Milton, John

[Broadside] AREOPAGITICA [and] TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

San Francisco: John Henry Nash, 1925. Broadside. Very Good+ binding. Item #7531

Bifolium. 12" x 8.5". [4] pp. Minor toning to the edges, only. Extract of Milton's Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England (1644) is printed on the recto of the first leaf; on the recto of the other leaf is a letter "To the President of the United States" in which Nash uses Milton's argument related to freedom of the press to Prohibition. Milton writes: "For those actions which enter into a man, rather than issue out of him, and therefore defile not, God uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood of prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser; there were but little work left for preaching, if law & compulsion should grow so fast upon those things which heretofore were governed only by exhortation." Nash concludes his letter: "Do you not agree with me that John Milton would have blotted no single line of this paragraph in Areopagitica had he been told that his argument would be applied to that strange experiment that we call Prohibition?" Scarce in the trade. Only three located in institutional holdings (OCLC: 11181983).

Price: $125.00