Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/299

 protection at Rome, who look upon that church, of which he calls himself the head, as founded on fraud and falsehood, and to educate their children in the same principles. Nor hath the pope, or the grand seignior, ever seen reason to repent of their indulgence.

Were any more laws restraining the liberty of the press in force, it is impossible to say how far they might be construed to extend. Those already in being are more than are requisite, and inconsistent with the interests of truth. Were they to extend farther, every author would lie at the mercy of the ministers of state, who might condemn indiscriminately, upon some pretence or other, every work that gave them umbrage; under which circumstances might fall some of the greatest and noblest productions of the human mind, if such works could be produced in those circumstances. For if men of genius knew they could not publish the discoveries they made, they could not give free scope to their faculties in making