The experiment has been
tried; you have witnessed the scene; our fellow-citizens looked
on, cool and collected; they saw the latent source from which
these outrages proceeded; they gathered around their public
functionaries, and when the Constitution called them to the
decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to
those who had served them and consolatory to the friend of man who
believes that he may be trusted with the control of his own
affairs.
No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the States
against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced;
he who has time renders a service to public morals and public
tranquillity in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions
of the law; but the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth
and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in
league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no
other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false
reasoning and opinions on a full hearing of all parties; and no
other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty
of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness. If there be
still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its
supplement must be sought in the censorship of public opinion.
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