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Lord Ellenborough, having called the attention of the jury to these passages, said that it appeared to him that their aim and tendency was to degrade and vilify, to render odious and contemptible, the person of the first consul in the estimation of the people of England as well as France, and likewise to excite to his assassination and destruction. "That appearing to be the immediate and direct tendency of these publications, I cannot," said his lordship, "in the correct discharge of my duty, do otherwise than state, that they are, in point of law, libels. And in the correct discharge of your duty, I am sure no memory of past or expectation of future injury, will warp you from the straight and even course of justice; but your verdict will mark with reprobation all projects of assassination and murder. Consider, likewise, how dangerous projects of this sort may be, if not discountenanced and discouraged in this country. They may be retaliated on the head of all those whose safety is most dear to us."

Anterior to this, however, in 1764, an information. had been filed against one D'Eon de Beaumont, a Frenchman, for a libel upon the then French ambassador, Count de Guerchy. The libel principally consisted of some angry reflections on the public conduct of the ambassador, charging him with ignorance in his special capacity, and of having used stratagem to supplant and depreciate the defendant at the court of consul for life. As for me, far from envying his lot, let him name-I consent to it-his worthy successor. Carried on the shield, let him be elected! Finally (and Romulus recalls the thing to mind), I wish that on the morrow he may have his apotheosis. Amen." Palm of Nuremburg was court-martialed and sentenced to be shot, at Brenau, in 1807, for writing some echo verses on Napoleon I. And very poor ones they were, too; pour enough to have let the author crawl away-one: would think.-Morgan's Macaronic Poetry, p. 98.

Versailles. After the defendant had been found guilty, Lord Mansfield observed to the Prussian and other foreign ambassadors then attending the court, that the law of England paid a high regard to the function of ambassadors, and would equally protect them from all insults, as well on their reputation as their persons. or property.'

2

Lord George Gordon was convicted, in 1787, of publishing, in a newspaper known as "The Public Advertiser," certain false, scandalous, malicious, and defamatory libels on the queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and on the French ambassador in London, imputing to the former, tyranny and oppression, and charging the latter with being the tool employed in carrying them on; and in 1799, John Vint, George Ross, and John Parry, were tried upon an information for publishing, in "The Courier" newspaper, the following libel upon the emperor Paul I., of Russia: "The emperor of Russia is rendering himself obnoxious to his subjects by various acts of tyranny, and ridiculous in the eyes of Europe by his inconsistency. He has now passed an edict prohibiting the exportation of timber, deals, &c. In consequence of that ill

1 Rex v. D'Eon, W. Black. Rep. 501, 517; Dig. L. L. 74, 75.

2 22 Howell's St. Tr. 175. For the above libel Lord George Gordon was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Newgate (to be computed from the expiration of a three years imprisonment to which he was sentenced on the same day for a former libel, which has been noticed), and to a fine of £500; and at the expiration of his term of imprisonment, to find sureties for his good behavior for the space of fourteen years, himself in £10,000, and two sureties in £2,500. On the 18th of January, 1793, he was brought into court for the purpose of being admitted to bail; but being unable to provide the requisite security, he was remanded to prison, where he remained until his death on the 1st of November, 1793.— Shortt, p. 381.

timed law, upwards of one hundred sail of vessels are likely to return to this kingdom without freights." Lord Kenyon, Ch. J., told the jury that such a publication, holding up the sovereign of Russia as a tyrant, and ridiculous over Europe, might tend to his calling for satisfaction, as for a national affront, if it passed unreprobated by our government, and in our courts of justice.'

43. To recapitulate, then: Works not innocent in their nature-although they come into court and pray it cannot receive the recognition of the law which will give no damages for their piracy, and consequently no protection, through equity, against such piracy. Works that, in addition to being not innocent, are absolutely and undeniably vicious, monstrous, and corrupting, by being either outrageously blasphemous, or filthy and obscene, will, as we have already seen, fall under the attention of the law without soliciting it, and be positively and criminally dealt with by the municipal or local authorities-they, and their authors and publishers and circulators.

44. There remain, still, two other classes of productions, namely, matters libelous (properly so called) of the individual, which are proceeded against both civilly and criminally, and matters contemptuous of courts of justice. These we propose to consider in a separate chapter.

1

27 Howell's St. Tr. 627, 643. The defendants were all found guilty, and the proprietor of the paper was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, to pay a fine of £100, and to give security for his good behavior for five years, himself in £500, and two sureties in £250 each. The printer and the publisher were sentenced to one month's imprisonment.-Ib.

CHAPTER II.

OF LIBEL.

45. It appears then, that the law, in return for the protection it extends to authors, requires that they shall not use their liberty to the hurt of the subject: and that the literary matter in which their rights are secured shall be—to begin with-Innocent. We have seen, so far, that this innocence must exist: I. in the Intention (ie., that it shall not prejudice or imperil the morals of the community), and II. in Representatation (ie., that it shall not harmfully deceive the public as to its genuineness or its value).

There is besides a third class of publications so directly, absolutely, and often maliciously harmful, that the law will not merely express its disapprobation by withholding its protection from them, but will interfere directly to shield the party injured, and to punish the utterers and publishers; whether that party be an individual, the state, or the community at large.

This class consists of publications Libelous; and the wrong which they commit is known as libel.

To the Roman law of libel, as applied to literature, Horace makes allusion in one of his satires: Quinetiam lex

Pœnaque lata, malo quæ nollet carmine quenquam
Describi. Vertere modum formidine fustis.'

1 Hor. Sat. ii. "Moreover, it is an extensive law and punishment which will not permit a person to be described in dog

The Institutes of Justinian defined a libeler to be one who shall, to the infamy of another, write, compose, or publish a book, song, or fable, or maliciously procure any of those acts to be done;" and a distinction was very early taken in the Roman law, between slander spoken and written. The injuria verbalis was deemed a much lower degree of injury than the malum carmen and famosus libellus.

This distinction has survived the civil law, and is the one observed to-day;' slander being a defamation conveyed by speech, and libel a defamation conveyed by writing or effigy. It follows, therefore, that what

gerel verse. To change the style for fear of a club!" The punishment at Rome, for slander, by means of defamatory verses (si quis aliquem publice defamisset, eique adversos bonos moros convicium feicisset vel carmen famosum in eum condidisset), was, beating with a club. Tiberias ordered one whom he had befriended, and who afterwards wrote defamatory verses against him, to be thrown from the Tarpeian rock (Dio. lvii., 22). There was no action for ingratitude among the Romans, as with the Persians; for, says Seneca, all the courts at Rome would scarcely have been sufficient for trying them.

There was something superstitious in the horror with which the Icelanders regarded a libel; and no offense among them was more surely or bloodily avenged than the publication of satirical verses, or the setting up of a "Nid"—that is, an insulting or indecent figure, or a horse's head on a pole on the lands of another. (See "The Story of Burnt Njal; or, Life in Iceland at the End of the Tenth Century." By George W. Dasent, D.C.S.) The Russian people "feel corporeal punishment less sensibly than a verbal insult. This idea has a religious foundation. A good Christian cannot admit that the punishment of fustigation, which has been inflicted on the Saviour of humanity, can be for a man a stain of infamy. He believes that a verbal insult affects the immortal part of man; whereas, a blow only produces suffering in the least noble part of his being" (Essai sur l'Histoire de la Civilization en Russie. Par Nicolas de Gerebtzoff. Paris, 1858, vol. ii., p. 575. Westminster Review, January, 1864-Art. Russia).

2

1 Holt on Libel, p. 21.

* So, suspending a lamp before the plaintiff's house, intimat

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