in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution[197]

Thus, Congress acknowledged that the purpose of the Bill of Rights was to address the recommendations of states, which had included guaranteeing a free press. The preamble mentions too that the purpose of the Bill of Rights included “extending the ground of public confidence in the Government.” This comment reflects the reasons given by Madison for the Bill of Rights when he introduced the initial version in the First Congress:

I appeal to those gentlemen who have heard the voice of their country, to those who have attended the debates of the State conventions, whether the amendments now proposed are not those most strenuously required by the opponents of the constitution? It was wished that some security should be given for those great and essential rights which they have been taught to believe were in danger....Have not the people been told that the rights of conscience, the freedom of speech, the liberty of the press, and trial by jury, were in jeopardy? That they ought not to adopt the constitution until these important rights were secured to them? [198]

As Madison explained, the reason for the Bill of Rights was to answer the claims of anti-Federalists that rights, including freedom of the press, were in danger. If we view the free press clause through the lens of the Bill of Rights preamble, it was intended to answer the fears of George Mason and other anti-Federalists that the federal government would deny press freedom.

In examining the original understanding of the First Amendment, Levy completely ignores the preamble to the Bill of Rights and Madison’s explanation that the Bill of Rights, including the press freedom clause, were meant to address the concerns of

[197] Senate Journal, September 1789, reproduced in 5 Schwartz, B., ed., The Roots of the Bill of Rights(1971) 1163, 1164

[198] Annals of Congress (1789) vol. 1 at 746, reprinted in Schwartz, B., ed., The Roots of the Bill of Rights (1971) vol. 5 at page 1104.