Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/491

Rh at that policy, which brings upon men an host of foes, in order to destroy one? The only abuse pretended to be checked by sedition laws, is the promulgation of falsehood. Their efficacy for attaining this solitary end, is questionable. An exclusive privilege of lying in a predominant party, is a premium for its encouragement; and an equality in the right between rival parties, may produce a reciprocal check.

Detraction and flattery also afford some correction to each other, and diminish the mischiefs produced by the exclusive agency of either. The zeal of governments against detraction, has caused them to overlook the malignity of flattery without its check. The falsehood of one, deducts from the falsehood of the other. Leave flattery without the subtractor, detraction, and the quantity of falsehood is increased, both by the natural disposition of flattery, and also by an artificial excitement of that disposition. Thus also sedition laws create more falsehood than they destroy, and of a more pernicious nature. If they destroy the species of falsehood, which calumniates individuals, they create that called adulation to governments; and to destroy a small evil, foster a great one. The delirium provoked by the sweet poison, flattery, is often assuaged and even cured by the bitter antidote, detraction. The medicine, however acrimonious, may not be invariably useless to individuals; and it invariably, as to governments, produces the wholesome effect of causing them to turn their eyes upon themselves; a spectacle which the mirror of flattery never justly reflects.

Sedition laws are as often suggested by a love of truth, as religious laws, by a love of God. The former enlighten men politically, as the latter do religiously. Civil liberty flows from one policy, in streams as copious, as religious does from the other. A restraint of religious discussion by law, is exploded in the United States, because idolatry, fraud and oppression, are the fruits of this restraint. Will restraint of political discussion, produce knowledge, truth