Existing comment:
1644
Areopagitica
London, 1697
English poet John Milton was a pamphleteer who crusaded for religious and civil liberties. "Areapagitica" was a critique of the principle of press censorship, written to protest an English requirement that books be licensed prior to publication. In the pamphlet -- itself unapproved -- Milton defended freedom to publish as essential to moral and intellectual development. "[He] who kills a person kills a reasonable creature," he wrote, "but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself." |