1829-J The late Prosecutions against the Press. 143 



and you take from us the right of superintending our servants, after we 

 have exercised our discretion in appointing them. The portions of our 

 liberty that would remam, would be no more than the permission to sanc- 

 tion all offences in the conduct of public affairs, because we dare not 

 oppose them. We should come at last to make a grace of our slavery ; 

 and since we could not use our leason, would be content to make a merit 

 of our obedience. Free-v/iU, the corner-stone of civil freedom, would 

 be dug out and buried in the chambers of the Inquisition. The most 

 precious, as well as the most costly of our immunities — for it was pur- 

 chased with blood and toil — would be at the mercy of the next ]\Ioloch of 

 the cabinet, who pushing further the example, would improve upon the 

 precedent, and by a permanent Act of Parhament, convert a constructive 

 indiscretion into a legal crime. 



We do not defend those who are to take their trial, at fearful odds, for 

 the alleged libels. They may have been indecorously zealous; they 

 may. have accidentally mistaken Lord Lyndhurst's nature; or they may 

 have never intended the remotest allusion to his Lordship. Our objec- 

 tion is, that our general welfare as a nation, shall be wounded through 

 individuals exercising a prerogative hitherto vested in the people. We 

 do not desire to prejudge the question ; we do not hope to turn the Chan- 

 cellor, or Sir James Scai'lett, or any one of the presiding judges from 

 any of those rigid and technical opinions which, as lawyers, they may 

 entertain ; but we do hope, that when twelve Englishmen are called 

 upon to consider the nature of the imputed misdemeanours, they will 

 remember, that the ingenious sophistry of law may wring malice from 

 the most harmless publication ; but that the universal principle of popu- 

 lar indemnity for the unbiassed investigation of the ministerial conduct, 

 is vital to the security of our lives and properties. To say that we have 

 no right to examine the private lives of public men, is to say, that he who 

 is personally unworthy to be trusted, may fiU with credit and honour the 

 most responsible stations ; and that as there are anomalies in our judicial 

 system, so there may be in our moral constitutions, which will achnit the 

 possibility of depravity being transformed into virtue by an exchange of 

 garments. Serpents are said to be ensnared by the glare of scarlet cloth, 

 but a state livery, or a gilt chain, should not be permitted to have the 

 same influence upon a country. 



The consideration of all questions of libel should be grave and cautious. 

 ]\Ien should not be convicted upon hypotheses. To put a forced and ex- 

 ternal construction upon a libel, is a more serious outrage upon the 

 interests of society than the libel itself: for if we go on at that rate, 

 there will be no such thing as writing without incurring the imputation 

 of a slanderous intent. IMany have been the attempts to contract the 

 power of juries, within some subtle labyrinth of legal chicanery, and to 

 limit their office by the overbearing and final voice of a sophism. Juries 

 have been told that they were merely to decide upon the fact of printing 

 and publishing ; that they had no discretion to exercise upon the moral 

 tendency, or intrinsic purport of the matter; that there were crimi- 

 nalities not visible in the libel ; that there were occult designs which no 

 common sense could fathom ; and that, therefore, because of guilt which 

 they could not discern, and which it belonged only to the law to dis- 

 cover, but which it was neither their duty, nor any body else's, to ex- 

 plain, they must find the defendant guilty. Thus the consciences of 

 juries have been set at variance with an imposed and inexpUcable duty ; 



