Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/157

 5. The immediate Care of upright Manners and Principles might seem an Object worthy the strictest Attention both of the Legislature and Magistrate.

To this End, if the growing Spirit of Novelty and Adoption could by any Means be checked, it would be a Work attended with the most salutary Consequences. The Writer would not willingly be thought chimerically to adopt all the Rigours of the Spartan State: But could wish to see a Law enacted, parallel to That of, by which their raw and unexperienced Youth were prohibited from bringing Home the new Follies and Vices of foreign Countries, picked up in a premature and too early Travel.

He would by no Means discourage the Freedom of the Press: Yet, sure, its Licentiousness might seem an Object of the Magistrate's Regard. The Search of Truth is good: But to search for This in the