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Page 1
THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.
An important discussion has arisen since the commencement of the war,
bearing upon the interests of the American Press. The Government has
seen fit, at various times, through its authorities, civil and military,
to suppress the circulation and even the publication of journals which,
in its judgment, gave aid and comfort to the enemy, either by disloyal
publications in reference to our affairs, or by encouraging and
laudatory statements concerning the enemy. The various papers of the
country have severally censured or commended the course of the
Government in this matter, and the issue between the Press and the
Authorities has been regarded as of a sufficiently serious nature to
demand a convocation of editors to consider the subject; of which
convention Horace Greeley was chairman. A few remarks on the nature of
the liberty of the press and on its relations to the governing powers
will not, therefore, at this time, be inopportune.
Men are apt, at times, in the excitement of political partisanship, to
forget that the freedom of the press is, like all other social liberty,
relative and not absolute; that it is not license to publish whatsoever
they please, but only that which is _within certain defined limits_
prescribed by the people as the legitimate extent to which expression
through the public prints should be permitted; and that it is because
these limits are regulated by the whole people, for the whole people,
and not by the arbitrary caprice of a single individual or of an
aristocracy, that the press is denominated free. Let it be remembered,
then, as a starting point, that the press is amenable to the people;
that it is controlled and regulated by them, and indebted to them for
whatever measure of freedom it enjoys.
The scope of this liberty is carefully defined by the statutes, as also
the method by which its transgression is to be punished. These
enactments minutely define the nature of an infringement of their
provisions, and point out the various methods of procedure in order to
redress private grievance or to punish public wrong, in such instances.
These statutes emanate from the people, are the expression of their
will, and in consonance with them the action of the executive
authorities must proceed, whenever the civil law is sufficient for the
execution of legal measures.
But there comes a time, in the course of a nation's existence, when the
usual and regular methods of its life are interrupted; when peaceful
systems and civilized adaptations are forced to give place to the ruder
and more peremptory modes of procedure which belong to seasons of
hostile strife. The slow, methodical, oftentimes tedious contrivances of
ordinary law, admirably adapted for periods of national quietude, are
utterly inadequate to the stern and unforeseen contingencies of civil
war. Laws which are commonly sufficient to secure justice and afford
protection, are then comparatively powerless for such ends. The large
measure of liberty of speech and of the press safely accorded when there
is ample time to correct false doctrines and to redress grievances
through common methods, is incompatible with the rigorous promptitude,
energy, celerity, and unity of action necessary to the preservation of
national existence in times of rebellion. If an individual be suspected
of conspiring against his country, at such a time, to leave him at
liberty while the usual processes of law were being undertaken, would
perhaps give him opportunity for consummating his designs and delivering
the republic into the hands of its enemies. If a portion of the press
circulate information calculated to aid the foe in the defeat of the
national armies, to endeavor to prevent this evil by the slow routine of
civil law, might result in the destruction of the state. The fact that
we raise armies to secure obedience commonly enforced by the ordinary
civil officers is a virtual and actual acknowledgment that a new order
of things has arisen for which the usual methods are insufficient, civil
authority inadequate, and to contend with which powers must be exercised
not before in vogue. Codes of procedure arranged for an established and
harmoniously working Government cannot answer all the requirements of
that Government when it is repudiated by a large body of its subjects,
and the existence of the nation itself is in peril.
It is evident, therefore, that at times the accustomed methods of Civil
government must, in deference to national safety, be laid aside, to some
extent, and the more vigorous adaptations of Military government
substituted in their stead. But it does not follow from this that
_arbitrary_ power is necessarily employed, or that such methods are not
strictly legal. There is a despotic Civil government and a despotic
Military government, a free Civil government and a free Military
government. The Civil government of Russia is despotic; so would its
Military government be if internal strife should demand that military
authority supersede the civil; the Civil government of the United States
is free, so must its Military government be in order to be sustained.
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