Dr. Stiggins:
law in France were the work of fiends, while the so-called massacres in the prisons during the Revolution were a melancholy necessity, and the wholesale executions under what has been called "The Terror" in reality deeds of mercy. I hope I have convinced you of the need of being on your guard against confusing things which are really essentially distinct in spite of surface similarities. Perhaps a more modern instance may be helpful: your blood must often have boiled at the way in which the late government packed the magistracy with Tories. But you surely do not see any resemblance between this most flagitious proceeding and the efforts of the friends of the present administration to ensure that Liberalism shall be efficiently represented on the Bench? Good; then I hope you will not confuse my proposition for a Board of Press Overseers with the tyrannical and abominable system of the censorship.
Besides, we have already the elements of such a system worked in a rough and ready way by the editors themselves.
22
