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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: suppose that the periodical press has always been entirely free
in the American colonies: an attempt was made to establish
something analogous to a censorship and preliminary security.
Consult the Legislative Documents of Massachusetts of January 14,
1722. The Committee appointed by the General Assembly (the
legislative body of the province) for the purpose of examining
into circumstances connected with a paper entitled "The New
England Courier," expresses its opinion that "the tendency of the
said journal is to turn religion into derision and bring it into
contempt; that it mentions the sacred writers in a profane and
irreligious manner; that it puts malicious interpretations upon
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