Page:The plot discovered; or, An address to the people, against ministerial treason (IA plotdiscoveredor00cole).pdf/18

 clause! All names of past ages dear to liberty are equally proscribed! He who prints and publishes against monarchy, as well as he who writes against it, is a traitor. The future editions will be treasonable. If the legislature can pass, if the people can endure such a law, it will soon pass, they will easily endure a domiciliary inquest, which will go through our private and our public libraries with the expurgatorial besom! This has been already done in Hanover; it was done by order of the government there in the course of the last year. We hope and struggle to believe, that the measure proceeded entirely from the resident ministers; we hope and struggle to believe, that the first magistrate of a free country, that a monarch whose forefathers the bold discussion of political principles placed and preserved on the throne of Great Britain, could not be the author of an edict which assumes the infallibility of the Pope, and the power of the inquisition. We hope and struggle to believe it, lest an unbidden and unwelcome suspicion force its way into our bosoms, that they, who ordered such a measure in Hanover, must wish it in England. Sages and patriots that being dead do yet speak to us, spirits of Milton, Locke, Sidney, Harrington! that still wander through your native country, giving wisdom and inspiring