Jefferson, the
Democratic party, that from that time to
within a few years, with a few exceptions,
has conducted the government, in all its de-
partments, with an unexampled degree of
success.
I have chosen in submitted this amend-
ment, to rest its defence upon the articles of
the Constitution of twenty-two States to
which I have referred, which have deemed it
important to adopt such a provision; and
that defence of the right of freedom of speech
and of the press, which is contained in the
passages I have read from Tucker's Black-
stone. And I shall conclude with quoting |
