The Virginia Gazette

Mess. DIXON & HUNTER.

GENTLEMEN,

YOUR paper is universally esteemed for its freedom and impartiality; and as the LIBERTY of the PRESS is the palladium of our LIBERTIES, I beg leave to quote a few sentiments of a late ingenious author relative to it, which please to insert.

He first observes, that the liberty of the press is inviolably connected with the liberty of the subject, and proves it thus: The use of speech is a natural right, which must have been reserved when men gave up their natural rights for the benefit of society. PRINTING is a more extensive and improved kind of speech. Blasphemy, perjury, treason, and personal slander, are the principal offences which demand restraint; the three first are offences against the whole community; the last (personal slander) being only an offence against individuals, if the punishment of it be carried beyond the damage sustained by the person aggrieved, it is not only contradictory to the principles of the constitution, but also dissonant to the laws of reason.

The exercise of this liberty of the press, and all the persecutions it laboured under, had the good effect of putting the nation upon their guard in the reign of King Charles II. It was by the exercise of the same liberty that every motion of the Popish faction was proclaimed and opposed in the reign of King James II. It was by means of the truth conveyed by the press that the Ministry of the four last years of Queen Anne became odious to the public, and that his late Majesty (George I.) escaped falling into the snares laid for him by the Jacobite party to obstruct his accession to the throne, which his illustrious House was called upon to defend.

CIVIS.