Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/734

710 P R E P R E nii l Hungarian malcontents concluded the treaty with Archduke Matthias against Rudolf II. In 1619 Prcssburg was taken by the Protestant leader Bethlen Gabor ; but it was recovered by the im perialists in 1021. It was also the scene of that memorable session of parliament, 1037, at which the Hungarians renounced their right of choosing their king and accepted the hereditary succession. In 1734 the capital was removed to Buda. Peace was made here be tween Napoleon and Francis I. after the battle of Austerlitz, 26th December 1305, and in 1809 Davoust bombarded the place for a whole month. It continued to be the seat of parliament until 1848, and it was the scene of the great reform debates during the session of 1847-43. PRESS LAWS. The liberty of the press has always been regarded by modern political writers as a matter of supreme importance. " Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all other liberties," says Milton in the Areopagitica. At the present day the liberty of the press in English-speaking countries is (with perhaps the single exception of Ireland) a matter of merely historical importance. The liberty was a plant of slow growth. Before the invention of printing the church assumed to control the expression of all opinion distasteful to her. (See BIBLIOGRAPHY, vol. iii. pp. 658, 659, INDEX LIBRORUM PROHIBITORUM, INQUISITION.) The authority of parliament was invoked in England to aid the ecclesi astical authority. There is an ordinance as early as 1382, 5 Ric. II. st. 2, c. 5 (not assented to by the Commons, but appearing upon the parliament roll), directed against unlicensed preachers. After the invention of printing the ecclesiastical censorship was still asserted, but only as col lateral with the censorial rights of the crown, claimed by virtue of its general prerogative. After the Reformation the greater part of the rights of censorship passed to the crown, which at the same time assumed the power of grant ing by letters patent the right of printing or selling books as a monopoly. The grant, if made to the author himself, was an ecjuivalent of copyright ; if made to a person other than the author, it seems to have always been subject to the author s copyright as it existed at common law. Censorship was either restrictive or corrective, i.e., it interfered to restrict or prevent publication, or it enforced penalties after publication. Repression of free discussion was regarded as so necessary a part of government that Sir Thomas More in his Utopia makes it punishable with death for a private individual to criticize the conduct of the ruling power. Under Mary printing was confined to members of the Stationers Company, founded by royal charter in 1556. Under Elizabeth the Star Chamber, the great censorial authority of the Tudor period, assumed the right to confine printing to London, Oxford, and Cam bridge, to limit the number of printers and presses, to prohibit all publications issued without proper licence, and to enter houses to search for unlicensed presses and publications (Order of 1585, Strype s Whityift, App. 94). The search for unlicensed presses or publications was entrusted to an officer called the "messenger of the press." The Stuart kings followed the example of their predecessors. Thus in 1637 was issued a stringent order of the Star Chamber forbidding the importation of books printed abroad to the scandal of religion or the church or the Government, and the printing of any book not first lawfully licensed. Law books were to be licensed by one of the chief justices or the chief baron, books of history and state affairs by one of the secretaries of state, of heraldry by the earl marshal, of divinity, philosophy, poetry, and other subjects by the archbishop of Canterbury or the bishop of London, or the chancellors or vice-chan cellors of the universities. There were to be only twenty master printers and four letter-founders. The punishment was at the discretion of the court (Rushworth, Historical Collections, vol. iii., App. 306). The same principle of press restriction was carried out by the Long Parliament after the abolition of the Star Chamber, and it was an ordi nance of that body issued in 1643 that called forth Milton s A reopayitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, itself an unlicensed book. The parliament appointed committees for printing, who appointed licensers, but the licensing was really left in a great measure to the wardens of the Stationers Company. At the Restoration Sir John Birkenhead acted as licenser, appointed apparently under the general prerogative. It was, no doubt, too, under the general prerogative that Charles II., by a proclamation in 1660, called in and suppressed Milton s Defensio j)r<> Populo Anglicano. Then followed the Licensing Act of 1662 (13 and 14 Car. II. c. 33), limited to two years. The provisions as to importation of books, the appointment of licensers, and the number of printers and founders were practically re-enactments of the similar provisions in the Star Chamber order of 1637. Printing presses were not to be set up without notice to the Stationers Company. A king s messenger had power by warrant of the king or a secretary of state to enter and search for unlicensed presses and printing. Severe penalties by fine and imprisonment were denounced against offenders. The Act was success ively renewed up to 1679. Under the powers of the Act Sir Roger L Estrange was appointed licenser, and the effect of the supervision was that practically the newspaper press was reduced to the London Gazette. (See NEWSPAPERS, vol. xvii. pp. 414, 415.) The objections made to lines 594- 599 of the first book of Paradise Lost by the archbishop of Canterbury s chaplain, acting as licenser, are well known. The Act expired in 1679, and for the remainder of the reign of Charles II., as in the reign of George III., the restrictions on the press took the form of prosecutions for libel. The twelve judges resolved in 1680 "that all persons that do write or print or sell any pamphlet that is either scandalous to public or private persons, such books may be seized and the person punished by law ; that all books which are scandalous to the Government may be seized, and all persons so exposing them may be punished. And further, that all writers of news, though not scan dalous, seditious, nor reflective upon the Government or the state, yet, if they are writers (as there are few else) of false news, they are indictable and punishable upon that account" (Harris s case, State Trials, vii. 929). In 1685 the Licensing Act was renewed for seven years (1 Jac. II. c. 8, 15). No mention of the liberty of the press was made in the Bill of Rights. On the expiration of the Licensing Act in 1692 it was continued till the end of the existing session of parliament (4 and 5 Will, and Mary, c. 24, 14). In 1695 the Commons refused to renew it. The immediate effect of this was to lay authors open to the attacks of literary piracy, and in 1709 the first Copyright Act (8 Anne, c. 19) was enacted for their protection. The power of a secretary of state to issue a warrant, whether general or special, for the purpose of searching for and seizing the author of a libel or the libellous papers them selves a power exercised by the Star Chamber and con firmed by the Licensing Act was still asserted, and was not finally declared illegal until the case of Entick v. Car- rington in 1765 (State Trials, xix. 1030). In 1776 the House of Commons came to a resolution in accordance with this decision. The compulsory stamp duty on news papers was abandoned in 1855 (18 Viet. c. 27), the duty on paper in 1861 (24 Viet. c. 20), the optional duty on newspapers in 1870 (33 and 34 Viet. c. 38). From that time the English press may be said to date its complete freedom, which rests rather upon a constitutional than a legal foundation. It is not confirmed by any provision of the supreme legislative authority, as is the case in many countries. A declaration in favour of the liberty

of the press is usually a prominent feature in the written