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+The freedom of the press-as-technology, of course, was not seen as redundant of the freedom of speech.56 St. George Tucker, for instance, discussed the freedom of speech as focusing on the spoken word and the freedom of the press as focusing on the printed: The best speech cannot be heard, by any great number of persons. The best speech may be misunderstood, misrepresented, and imperfectly remembered by those who are present. To all the rest of mankind, it is, as if it had never been. The best speech must also be short for the inves- tigation of any subject of an intricate nature, or even a plain one, if it be of more than ordinary length. The best speech then must be altogether inadequate to the due exercise of the censorial power, by the people. The only adequate supplementary aid for these defects, is the absolute freedom of the press. 57 at the Debates of the Constitutional Convention. Likewise, George Hay, who later became a U.S. Attorney and a federal judge, wrote in 1799 that “freedom of speech means, in the construc- tion of the Constitution, the privilege of speaking any thing without control” and “the words freedom of the press, which form a part of the same sentence, means the privilege of printing any thing without control.”58 |