At least in the United States, the right to freedom of speech underwent significant transformations in the early 19th century. Take, for example, the now notorious Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the Federalists during the Adams administration. Criminalizing certain acts criticizing the US government, Congress passed them and President Adams signed them even though the Bill of Rights had been adopted not a decade earlier. It is important to note that at this time, the Federalists understood freedom of speech under a more conservative, English jurisprudential definition that only protected the speaker from prior restraint. In other words, many Americans in the earliest years of the republic believed that the government could not constitutionally prohibit you from saying something before the fact, but there was no reason you couldn't be held liable for something after you said it. The government couldn't stop you from saying something, but could apply penalties after you said it. The idea of constitutionally protected political speech as a positive, affirmative right had not yet taken hold. When Jeffersonian Republicans objected to the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, they did not necessarily object to restriction of speech per se, but by the federal government, which they did not believe was constitutionally empowered to do so. Prosecutions for seditious libel might still be appropriate under state laws. Jefferson's victory in 1800 coupled with the triumph of Madisonian liberalism at the beginning of the 19th century are really what enshrine free speech as individual right of free expression, and that is largely what people mean when they refer to free speech today in the American context.

Readings

Elkins and McKittrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788 - 1800

Leonard Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights

Leonard Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side

Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty