Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governours: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.

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Those words were penned by John Milton in 1644, when he wrote, in “Areopagitica,” his plea for unlicensed printing. Where is the Mighty Milton now that England’s monarch, Elizabeth II, is getting set to establish by royal charter a new body, cooked up in the mother of parliaments, to regulate the press? The newspapers are issuing feeble protests, and some, such as the Financial Times, are announcing they’re prepared to go along with the scam. The idea that Britain is not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to, well, Milton’s celebrated sentiment seems to be a 17th century reverie.

Prime Minister Cameron is trying to put a benign face on the royal charter, but there is no gilding this lily. It is a historic regression. It will end up like the Star Chamber once used to try powerful people in secret. That notorious court drew its name from the stars in the ceiling. One wonders what will decorate the ceiling where the press regulators will rule try to bring the what’s left of Fleet Street to heel? How about portraits of the British editors who sat back and let this happen — or of the editors of the New York Times who egged on the legislative mob against Rupert Murdoch?

The Times tried, with an editorial issued this morning, to claim the high ground in this debacle. It comprehends that the plan just unveiled in London would not only “chill free speech” in Britain, as the Times put it, but also “threaten the survival of small publishers and Internet sites,” including sites based offshore that are read at Britain. Failure to submit to the regulatory body Britain intends to set up could expose publications to being fined up to a million pounds where the courts reckon they have committed, say, libel. Regulators could order the publication of corrections of even material the editors reckon is accurate.

Britain’s scheme grew out of what the Times calls “a desire to hold the industry accountable” for “egregious actions” of British tabloids. Why the industry should be held accountable for such “egregious actions” even before — or for that matter, even after — any criminal court has found anyone guilty of any crime is beyond us. The Times, in any event, was at pains to note that it was the Times itself and the Manchester Guardian, “not the police,” that “first brought to light” what the Times called the “scope and extent of hacking” by British tabloids.

“Perverse” is the word the Times uses to describe the outcome “if regulations enacted in response to this scandal ended up stifling the kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism that brought it to light in the first place.” What is perverse is the long lectures on “hacking” from one of the newspapers that entered into an agreement with Wikileaks. The rest of us can thank God for the American revolutionaries who made sure that Americans would never have to suffer from any royal charter. Looks like they’ve outlasted Milton.