In Denmark, an ordinance of Christian VII., dated September, 1799, on the sub ject of the press, abolishes the previous censorship, but imposes severe penalties ou those who offend through the press ; death is the penalty for any person who shall excite rebellion or provoke a funda mental change in the constitution of the monarchy. Whoever censures or defames or excites hatred or contempt against the constitution of the kingdom and the go vernment of the king, either on general grounds or on the occasion of any par ticular act, shall be banished for life, and if he returns without permission, shall be sent to bard work for life. Whoever shall censure or vilify the monarchical form of government in general shall be exiled from three to ten years. Any libel against the person and honour of the king, or any member of the royal family, shall be punished with exile. Whoever publishes a work tending to deny the existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or to cast censure or ridicule on the fundamental dogmas of the Christian religion, is to be banished likewise. Any one who shall attack or ridicule the tenets of the other Christian communions tol erated in the kingdom, shall be punished by a short imprisonment on bread and water. The same punishment is assigned to those who shall offend public morals by their writings. Any one defaming a foreign prince friendly to Denmark, or ascribing to his government any unjust or disgraceful act, without quoting any au thority, shall be sent to hard work in a house of correction for a limited period.
The liberty of the German press, or the thing so called, varied in former times according to the spirit of the dif ferent governments. As long as the emperors of the house of Austria were under the influence of the Jesuits, they tried to establish certain rules in order to check the press equally all over the empire, and an imperial commission was appointed, which sat at Frankfurt on the Main, to watch over the productions of a host of authors. The states of the empire however showed little deference to imperial orders; many of them al lowed the press nearly complete free dom; and Saxony being foremost among them, the booksellers ceased to assemble at Frankfort, and chose Leipzig for the centre of their extensive trade, which it has remained ever since. King Frederick II. of Prussia granted liberty to the press " because it amused him ;" but he cautioned the editors of newspapers "to act cum gran salis, and especially not to give offence to foreign states." The cen sorship was abolished in Bavaria in 1803; in Hesse and Mecklenburg it existed only occasionally ; and in Holstein the press had always been free ; but these were exceptions, and in most of the Roman Catholic states, especially in Austria, the press was most arbitrarily checked. The great exertions of the German nation to put down the power of Napoleon and re establish most of their petty princes on their thrones, seemed to deserve some re ward, and the princes consequently pro mised, in Art. 18 of the Act of Con federation, " that the diet should occupy itself in its first meeting with fixing general rules concerning the press in Germany." The nation thought that such rules would be in favour of the liberty of the press, but it soon became manifest that they were greatly mistaken in forming such sanguine hopes. Severe of the minor states, however, abolished the censorship ; as Nassau in 1814, Wiir temberg in 1815, and Saxe-Weimar in 1816. The political agitation of Europe after the downfall of Napoleon, and the desire of a new order of things, which seemed to take the same turn in Germany as in Spain and Italy, caused the German rulers to hold a congress at Karlsbad in 1819, by which the German periodical press was enslaved by the decision that all books or other printed publications under twenty sheets should be subjected to a censorship. The spirit which directed this censorship was most arbi trary and harsh, and led to collisions of the most dangerous kind between the re presentative bodies of the states and the rulers. Nor was the liberty of the press for books above twenty sheets respected, and political authors especially ex perienced many persecutions, while, strangely enough, religious matters might be treated with perfect freedom.
The French revolution in 1830 pro duced most salutary effects in Germany. The people rose in arms, demanding con stitutional rights, and above all a free press, and the rulers were in some states compelled to grant their claims. In § 37 of the new constitution of the electorate of Hesse, it is said that the press and the book trade shall enjoy complete liberty, and that the censorship shall only exist in cases specified by the diet. Similar laws were made in the kingdoms of Saxony and Hanover, in Brunswick and most of the minor states. The most liberal regulations for the press were ob tained by the chambers of the grand duchy of Baden, in December, 1831; but the fear of the French revolutionists having then subsided, the laws of Baden as to the press were declared by the diet, in 1832, to be contrary to the general law (the decree of Karlsbad of 1819), and the press in Baden was once more en slaved. On the 28th of June, 1832, the
diet resolved that care should be taken to compel the editors of newspapers and other political productions to keep within proper limits in publishing the debates of the representative bodies, and the diet of 1836 declared that editors of newspapers and political writers should publish no accounts of such debates except those published in the government papers, or extracts from them. Since that time there has been a visible reaction against the freedom of the press, though the censorship is much more severe against political and historical publications than against other works. It was hoped that the present king of Prussia, who mani fested very liberal sentiments when his kingdom was threatened with a French invasion, would grant a free press ; but that fear having ceased in 1841, the king gave fresh orders to adhere strictly to the decree of Karlsbad, so that now only books above twenty sheets are exempt from the censorship. There are, how ever, plenty of means in Prussia, as well as in the rest of Germany, for prevent ing authors from publishing works of a tendency contrary to the views of its government ; for nearly all men of scientific attainments, being in the service of government, expose themselves to dangerous consequences unless they act as Frederick the Great recommended, " cum gran sails." A proof of the in fluence of the government in this respect is the strange change in the spirit of so many Prussian authors since the accession of the present king. Previous to this event the worship of the philosophy of Hegel was almost necessary for obtain ing places under government : the present king, however, was known to be opposed to Hegel, and no sooner was he king than Hegel was abandoned by most of his disciples, and those who stuck to him were attacked without mercy. Great numbers of Prussian authors, who were not known for their piety before the king's accession, became known for it after. The only country where the press was free, in spite of the decrees of the diet, was the duchy of Holstein, as men tioned above : and the most liberal Ger man works were printed and issued by the publishers at Altona : but since the dissensions between the German and the Danish populations of the kingdom of Denmark, the periodical press in that duchy has been enslaved to such a degree that even suspicious music has not passed the scissors of the censors, as we read in a late number of the Hamburger Cor respondent.' In the political systems prevalent in Germany, censorship is one of the various functions of the police, a word which among the German theorists has a much larger meaning than we are accustomed to give to it. The direction of the cen sorship was accordingly in the hands of the ministers of police. The present king of Prussia, however, established an Ober-Censur-Behorde, or a commission charged with the direction of the censor ship and the superintendence of the dif ferent censors in the provinces. A similar arrangement was lately made in Austria: the censorship was taken from the minister of police, and intrusted to a commission, as in Prussia, which is under the control of the minister of the interior.
(C'onversations-Lexicon, Supplement, Art. Pressfreiheir; Lesur, Annuaire ; Venturini, Chronik des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.) The constitutions of the various States composing the North American Union admit the absolute liberty of the press. There is of course in each state a law of libel, sufficiently strict, concerning which it may be entertaining to read Cobbett's account of his own trial, entitled ' A Republican Judge,' under the assumed name of Peter Porcupine. In the slave states there are very severe laws against interfering by the press with the great question of slavery. It has been stated that abolitionist newspapers are seized at the post-office.
The republics of Spanish America likewise acknowledge the principle of the unfettered liberty of the press, however it may have been often violated in prac tice amidst the never ending factions and civil wars of those countries. The con stitution of the Brazilian Empire esta blishes the freedom of the press without any censorship ; but an author is liable to punishment in such cases as are pro vided by law.
(Beckmann, History of Inventions ; Burton, Diary ; Encyclopedic Me'tho dique, section " Jurisprudence, " art. " Censure des Livres ;" Thibaudeau, Histoire de la France et de Napoleon Bonaparte ; Bacqua, Codes de la Legisla tion Francaise, 1843; Collection de Con stitutions et Chartes, by A. Dufau, etc. Paris, 1830 ; and the other works and pamphlets quoted in the course of this article.)