To vest a few fallible men – prosecutors, judges, jurors – with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the “moral police” is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products… If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author’s imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries…
