158 
VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
Maybe w rose to repudiate, with the indignation which he felt, that 
which he knew to be an unfounded calumny and untruth. The 
President interposed ; he saw that this might lead to unpleasant 
circumstances, and said, “ Mr. Mayhew, you cannot be allowed to 
enter into any explanation now: you have your remedy elsewhere ; 
bring your action, and vindicate your character. Do not break up 
the proceedings and interrupt the harmony of this meeting ; have 
recourse to the remedy which is open to you elsewhere, in a better 
field than the present.” Accordingly, Mr. Mayhew was induced 
to leave the assembly ; but he found these expressions had pro- 
duced an impression, and a very considerable impression, on the 
minds of those who heard them, that the imputations on his re- 
ligious faith, and his veracity and character, in stating him to 
be a convicted libeller, would induce people to withhold the 
credit they would otherwise give to his assertions : he has felt his 
character impeached ; and he has therefore felt it is a duty to his 
honour, and to vindicate his religious faith, to bring Mr. Spooner 
into a court of justice, calling on him to make good his assertions 
if he can, and, if not, to afford him that redress which every man 
is entitled to whose character has been wantonly assailed. 
Gentlemen, in the times in which we live, in which there is a 
growing feeling which every man must uphold, not to have re- 
course to those old methods to which people were too willing and 
too eager to have recourse for the purpose of seeking satisfaction 
in a different mode where the character is assailed, it now becomes 
the duty of every man to abstain from taking the law into his own 
hands, and proceeding in a way at variance with morality, religion, 
and the law of man, to come into a court of justice, and demand re- 
paration in a court of justice as a means of vindicating his cha- 
racter. 
Now, gentlemen, if Mr. Spooner had been willing to say that 
this had fallen from him in the heat of the moment ; — if he had felt 
himself that he had used language which he was not justified or 
warranted in using, and had been willing to come forward, and say, 
“ I have said that of you which I feel I cannot maintain, which 
was not justifiable at all in me to use — I am sorry for it, I retract 
it ; and you are at liberty to make known to those in whose pre- 
sence I uttered it, that I thus give you the means of vindicating 
yourself from the aspersions I cast upon you, by admitting their 
untruth, and that I regret the use of them;” this action never would 
have been brought into a court of justice. Mr. Spooner admits, 
by the course he has taken in putting no plea of justification on 
the record, that he used these words of Mr. Mayhew without 
having any ground whatever for applying them to that gentleman, 
but he has not the moral courage to make to him that apology and 
