JB/109/141/001

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1820 Apr. 27.
Collectanea – La Fayette for Liberty of the Press – well applied by Morn. Chron.

actual resources of the police, in a code in which the
safety of ruling families has certainly not been neglected,
in our procedure, and even in the views of our forms of
proceeding, means more than were necessary to have prevented
this crime?"

This judicious observation with very little variation
is applicable to our own politics. Whenever an atrocity
connected with political feelings, be committed, the
fact is immediately trumpetted forth by the Ministerial
prints as a justification of their restrictive measures; but
the question is never asked; is the act such as can be prevented
by a restrictive law? Laws are never considered by
them as means adapted to an end, but as things to be
measured by their quantity only. For instance the plot
of Thistlewood, which succeeded, l was held to be a justification
of the law against public meetings, as if that law
had not a tendency (if it were at all connected with that
crime) by preventing the evaporation of political rage, to
encourage plans for violence and assassination. It was
at the conclusion, of this speech, that he made the striking
appeal to the assembly, which we mentioned at
Notables in of 1787, that I the first demanded the abolition
of lettres de cachet, I now vote against their
re-establishment."

In the course of his speech on the Law of Censorships
after observing that the boldest friends of arbitrary power
in England would not dare to propose simultaneously
two such measures as were at that time brought forward
in France, he said, "I shall not be accused of citing
the United States on this point, because political
civilization has proceeded so far with them, that not only
the idea of civilization of such an accumulation,
but even the suspension of either of these rights cannot be
an admissable hypothesis. – And nevertheless is there an
European city of 100,000 souls, in which you would
dare to guarantee tranquility for a given time at the
same premium of insurance that you would accept guarantee
of that of the town of New York or Philadelphia?

Another fact, which he in common with other liberal
members, he mentioned to elucidate the advantages derived
from a free press, is equally important, and the more necessary
to be brought to view in this country, because, from our
long enjoyment of its benefits, some well meaning men annoyed
at some trifling inconveniences, are apt to forget the
manifold evils which it prevents. He alludes as a notorious
circumstance to the disappearance, since the removal of
the censorship from the journals, of those reports of the re-appearance
of Bonaparte, which as every one remembers
kept many parts of France in a state of continual
agitation "what is become, as you were reminded yesterday,
of those popular rumours of the pretended arrival of the former
head of the state since the liberal journals have enlightened the spirit of
party or of discontent & have made it ashamed to breathe both sighs for the loss of servitude?"

Identifier: | JB/109/141/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 109.
Date_1	1820-04-27	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	109	Main Headings	Liberty of the Press
Folio number	141	Info in main headings field	[[info_in_main_headings_field::Collectanea La Fayette for Liberty of the Press - will[?] applied by Morn. Chron.]]
Image	001	Titles
Category	Collectanea	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	D2 / E2
Penner		Watermarks	C WILMOTT 1819
Marginals		Paper Producer	Andreas Louriottis
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1819
Notes public		ID Number	35796
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