Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/395

379 MEANING OF THE TERM '' LIBERTY P 379 ment.^ Even in this country religious liberty has not always flourished. In fact all the early colonies, except Rhode Island, absolutely denied it, and it cannot be said to have become gener- ally established as a right until well into the last century. And so it is with what we call *' liberty of the press,"" which means nothing more than liberty to pubHsh any statement without the permission of a licenser, or freedom from censorship. This right is also of very recent origin. It is not mentioned in the Petition of Right (1627), nor in the Bill of Rights (1689), of so little importance did it seem to those engaged in redressing the grievances of that time in England.^ In the colonies the feeling was the same. In 1671 Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, "thanked God that there were no free schools or printing; and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning hath brought disobedience and heresy into the world, and printing hath divulged them. God keep us from both." ^ He was speak- ing of the condition of the colonies in reply to EngHsh Commis- sioners. In 1683, when Governor Dongon was sent out as gov- ernor of New York, he was expressly directed not to allow any printing.* In Massachusetts the publication even of State papers did not become free until 1719.^ Yet at this time, as always, the colonists most strenuously asserted their rights to life, liberty, and property; and Chalmers, in his Colonial Annals, declares that they are " assuredly entitled to the same liberties which are enjoyed by those whom they had left within the realms." '* They were entitled to personal security, to private property, and, what is of most importance of all, to personal liberty." ^ On the whole, therefore, one is fully justified in saying that liberty of press and religion, and of speech, were unknown and unclaimed as rights, not only when the thirty-ninth article of Magna Charta was formed, but also centuries later when the terms of that article became paraphrased or consolidated into the more modern expression, " life, liberty, and property." That phrase was probably in use 1 9 & 10 Will. III. c. 35 ; 53 Geo. III. c. 160 ; Dicey on the " Law of the Constitution," 257- 2 It was not fully obtained in England until 1694. See 2 Cooley's Blackstone, 135, note (a). 3 Chalmers' Annals, 328. 6 2 Hildreth, 298. 6 Chalmers' Annals, 678.
 * 2 Hildreth's History, ']'].