248. America/Americans; Freedom; Slavery

"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

Johnson: Taxation No Tyranny

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666. America; Freedom; Slavery

"Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty."

Johnson: Idler #11 (June 24, 1758)

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1,026. Authority; Censorship; Freedom

Regarding Arepagitica, a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing: "The danger of such unbounded liberty and the danger of bounding it have produced a problem in the science of Government, which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his projects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every skeptick in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authours; for it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions, which that society shall think pernicious: but this punishment, though it may crush the authour, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief."

Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)

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1,036. Freedom

"They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it."

Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)

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