"May it not be asked of every intelligent friend to the liberties of his country, whether the power exercised in such an act as this ought not to produce great and universal alarm? Whether a rigid execution of such an act, in time past, would not have repressed that information and communication among the people which is indispensable to the just exercise of their electoral rights? And whether such an act, if made perpetual, and enforced with rigor, would not, in time to come, either destroy our free system of government, or prepare a convulsion that might prove equally fatal to it? " | by: | James Madison
(1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President |
Source: | Jan 1800, regarding the Sedition Act of 1798, Report on the Virginia Resolutions
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs24.html |
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