dispensed with the sacramental test in favour of all foreigners who had been engaged in the hemp and flax manufacture, and (1739) of all Jews and Protestant foreigners who had resided. seven years continuously in the American plantations.1 Notwithstanding the political disabilities attaching to them in England, the number of foreign Jewish settlers continued to increase with the expansion of English commerce; and at length, in 1753, an attempt was made to extend to all Jews applying for Parliamentary naturalisation the exemption from the sacramental test, already conceded to those who had resided in the colonies, or been engaged in the manufacture of hemp or flax. But the celebrated Jew Bill,2 by which this very moderate measure of toleration was effected, proved to be in advance of the opinion of the age. "No Jews! No Jews! No Wooden Shoes!" became the popular cry; and although the Bill, after a fierce opposition in the House of Commons, obtained a fleeting place upon the statute book, it raised such a storm of opposition throughout the country as to necessitate its repeal in the following session.3 Jews were occasionally admitted to municipal offices, together with Protestant Nonconformists, under cover of the annual Indemnity Acts; but the declaration "on the true faith of a Christian," imposed by the Act 9 Geo. IV. c. 17, while relieving Dissenters from the requirements of the Test and Corporation Acts, had forged new fetters for the Jew. These were removed, so far as regards corporations, in 1845;4 and after a lengthened struggle, the only legal obstacle to the admission of Jews to Parliament was also removed, in 1858, by an Act Admission which empowered either House of Parliament, by Resolution, of Jews to to omit the words "upon the true faith of a Christian," from the 1848. oath of Abjuration.5

Parliament,

1836.

of

In 1836 a civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths Civil regiswas established; and by another Act, Dissenters were permitted bration, marto solemnise marriages in their own chapels, registered for riages, and that purpose. The grievance complained of by Dissenters with deaths, regard to burials (though destined, doubtless, soon to disappear)? Dissenters' still continues in the country districts of England, mitigated, Marriage however, by the practice of some incumbents who allow Dissenting Bill, 1836. 1 15 Car. II. and 13 Geo. II. c. 7; Cobbett's Parl. Hist., xiv. 1373; Lecky, Hist. of Eng., i. 262. 2 Supra, p. 523, n. 3.

3 Lord Mahon, Hist. of Eng., iv. 32-37.

4 8 & 9 Vict. c. 52.

5 21 & 22 Vict. c. 49; 23 & 24 Vict. c. 63. By the 29 & 30 Vict. c. 19, all distinctions between Jewish and other members were removed by the enactment of a new form of oath from which the words on the true faith of a Christian" were omitted. 6 6 & 7 Will. IV. cc. 85, 86.

7 [The Local Government Act, 1894, 56 & 57 Vict. c. 73, known as the Parish and District Councils Act, confers by sec. 7 upon the parish meeting the right of adopting the Burial Acts, 1852-1885; while the secularisation of the parish churchyard was practically effected by the Burial Act of 1900.-ED.]

Universities Tests Act, 1871.

(V.) Liberty

of the Press.

The censorship.

The Press under

James I. and
Charles I.

ministers to perform their own burial service in the parish churchyard; and in populous towns the Dissenters have generally provided themselves with separate burying-grounds and unconsecrated parts of cemeteries. Lastly, in 1871, one of the few remaining disabilities of Dissenters was redressed by the Universities Tests Act, which opened all lay academical degrees and all lay academical and collegiate offices in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham to persons of any religious belief.

V. Liberty of the Press.

Of the political privileges of the people acquired or enlarged since the Revolution, we have still to consider the liberty of the Press" the guardian and guide of all other liberties "-and the last to be recognised by the State.

We have seen how freedom of opinion in religious matters was early restrained by the action of the Church against the Lollard teachers and writers; and soon after the invention of printing in the fifteenth century the Press was placed under a rigorous censorship, not only in England but throughout Europe. After the Reformation in England, the censorship of the Press passed with the ecclesiastical supremacy to the Crown. It became a part of the royal prerogative to appoint a Licenser, without whose imprimatur no writings could be lawfully published; and the printing of unlicensed works was visited with the severest punishments. Printing was further restrained by patents and monopolies. The privilege was confined, in the first instance, under regulations established by the Star Chamber in Queen Mary's reign, to members of the Stationers' Company, and the number of presses, and of men to be employed on them, was strictly limited. Under Elizabeth, the censorship was enforced by more rigorous penalties. All printing was interdicted elsewhere than in London, Oxford, and Cambridge; and nothing whatever was allowed to be published until it had first been seen, perused, and allowed" by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London, except only publications by the queen's printers, to be appointed for some special service, or by lawprinters, for whom the licence of the chief justices was sufficient.3 Mutilation or death was the penalty of those who dared to print anything which the judges might choose to construe as seditious or slanderous of the Government in Church or State.1

Under James I. and Charles I., political and religious discussion was repressed by the Star Chamber with the greatest severity.5 1 Earl Russell, Eng. Con., p. 339. 2 Supra, pp. 325, 327.

3 Ordinances of the Star Chamber for the regulation of the Press in 1585,

supra, p. 389.

4 St. 23 Eliz. c. 2. See the cases of Stubbe, Udal, Barrow, Greenwood, and Penry, supra, p. 362, n. 1., and p. 365.

5 Supra, pp. 440-442.

By an ordinance of the Star Chamber, issued in July 1637, the number of master printers was limited to twenty, who were to give sureties for good behaviour, and were to have not more than two presses and two apprentices each (unless they were present or past Masters of the Stationers' Company, when they were allowed three presses and three apprentices): and the number of letter-founders was limited to four. The penalty for practising the arts of printing, book-binding, letter-founding, or making any part of a press, or other printing materials, by persons disqualified, or not apprenticed thereto, was whipping, the pillory, and imprisonment. Even books which had been once examined and allowed were not to be reprinted without a fresh licence; and books brought from abroad were to be landed in London only, and carefully examined by licensers appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, who were empowered to seize and destroy all such as were "seditious, schismatical, or offensive." Periodical searches, both of booksellers' shops and private houses, were also enjoined and authorised. Yet it was during this inauspicious period that the first newspaper, the Weekly Newes, made its appearance, late in the The first reign of James I. ;1 and after the abolition of the Star Chamber newspaper, the Weekly (Feb. 1640-1), tracts and newspapers issued forth in shoals Newes. during the contest between the Crown and the Parliament.2 1623. The Long Parliament, however, while abolishing the Star Chamber, continued the censorship of the Press; and endeavoured to The censorsilence all Royalist and prelatical writers by most tyrannical ship conordinances, "to repress disorders in printing," by which the the Comof the Government were empowered to break open messengers doors and locks, by day or by night, in order to discover unlicensed printing-presses, and to apprehend authors, printers, and others. These proceedings called forth the "Areopagitica" Milton's of Milton, in which he branded the suppression of truth by the Areopagi licenser as the slaying of "an immortality rather than a life," maintained that "she needs no policies, no stratagems, no licensings, to make her victorious," and nobly, but ineffectually, pleaded for " the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience, above all [other] liberties."

tinued under

monwealth.

tica.

After the Restoration, the entire control of printing was Licensing placed in the hands of the Government by the Licensing Act of Act, 1662. 1662, which, though originally passed only for three years, was

1 The Weekly Newes, May 23, 1623, printed for Nicholas Bourne and Thomas Archer.-May, Const. Hist., ii. 240.

2 More than 30,000 political pamphlets and newspapers were issued from the press during the twenty years from 1640 to the Restoration. They may be seen at the British Museum bound up in 2000 volumes.—Ibid. ii.

241.

3 Milton, Areopagitica; a Speech for Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, pp. 73, 74. [Arber's Reprints.]

The judges declare it criminal to publish anything concerning the Govern

ment.

Unofficial

newspapers stopped, 1679.

Their place supplied by the coffeehouses and

news

letters.

Licensing Act revived, 1685.

Finally expired, 1695.

2

continued by subsequent renewals until 1679. Printing was strictly confined to London, York, and the two Universities; the number of master printers was limited, as in the ordinances of the Star Chamber, in 1637, to twenty; and no private person was to publish any book or pamphlet unless it were first licensed -law books by the Lord Chancellor, or one of the chiefs of the Common Law Courts, historical or political books by the Secretary of State, books of heraldry by the Earl Marshal, and all other books by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London, or by the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor of one of the Universities. Authors and printers of obnoxious works were hung, quartered, mutilated, exposed in the pillory, flogged, or simply fined and imprisoned, according to the temper of the judges; and the works themselves were burned by the common hangman. After the Licensing Act had been temporarily suffered to expire in 1679, the twelve judges, with Chief Justice Scroggs at their head, declared it to be criminal at Common Law to publish anything concerning the Government, whether true or false, of praise or censure, without the royal licence. All newspapers were in consequence stopped; and the people were reduced for political intelligence and instruction to two Government publications, the official London Gazette, which furnished a scanty supply of news without comment, and the Observator, which consisted of comment without news. In the absence of newspapers, the coffee-houses became the chief organs through which the public opinion of the [Capital] vented itself, while the inhabitants of provincial towns, and the great body of the gentry and country clergy, depended almost exclusively on news-letters from London for their knowledge of political events.*

At the accession of James II., in 1685, the Licensing Act was revived for seven years, and was thus in force at the Revolution. It was once more renewed in 1692, for one year and until the end of the following session of Parliament; but a further attempt to renew it in 1695 was negatived by the Commons, and thenceforth the Censorship of the Press has ceased to form part of the law of England. It is a noteworthy fact, and a striking example of the predominance of the practical, as contrasted with the theorising spirit in English politics, that this emancipation of the Press

1 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 33.

2 See the cases of John Twyn, State Trials, vi. 659; of Keach, ibid. 710 ; of Harris, Smith, Curtis, Carr, and Cellier, ibid. vii. 926–1043, 1111, 1183; and cf. May, Const. Hist., ii. 242.

་་

3 If you write on the subject of Government, whether in terms of praise or censure, it is not material; for no man has a right to say anything of Government."-Carr's case, 1680, State Trials, vii. 929. This monstrous opinion was not judicially condemned until 1765, by Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in the case of Entick v. Carrington, State Trials, xix. 1030. [Cf. Denman's Broom's Const. Law., pp. 555, 609.] 4 See Macaulay, Hist. Eng., ch. iii. [1861, i. pp. 389-392.]

which Macaulay did not hesitate to declare " has done more for liberty and for civilisation than the Great Charter or the Bill of Rights"-attracted scarcely any attention at the time; and was justified by the Commons, in conference with the Lords, without any reference to the great principle involved, and solely on questions of detail concerning the abuses and inconveniences incidental to the Censorship.

free, but still

The Press was now theoretically free; but in practice it was The Press still subject to several methods of restraint. The way in which theoretically the summary jurisdiction of Parliament was employed to check subject to the publication of debates has already been referred to, with restraints. reference to the privileges of the House of Commons; and the Government also made use of two other means of controlling the Press: (1) the Stamp Duty on newspapers, and (2) the Law of Libel. Newspapers, however, quickly multiplied when freed from the Censorship, and in the reign of Queen Anne assumed their present form, combining intelligence with political discussion. At the same time the intellectual character of the periodical literature was raised, and its influence widely extended, by the talents of writers like Addison, Steele, Swift, and Bolingbroke.

3

papers.

But the Press soon became the favourite instrument of party warfare, and by its scurrilous language excited a strong feeling of opposition to it among the governing classes. Each party, when in power, endeavoured to crush its opponents by prosecuting as seditious libels all publications which supported the Opposition. The revival of the Licensing Act was even suggested, but dismissed as impracticable; and the stamp duty on news- Stamp duty papers and advertisements was adopted instead, avowedly for on newsthe purpose of restraining the Press generally and of crushing the smaller papers. The first Stamp Act was passed in the tenth year of Queen Anne, and being found efficient both as a check on the circulation of cheap periodicals and as a source of revenue, the stamp was gradually raised to fourpence. At the end of George. III.'s reign it was extended, by one of the series of statutes known as the Six Acts,5 to tracts and other unstamped periodicals which, The Six 1 Macaulay, Hist. Eng. [1861, iv. 542]. 2 Supra p. 582, seq.

4

3 The first daily paper, the Daily Courant, was issued in 1709.

4 10 Anne, c. 19.

Acts.

5 The Six Acts (60 Geo. III. and I Geo. IV. cc. 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9) were a The "Six batch of repressive measures passed at the instance of the Government, Acts,” 1819. in 1819, in consequence of the disturbed state of the country. By the first (c. 1) the training of persons to the use of arms was prohibited; by the second (c. 2) the magistrates in the disturbed counties were authorised to search for and seize arms; by the third (c. 4) defendants in cases of misdemeanour were deprived of the right of traversing; by the fourth (c. 6) called the Seditious Meetings Act, extraordinary powers were conferred on the Executive, and all meetings of more than fifty persons for the discussion of public grievances were prohibited, except under very stringent conditions; by the fifth (c. 8) the Courts of Law were enabled on the conviction