CHAP.

XIX.

1GU3.

172 HIST011T OP EXGLAIO).

was given to the world. In that work he is ordinarily garrulous- even to minuteness about all that concerns himself, and some-times relates with amusing ingenuousness his own mistakes andthe censures which those'mistakes brought upon him. Butabout the ignominious judgment passed by the House of Com-mous on his Pastoral Letter he has preserved a most significantsilence.*

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour tothose who contrived it, produced important and salutary effects.Before the conduct of the unlucky licenser had been broughtunder the consideration of Parliament, the Commons had re-solved, without any division, and, as far as appears, withoutany discussion, that the Act w'hieh subjected literature to acensorship should be continued. But the question had noxv as-sumed a new aspect; and the continuation of the Act was nolonger regarded as a matter of course. A feeling in favour ofthe liberty of the press, a feeling not yet, it is true, of wideextent or formidable intensity, began to show itself. Theexisting system, it v'assaid, v r as prejudicial both to commerceand to learning. Could it be expected that any capitalist wouldadvance the funds necessary for a great literary undertaking, orthat any scholar would expend years of toil and research onsuch an undertaking, while it was possible that, at the lastmoment, the caprice, the malice, the folly of one man mightfrustrate the whole design? And was it certain that the lawwhich so grievously restricted both the freedom of trade and the

* The vote of the Commons is mentioned, with much feeling, in thememoirs which Burnet wrote at the time. “It look’d,” he says, “some-what extraordinary that I, who perhapps was the greatest assertor ofpublick liberty, from my first setting out, of any writer of the age, shouldbe soe severely treated as an enemy to it. But the truth was the Toryesnever liked me, and the Whiggs hated me because I went not into theirnotions and passions. But even this, and worse things that may happen tome shall not, I hope, be able to make me depart from moderate principlesand the just asserting the liberty of mankind.” — Burnet MS. Harl. 6584.