John Milton on the tyranny of government licensed printing (1644)

Milton makes many fine points in this classic defence of the freedom of speech and printing which he wrote in 1644 during the English Revolution. One point was to expose the hypocrisy of Parliament which continued the King’s policy of requiring prior approval by a panel of bishops and church leaders before any book could be published, even though they had vigorously opposed this when in opposition. Parliament merely wanted to have their own men in a position to censor their opponents, or as Milton put it “to make room for others into their seats under another name.” Another important point were the many parallels he drew between the free circulation of books and ideas and the free circulation of goods. Both kinds of “free trade” had great benefits for ordinary people and so should be deregulated from government control. A third very fine point was the idea that books were like living and thinking creatures and that censorship was like killing reason itself: “as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.”