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 CURRAN. 843 minister, no government, which nothing but the depravity, or folly, or corruption of a jury, can ever destroy. And what calamities are the people saved from by having public communication left open to them? I will tell you, gentlemen, what they are saved from, and what the government is saved from; I will tell you also to what both are exposed by shutting up that communication. In one case sedition speaks aloud, and walks abroad; the demagogue goes forth; the publid eye is upon him; he frets his busy hour upon the stage; but soon either weari- ness, or bribe, or punishment, or disappointment, bears him down, or drives him off, and he appears no more. In the other case, how does the work of sedition go for- ward? Night after night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark, and casts another and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the hour of fatal maturity shall arrive, he will apply the flame. If you doubt of the borrid consequences of suppressing the effusion even of indi- vidual discontent, look to those enslaved countries where the protection of despotism is supposed to be secured by such restraints. Even the person of the despot there is never in safety; neither the fears of the despot, nor the machinations of the slave, have any slumber; the one anticipating the moment of peril, the other watching for the opportunity of aggression. The fatal crisis is equally a surprise upon both; the decisive instant is precipitated without warning, by folly on the one side, or by frenzy on the other; and there is no notice of the treason till the traitor acts. In those unfortunate countries (one cannot read it without horror) there are officers whose province it is to have the water, which is to be drunk by their ralers, sealed up in bottles, lest some wretched miscreant should throw poison into the draught. "But, gentlemen, if you wish for a nearer and more in- teresting example, you have it in the history of your own revolution. You have it at the memorable period when the monarch found a servile acquiescence in the ministers of his folly; when the liberty of the press was trodden