Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/157

Rh of Sir Henry Vane in one case to relieve an author from censure was met with the answer "we held it our duty and believe we were called of God to proceed against him." Books of the Quakers were seized and burned at this time and the author concludes that prior to the establishment of the censorship, 1662, "there was no recognition of a general right of freedom of discussion or of a special right of freedom of the press." The Act of 1662 was repealed in 1663. but in 1665 a new licensing act was passed which apparently remained in force until the colony charter was vacated.

Under Dudley in the days of the president and council, control over the press was arbitrarily exercised and the royal instructions to Andres required him to maintain supervision over the printing of "books, pamphlets or other matters."

Under the ad interim government inaugurated after the overthrow of Andros, the governor and council assumed that they had the right to issue an order forbidding any person "to set forth anything in print without license first obtained." Following this came the organization of the government under the provincial charter, and in the instructions to the royal governors down to the year 1730 sections are to be found ordering a careful supervision over publications in the province. During this period there were spasmodic exercises of control over the press, but the interference on the part of the government diminished as time went on, while the number of publications which were issued without license steadily increased. In 1722, however, the General Court intervened and passed an order forbidding James Franklin to "print or publish the New England Courant, or any pamphlet or paper of the like nature, except it be first supervised by the Secretary of the Province."

The instructions to Belcher in 1730 did not contain the clause requiring him to maintain a censorship of the press. Up to that time licensed newspapers printed in the province had paraded the fact that they were "published by authority". Now they were forbidden to do so, and resort was had to criminal prosecutions for protection from improper or injurious publications. The review of the libel cases which arose in the days of the province is quite interesting, but the author confines himself to the consideration of criminal prosecutions. This compelled him to omit reference to the suit of Admiral Knowles against Dr. Douglass, which resulted in the suppression of the Summary, Political and Historical, etc., as originally published and the withdrawal from the market of such copies containing the libellous matter complained of as could be procured. The Summary is one of the few contemporary contributions made to our provincial history, and Mr. Duniway might have been forgiven if he had stretched the limits which he imposed upon himself and enlivened his pages with some of the doctor's picturesque language. (See Publications of the Col. Soc. of Mass., III. 213, 240.)

In Bernard's day, the House asserted that the liberty of the press is a great bulwark of the liberty of the people and that it was their