AREOPAGITICA
By John Milton
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING
TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND
This is true liberty, when free-born men,
Having to advise the public, may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise;
Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace:
What can be juster in a state than this?
Euripid. Hicetid.
They, who to states and governors of the Commonwealth direct
their speech, High Court of Parliament, or, wanting such access in
a private condition, write that which they foresee may advance the
public good; I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean
endeavour, not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds:
some with doubt of what will be the success, others with fear of
what will be the censure; some with hope, others with confidence of
what they have to speak. And me perhaps each of these
dispositions, as the subject was whereon I entered, may have at
other times variously affected; and likely might in these foremost
expressions now also disclose which of them swayed most, but that
the very attempt of this address thus made, and the thought of whom
it hath recourse to, hath got the power within me to a passion, far
more welcome than incidental to a preface.
Which though I stay not to confess ere any ask, I shall be
blameless, if it be no other than the joy and gratulation which it
brings to all who wish and promote their country's liberty; whereof
this whole discourse proposed will be a certain testimony, if not
a trophy. For this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no
grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth--that let no man in
this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply
considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil
liberty attained that wise men look for. To which if I now
manifest by the very sound of this which I shall utter, that we are
already in good part arrived, and yet from such a steep
disadvantage of tyranny and superstition grounded into our
principles as was beyond the manhood of a Roman recovery, it will
be attributed first, as is most due, to the strong assistance of
God our deliverer, next to your faithful guidance and undaunted
wisdom, Lords and Commons of England. Neither is it in God's
esteem the diminution of his glory, when honourable things are
spoken of good men and worthy magistrates; which if I now first
should begin to do, after so fair a progress of your laudable
deeds, and such a long obligement upon the whole realm to your
indefatigable virtues, I might be justly reckoned among the
tardiest, and the unwillingest of them that praise ye.
Nevertheless there being three principal things, without which
all praising is but courtship and flattery: First, when that only
is praised which is solidly worth praise: next, when greatest
likelihoods are brought that such things are truly and really in
those persons to whom they are ascribed: the other, when he who
praises, by showing that such his actual persuasion is of whom he
writes, can demonstrate that he flatters not; the former two of
these I have heretofore endeavoured, rescuing the employment from
him who went about to impair your merits with a trivial and
malignant encomium; the latter as belonging chiefly to mine own
acquittal, that whom I so extolled I did not flatter, hath been
reserved opportunely to this occasion.
For he who freely magnifies what hath been nobly done, and fears
not to declare as freely what might be done better, gives ye the
best covenant of his fidelity; and that his loyalest affection and
his hope waits on your proceedings. His highest praising is not
flattery, and his plainest advice is a kind of praising. For
though I should affirm and hold by argument, that it would fare
better with truth, with learning and the Commonwealth, if one of
your published Orders, which I should name, were called in; yet at
the same time it could not but much redound to the lustre of your
mild and equal government, whenas private persons are hereby
animated to think ye better pleased with public advice, than other
statists have been delighted heretofore with public flattery. And
men will then see what difference there is between the magnanimity
of a triennial Parliament, and that jealous haughtiness of prelates
and cabin counsellors that usurped of late, whenas they shall
observe ye in the midst of your victories and successes more gently
brooking written exceptions against a voted Order than other
courts, which had produced nothing worth memory but the weak
ostentation of wealth, would have endured the least signified
dislike at any sudden proclamation.
If I should thus far presume upon the meek demeanour of your
civil and gentle greatness, Lords and Commons, as what your
published Order hath directly said, that to gainsay, I might defend
myself with ease, if any should accuse me of being new or insolent,
did they but know how much better I find ye esteem it to imitate
the old and elegant humanity of Greece, than the barbaric pride of
a Hunnish and Norwegian stateliness. And out of those ages, to
whose polite wisdom and letters we owe that we are not yet Goths
and Jutlanders, I could name him who from his private house wrote
that discourse to the Parliament of Athens, that persuades them to
change the form of democracy which was then established. Such
honour was done in those days to men who professed the study of
wisdom and eloquence, not only in their own country, but in other
lands, that cities and signiories heard them gladly, and with great
respect, if they had aught in public to admonish the state. Thus
did Dion Prusaeus, a stranger and a private orator, counsel the
Rhodians against a former edict; and I abound with other like
examples, which to set here would be superfluous.
But if from the industry of a life wholly dedicated to studious
labours, and those natural endowments haply not the worst for two
and fifty degrees of northern latitude, so much must be derogated,
as to count me not equal to any of those who had this privilege, I
would obtain to be thought not so inferior, as yourselves are
superior to the most of them who received their counsel: and how
far you excel them, be assured, Lords and Commons, there can no
greater testimony appear, than when your prudent spirit
acknowledges and obeys the voice of reason from what quarter soever
it be heard speaking; and renders ye as willing to repeal any Act
of your own setting forth, as any set forth by your predecessors.
If ye be thus resolved, as it were injury to think ye were
not, I know not what should withhold me from presenting ye with a
fit instance wherein to show both that love of truth which ye
eminently profess, and that uprightness of your judgment which is
not wont to be partial to yourselves; by judging over again that
Order which ye have ordained to regulate printing:--that no book,
pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed, unless the same be
first approved and licensed by such, or at least one of such, as
shall be thereto appointed. For that part which preserves justly
every man's copy to himself, or provides for the poor, I touch not,
only wish they be not made pretences to abuse and persecute honest
and painful men, who offend not in either of these particulars.
But that other clause of licensing books, which we thought had died
with his brother quadragesimal and matrimonial when the prelates
expired, I shall now attend with such a homily, as shall lay before
ye, first the inventors of it to be those whom ye will be loath to
own; next what is to be thought in general of reading, whatever
sort the books be; and that this Order avails nothing to the
suppressing of scandalous, seditious, and libellous books, which
were mainly intended to be suppressed. Last, that it will be
primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the stop of
truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what
we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that
might be yet further made both in religious and civil wisdom.
I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church
and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean
themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and
do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not
absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to
be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do
preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that
living ...
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