400 GOVERNMENT, LAWS, [PART II. 



"... ...' * 



State of PENNSYLVANIA, eighteen years ago, 

 the Chief Justice of that State, finding even 

 this law not sufficiently large, gave it another 

 stretch to make it fit me. Whether the Legis 

 lature of that State will repair this act of injus 

 tice and tyranny remains yet to be seen. 



116. The State of NEW YORK, in which I 

 now live, awakened, probably by the act of 

 tyranny, to which I allude, has taken care, by 

 an Act of the State, passed in 1805, to put an 

 end to those attacks on the press by charges of 

 constructive libel, or, at least, to make the law 

 such, that no man shall suffer from the prefer 

 ring of any such charges unjustly. 



417. The principal effect of this twisting of 

 the law was, that, whether the words published 

 were true or false the crime of publishing was 

 the same ; because, whether true or false, they 

 tended to a breach of the peace! Nay, there 

 was a Boroughmonger Judge in England, who 

 had laid it down as law, that the truer the 

 words were, the more criminal was the libel; 

 because, said he, a breach of the peace was 

 more likely to be produced by telling truth of 

 a villain, than by telling falsehood of a virtuous 

 man. In point of fact, this was true enough, to 

 be sure ; but what an infamous doctrine ! What 

 a base, what an unjust mind must this man 

 have had ! 



