And even if I am forced to admit that our fathers, in theory, had not the courage of the conclusions which follow from this liberty of conscience for the liberty of speech, and the liberty of worship; even if I am well aware that they made a desperate effort to hinder the spread of literature which they disliked, by censure and refusal of publication;—all this does not set aside the fact that the free expression of thought, by the spoken and printed word, has first achieved its victory in the Calvinistic Netherlands.
