‘The Press Ought to be Open to All’ From the Liberty of Conscience to the Liberty of the Press

Abstract

This chapter examines a number of texts, dating from the turn of the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, that took a new look at the problem of the freedom of religion, the press, and opinion. This represents part of the debate that was conducted after the abolition of the licensing system in 1695. The chapter traces the line that leads from Matthew Tindal's Letter to a Member of Parliament (1698) to Anthony Collins' Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of Writing (1724). These positions from the deistic milieu are contrasted with reflections on the liberty of the press from the camp of High Church orthodoxy. It also considers how a number of writers, both supporters and opponents of the 'liberty of the press', linked the issue of press freedom to liberty of conscience and increasingly employed an idiom of natural rights in doing so.