Note 421 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 5)

The writer of Algernon Sidney’s Memoirs could not have known this fact, or he would not have said that “this was the first indictment of high treason upon which any man lost his life for writing anything without publishing it.”—Edit. 1751, p. 21. It is curious to have Sidney’s own opinion on this point. We discover this on his trial. He gives it, assuming one of his own noble principles, not likely to have been allowed by the wretched Tories of that day. Addressing the villanous Jeffries, the Lord Chief Justice:—“My Lord, I think it is a right of mankind, and ’tis exercised by all studious men, to write, in their own closets, what they please, for their own memory; and no man can be answerable for it, unless they publish it.” Jeffries replied:—“Pray don’t go away with that right of mankind, that it is lawful for me to write what I will in my own closet, so I do not publish it. We must not endure men to talk thus, that by the right of nature every man may contrive mischief in his own chamber, and is not to be punished till he thinks fit to be called to it.” Jeffries was a profligate sophist, but his talents were as great as his vices.