Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/176

 regularly exacted for political speeches in addition to reimbursement for my outlays. It was one of the crosses I had to bear. Sometimes it severely tried my patience, but did not exhaust it.

The question whether it is not advisable or even necessary to restrain by law the license of the press in attacking public men has often been argued, and plausible reasons have been adduced in favor of restrictive measures. In spite of many provocations I have had to suffer, I have always been decidedly opposed to such a policy. That the freedom of the press in the discussion of the merits or demerits of public characters is liable to gross abuse, is certainly true. But it is no less true that any restrictive legislation would be liable to abuse far more dangerous. It is very difficult to draw the dividing line between legitimate and illegitimate criticism, and a law against the latter can hardly be devised that could not easily be misused against the former. It is infinitely more important that in a free government which is to rest upon a well-informed public opinion, legitimate criticism should have the widest and most unobstructed range, than that illegitimate criticism should be restrained or punished. As to the practical working of this freedom, I do not know a single instance of a public man in our political history being destroyed or seriously injured in his standing or influence by unjust attacks upon his character. But I know of several cases in which public men were justly attacked, and the public interest demanded that they be attacked, when such conscientious attacks would in all probability have been seriously discouraged, if not entirely prevented, had restrictive laws against illegitimate criticism, outside of our present libel laws, been in force. In fact, the enactment of such restrictive legislation has in our days been most urgently asked for, or at least desired, by a class of politicians whose