King made the Bishop refund every penny he had received for fees in a long course of years, and transferred the money, without scruple, to his private purse. It was said of the Statutes of Limitation by Lord Plunket, that "when Time comes with his scythe, in one hand, to mow down the muniments of our rights, the Legislature has placed an hour-glass in his other hand, by which he metes out incessantly those portions of duration which render needless the evidences he has swept away." Time, however, in the reign of Charles II., was deprived of his hour-glass, and confined to the use only of his scythe, in favour of royalty: he has resumed it permanently, and without distinction of persons, in consequence of the Nullum Tempus Act of George III. The Act was made prospective as well as retrospective, against the opposition of Ministry, by a majority of 205 to 124. It was passed on the "spur of an occasion," upon the government availing themselves of a defect in a grant made to the Duke of Portland by William III.

It is stated by Mr Hallam that, in the reign of Charles II., there was "an entire cessation of impositions of money without consent of Parliament." It may, however, appear to be a qualification of this statement, that the House of Commons, in 1673, in an Address to the King on the subject of Grievances, petition "that the imposition of twelve pence per chaldron on coals, for the providing of convoys, by virtue of an Order of Council, dated the 15th of May, 1672, may be recalled, and all bonds taken by virtue thereof cancelled;" and in a debate of the same Session about a postponement of the engrossing of a Money Bill, four members complain of impositions without authority of law. Andrew Marvell, in a letter to the Mayor of Hull, in the year 1675, mentions a Bill that was read a second time and referred to a committee after "mature debate," for making it treason to raise money on behalf of the King otherwise than by Act of Parliament. It may be thought that the law as it was unequivocally established by the Petition of Right was

diametrically opposed to prerogative taxation; but it has been seen that much mystification prevailed, in the reign of Charles II., relative to arbitrary Proclamations, especially in matters connected with the Ports. The Bill of Rights which is, in its objects, retrospective of the abuses of government in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., contains what may be presumed to have been no idle provision, that "the levying of money for or to the use of the Crown, by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time or in any other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal.”

Courtiers and persons holding government offices were, in the reign of Charles II., liable to contribute to the King's wants, for which, probably, it was understood that they received compensation in the numerous gratuities paid for subordinate places, and other fruits of reflected favor. Pepys writes, in 1667, "Sir W. Coventry did single out Sir W. Penn and me, and desired us to lend the King some money out of the prizes we have taken by Hogg." He adds, probably in consequence of this loan hanging over his head, "My wife mighty pressing for a new pair of cuffs, which I am against the laying of money out upon yet, which makes her angry." In the same year, Pepys makes mention of loans from £1000 to £5 upon some Act of Parliament. He says "Upon the whole I do think to lend, since I must lend, £300; though, God knows! it is much against my will to lend my money." Pepys thus relates a custom in the reign of Charles II. of New Year's Gifts to the King: "I had been early this morning to the Jewel Office to choose a piece of plate for my Lord Sandwich in return of his offering to the King (which, it seems, is usual at this time of year, and an Earl gives twenty pieces of gold in a purse to the King). I chose a gilt tankard, weighing thirty-one ounces and a half, and he is allowed thirty; so I paid 12s. for the ounce and a half over what he was to have: but strange it was for me to see what a company of small fees I was called upon by a great many to

pay; which, I perceive, is the manner that courtiers do get their estates."

The most recent triumph of the Subject's right in respect of Property, is the famous decision by Lord Camden, in 1763, that a warrant to search for and seize the papers of the accused, upon a charge for a seditious libel, is illegal. In 1766, the House of Commons resolved, that "the seizing or taking away the papers of the author, printer or publisher of a libel, or the supposed author, printer or publisher of a libel, is illegal." Of this Resolution Mr Burke, in his "Short Account of a late Short Administration," observes, "The lawful security of business and friendship were rendered inviolable, by the Resolution for condemning the seizure of papers."

CHAPTER VIII.

LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

THE Liberty of the Press, described by Milton as a liberty of

knowing, uttering, and arguing freely according to conscience," depends, first, on a freedom from Censorship, or a Licenser; and, secondly, on an exemption from penalties on account of publishing sentiments on public affairs, apart from licentiousness and scurrility, whether such publications require an Imprimatur or not. In both these respects the history of the English Press has been eventful; it is proposed to treat, I. Of Censorship, and II. Of Penalties for Writings.

I. Censorship.

"Truth and understanding," writes Milton, "are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broad cloths and our woolpacks. What is it but a servitude, like that imposed by the Philistines', not to be allowed the sharpening of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters of the land to a Licensing Forge?"

The original institution of a Licenser of the Press is usually attributed to the Popes, or, as Milton writes, that the last

I Sam. ch. xiii.

invention of the Popes for the subjugation of the Press was to "ordain that no book should be printed (as if St Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the Press as well as of Paradise) unless it were approved and licensed under the hands of two or three gluttonous friars." He observes that "the form of an Imprimatur was so apishly Romanizing as still to be set down in Latin, because no vulgar tongue was worthy to express the pure conceit of it." The term Imprimatur was sometimes used after the Restoration, as in the instance of a well-known work ushered into the world by the midwifery of well-known Licensers.

Imprimatur.

Liber cui titulus est Origines Juridicales, Authore Gulielmo Dugdale.

24 Maii,

1666.

ORL. BRIDGMAN.
MATTHEW HALE.

The art of printing had not long been introduced into this country before it became the policy of the Government to crush in the embryo whatever opinions were not in accordance with its views. In the reigns of the Tudors and of the first two Stuart Kings, the Star Chamber, whose cruel sentences, as Clarendon represents, were suspended like a meteor over the nation, rendered it an enterprise of extreme peril to publish anything which had not obtained the previous sanction of a Licenser.

After the Star Chamber had been abolished, Milton, in the most eloquent defence of unlicensed printing ever written, his Areopagitica, ineffectually attempted to stay an Ordinance imposing a censorship on the press, which was passed by the professed champions of liberty. Milton denounced the new censorship as a "second tyranny over learning, putting it out of controversy that Bishops were abrogated to make room for Presbyters to enter into their seats under another name; whilst the Pastor of a small unlearned parish would, on the sudden, be exalted Archbishop over a large diocese of books; this was not