Note 125 — Chapter XIV · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Still there was no new deistic literature apart from Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious (1696) and his unauthorized issue (of course without author’s name) of Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue in 1699; and in that there is little direct conflict with orthodoxy, though it plainly enough implied that scripturalism would injuriously affect morals. It seems at that date, perhaps through the author’s objection to its circulation, to have attracted little attention; but he tells that it incurred hostility.125 Blount’s famous stratagem of 1693126 had led to the dropping of the official censorship of the press, the Licensing Act having been renewed for only two years in 1693 and dropped in 1695; but after the prompt issue of Blount’s collected works in that year, and the appearance of Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious in the next, the new and comprehensive Blasphemy Law of 1697127 served sufficiently to terrorize writers and printers in that regard for the time being.128 Bare denial of the Trinity, of the truth of the Christian religion, or of the divine authority of the Scriptures, was made punishable by disability for any civil office; and on a second offence by three years’ imprisonment, with withdrawal of all legal rights. The first clear gain from the freedom of the press was thus simply a cheapening of books in general. By the Licensing Act of Charles II, and by a separate patent, the Stationers’ Company had a monopoly of printing and selling all classical authors; and while their editions were disgracefully bad, the importers of the excellent editions printed in Holland had to pay them a penalty of 6s. 8d. on each copy.129 By the same Act, passed under clerical influence, the number even of master printers and letter-founders had been reduced, and the number of presses and apprentices strictly limited; and the total effect of the monopolies was that when Dutch-printed books were imported in exchange for English, the latter sold more cheaply at Amsterdam than they did in London, the English consumer, of course, bearing the burden.130 The immediate effect, therefore, of the lapse of the Licensing Act must have been to cheapen greatly all foreign books by removal of duties, and at the same time to cheapen English books by leaving printing free. It will be seen above that the output of treatises against freethought at once increases in 1696. But the revolution of 1688, like the Great Rebellion, had doubtless given a new stimulus to freethinking; and the total effect of freer trade in books, even with a veto on “blasphemy,” could only be to further it. This was ere long to be made plain.