ABSTRACT
Each of these principles is foundational, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say one is more important than the other. However, it does make sense to say that the other principles would not operate properly if speech were not free-if the operations of government, social institutions, and the state were not subject to scrutiny and criticism. So for a long time-at least since the early 18th century-democratic theory has pointed to free expression as the lubricant that allows the machinery of democracy to function. It was said as early as 1704, for example, when British writers were pressing for the reform of the law of seditious libel, that “…there’s no Freedom either civil or ecclesiastical, but where the liberty of the Press is maintained” (Tindal, 1704, 14). A parallel view was expressed by an anonymous writer in the mid-18th century who said the press’s freedom is the “most valuable branch of our constitution; to which we owe being a free people” (Anon, Old England, 1747) To some writers the freedom of the press “was the “palladium of the English Constitution” (Anon, The English Review, 1787, 313) and to others it was “the only necessary law to the Constitution” (Carlile, 1823, cited in Wickwar, 1928).
