thought to terrify his critic into silence. Your lordship has now set your face against this species of action; and, it was high time; for if it had succeeded, even the most stupid part of the people would have laughed at the talk of the liberty of the 'press." That talk would not have deceived any crea ture capable of counting its fingers. then, as he had heard it laid down as a maxim of law and justice, that it was a crime to ridicule the talents or wound the feelings of any person, why should not he bring his action as well as another? see and ridicule than any other act of man Why, for the reasons stated by your lordship. Most excellent reasons you have given us, why his action should not b The most important restriction, however, maintainable; but none at all, that I ca relates to the quality, or, rather, the pro discover, why the plaints of persons, no fession, of the person censured, or ridiculed. authors, should be any more attended t Sir John Carr had evidently conceived, that than his. None, that I can discover, wh the feelings of an author were no more to the act of bock-writing should be more ex be hurt with impunity than the feelings of posed to criticism than any other of the ac any other soit of man; and, as he had of men; none; no, none at all, why autho heard, that it was a libel to hurt the feelings should not have feelings as well as oth of any person, by the means of the press, people; nor any reason whatever why th he expected, of course, to hear your lord- talents of others should not be exposed ship reprobate the conduct of his critics. ridicule as well as the talents of author He could not have anticipated what took It is necessary, as your lordship well observe place. It was quite just and reasonable, to to expose and destroy a silly or wicked boo be sure, that he should be told, that his and the reputation of its author along wi work was liable to ridicule; that the ridicule it, because such books do great pub naturally grew out of the demonstrations of mischief, and because, if not put down his own want of talent; that if it were for- exposure, they would continue to do mischi bidden to ridicule such a work and such an to the end of time. But, my lord, the author, great public mischief would thereare good books as well as bad ones; the from arise, and that the liberty of the press are authors whose works do good instead would be a farce too contemptible to be mischief; and, therefore, I can borne. All this was very right; but, he reason whatever why the act of book-writi had heard it laid down, that the line of in-should be more exposed to public cens terdiction began when the feelings of any person were hurt. No matter who or what he was. No matter what his actions or his character. He had heard of no restrictions, reservations, or qualifications; he had been told; he had heard it laid down as a maxim of law; he had heard it so laid down in a charge to a jury; he had seen a verdict of guilty given upon the principle; and that principle, without any qualification, was, that no person had a right to use the press for the purpose of turning into ridicule either the talents or the person of any one; and that, where ever a publication wounded the feelings of any person, there the line of interdiction began. He had heard of no exception with respect to authors and their works. He had proof that both his talents and his person had been turned into ridicule. He had proof, that, in a picture as well as in words, he had been exhibited to the public as a man of most despicable talents, as a frothy fool, as a lunatic at large, as a sort of literary vagabond. He had clear proof of all this; he had proof besides, that he had, from this attack, sustained a special da mage to a considerable amount; and it was quite impossible for any one not to be convinced utsett had, by the alledwounded. Well, Your lordship was so good as to signify t the liberty of the press was something y valuable to this nation. Not in d terms, indeed, but by implication lordship certainly did say this. Now, I take the liberty of asking your lordsh what way you think it can operate to advantage of this nation? In the wa praise; in bedawbing all the rich ro and fools of the time with praise as we all the wise and virtuous men? Ha this. In confining its praises to the wise the good? This would be very lauda and might be of some littie use; but, the word liberty would be without a m ing; for the devil is in it if we need a leave to praise any one, particularly be in a public capacity, or in any caps which must make him desirous of po ing the good opinion of the world. If lordship means, as I think you must, the liberty of the press is valuable, means of detecting and exposing vice folly; then, give me leave to say, cannot, consistently, I will not say justice and reason...... but it cannot sistentlywith common sense, with bare mon sense, be restricted to authors their writings; for what would the LIFES then amonut to but this: a liberty possessed by the press of combating its own vices and follies, and of doing, nothing more? Such a press would be totally unworthy of praise, or of protection of any sort. To speak of such “ liberty" as a valuable thing; to make it a matter of boast; to hold it up as one of the means of preventing the people from being enslaved, would be an instance of absurdity surpassing any of those pointed at in the works of sir John Carr. Why, my lord, this is a sort of liberty, that the Emperor Napoleon grants to his press; and, why should he not? He would be a fool indeed if he cared what anthors said of one another and of one another's books. It may be an amusement to him to witness their quarrels; and, in this way, the press may be, with the public, as useful as a puppet-shew, or any thing else that serves to produce a momentary oblivion of their cares and their sufferings. All that Napoleon forbids his press to do, is to meddle with him, his government, his army, his navy, or any of his family. That is all. The press may praise all these indeed; it has full liberty to do that; but, it must neither censure nor ridicule any one of them; it has no liberty to do that; and it is honestly told so; there is no sham in the case; no delusion; no talk about liberty of the press; those who write and publish are plainly told, that if they meddle with these matters, they shall be punished; and, accordingly, they do not meddle with them, nor are they guilty of the base hypocricy to pretend that they have a free press. It must, I think, my lord, be quite evident, that, if censure and ridicule, if exposure of vice and folly, if depreciating talents or character, were to be allowed only in cases where the party assailed was the author of a book, or a public writer of some description, the liberty of the press could, at the utmost, effect no other good object than that of counteracting the vices and follies of the press itself; it could not possibly produce any balance in favour of the press, which, in that case, could, as far as related to freedom, be of no possible use, Suppose, for instance, that I write a book, containing principles subversive of the constitution, and that some critic exposes both me and my book to such contempt, that the book is at once destroyed and my reputation is ruined. am rightly served, and the critic is, it now would appear, not exposed to the fangs of the law; but, it would be quite silly, upon an occasion like this, to boast of the liberty of the press as a public good; for, supposing the critic to have completely succeeded, all that he has done is to place matters where they were before, and where they would have remained if no press at all had existed. Your lordship very judiciously cited the instance of Mr. Locke and sir Robert Filmer, and observed that the former did great good in writing down the latter; though, between you and I, my lord, I much question, whether, if Mr. Locke lived in the present day, he would be much of a favourite. But, what mighty thing did Mr. Locke do here? He answered sir Robert Filmer; he put him down. I doubt the fact; for Filmer's principles are much more in vogue than those of Mr. Locke. But, admit the fact, all that Mr. Locke did, with the aid of the press, was to prevent sir Robert Filmer from doing harm with the press. Between them the press, at the very best, could do no good, and it might do some harm. Who would not think a man foolish, aye, "the "greatest fool that ever walked the earth without a leader," who should keep a fox in his poultry-yard, and a dog to watch the fox; and who should boast of the valuable services rendered him by the dog? 66 Why, you stupid ass," his neighbour would say to him, "for what do you keep either dog or fox; why not hang them both up at " once; and give to some really useful ani"mal the food by which they are sustain"ed?" I shall be told, perhaps, that the press is of great public utility independent of this sort of use of it. That it communicates a great deal of knowledge to the public at large, which would, were it not for the press, be confined to the possession of comparatively a very few persons. This may be true; but, this is not our subject, my lord. We are talking about the liberty of the press. It is not the right to write and to print and to publish, upon which I am taking the liberty to address your lordship, but the right to censure and to ridicule, by the mighty means of writing and printing and publishing. There are a multitude of books, as connected with which the liberty of the press has no meaning. In lifting up my eyes, the first books I see before me, are Marshall's Gardening, Pontey's Pruner, Bonnycastle's Alcgebra, Code Diplomatique, Vauban's Fortification, and Daniel's Rural Sports. Why, my lord, the liberty of the press has no more to do with books like these than it has to do with the making of shoes or the blacking of shoes; and, as I have, I think, pretty clearly shewn, that it is to prove oneself void of even common sense to set a value upon the liberty of the press, if that liberty is to extend no further One than the censuring or ridiculing of productions of the press itself, there must, it appears to me, be another meaning at tached to this word liberty, as connected with the press. By the word liberty we always conceive a something, to which there are some persons who have a dislike. When we talk of securing our liberties, we should talk downight nonsense, if our hearers did not suppose, that there were some persons, somewhere or other, who were likely to be énemies to those liberties. The two ideas are inseparable. You cannot talk of liberty, without supposing the fear, nearer or more distant, of slavery. What other sense is there in the word liberty? Why talk about any such thing? In short, political liberty has these two meanings: freedom from oppression; and, the legal right of doing certain things which may be displeasing and even injurious to others. The great end is freedom from oppression; but, to secure this, it is indispensably necessary, that men should be legally protected in doing certain things that may hurt the feelings and injure the fortunes of other men. This implies a natural and a necessary opposition of interests as well as of feelings. part of the community are necessarily opposed to another part; and, are we to be told, that if one part feel wounded at the censure or the gibes of the other, that the latter is to be liable to legal punishment? All our notions about the liberty of the press, the whole history of it, tell us. that it means a legal right, in any man, freely to examine, in print, into the character, talents, and conduct of any other man (especially if that other be in a public situation), and, if he please, to censure or ridicule such character, talents, or conduct. It has now been decided, that this is the meaning, as far as relates to authors and their works; but, I have, I think, proved, that if this be all, the liberty of the press could not possibly be of any public advantage, and that to boast of it would be to hold ourselves up to the scorn and contempt of the world. The press is daily boasted ot as the great, instrument in the cause of political and religious freedom. But, my lord, I am in a fever to know how it can possibly be so, if writers are to be punished every time they hurt the feelings of another man? To the press is ascribed the reformation of the church in this kingdom. Now, my lord, do you not think, that the authors of that day hurt the feelings of the monks and friais, whose tricks they exposed to the deluded people? Well, then, if those authors had been legally punished the moment they be gan their exposures, do you think that the reformation would ever have taken place? Nay, is it not impossible that it should have taken place, through the means of the press, or, that the press should have at all contr buted towards that great and memorable event? Aye, aye, very true, sence precious peculating, corrupting, double-dis tilled knave may tell me, “but there is now no reformation wanted; there is now no "delusion, no trick, no hypocrisy, no "humbug, going on, either in religion or 66 politics." Well then, if this be the case, of what can anybody be afraid? If there be nothing to expose, there can be no exposure. If all our ministers are wise and able, all our senators incorrupt, all our generals brave, all our priests pious, and all our princes exemplary in their conduct, how is it possible for any man to hurt their feelings. by remarking upon their talents, their cha racter, or their conduct? What a thing it would be, by lord, for a government to say to the people: "You have a right to free "dom; to secure your freedom it is essen "tial that you should enjoy liberty of the press; by the liberty of the press yaj will check, in time, every encroachment on your freedom; but, our feelings must "necessarily be hurt by a disclosure of the "fact that we are making such encroachof you ments and, by the lord! if any "hurt the feelings of any one of us, yea "shall be thrown into jail, and, perhaps. "have your ears cropped off into the bar"gain?" What a thing would it be for 1 government to say this to a people? Ard what a people must that be, to whom a government would venture to say it ? Is there a man in the whole nation who be lieves, that the emperor Napoleon would dare to say such a thing to any of those nations, whom we, with perfect truth, cali lis slaves No; even that master in the arts tyranny would not, at the head of his army, tell the most crouching of his slaves, that they had liberty to do that, for which, f they did it, he would chop off their ears and make them end their days in prison. This! is a pitch, my lord, at which no openly! avowed despotism ever yet arrived. In certain observations, which, upon this subject, I offered to my readers at page 271 of this volume, I stated, that, as to the injury which is done to any one by exposing him to ridicule, it ought to be considered as no objection to the ridicule; because, the injury to bim might be a great advantage to the public. I was much pleased to see this stated by your lordship, who described it, in the case in question, as a damage which the law did not regard as an injury. You said, that it was a damage which the exposed author ought to sustain; that the critie had taken from him gains and reputation to which he was never entitled; and that, though it was a damage to him, it was, as in the case of Sir Robert Filmer, a great advantage to the public. Your lordship did, indeed, clog this excellent doctrine with the words author and literary work; and, in the charge, you observed to the jury that neither they nor you had appeared before the world, in the character of an author, or at least, that you never had; which observation came immediately after you had been laying down the right to censure and ridicule authors. But, my lord, we shall find, I think, from the reason, upon which this right was founded by your lordship, that the right must apply to all other persons as well as to authors. The doctrine was this: men have a right to expose and to ridicule published works and the authors thereof as far as connected with such works; they have a right to proceed so far as totally to destroy the reputation and the means of livelihood of such persons; and, instead of being legally punished for it, are entitled to commendation. Now for the reason why: because, if this were not the case, bad morals and bad principles of government and other bad things might be taught, and might be established and perpetuated, to the great and lasting injury of the public.. Well, then, my lord, censure and ridicule, through the means of the press, is here justified, because they are useful in preventing injury to the public. That is the reason why they are to be tolerated, and even highly commended; and, it appears to me utterly impossible for the most ingenious man alive to assign a reason why the press should not be employed to censure and ridicule those acts of other persons, as well as of authors, which tend to produce an injury to the public. It is but a very small part, comparatively, of public mischief that proceeds from the press; the far greater part of it comes from those who have the miserable press under their controul; and shall not they be exposed as well as a poor silly writer of travels? My lord Mountnorris, who very wisely read the Knight's book previous to a purchase of it, was, by the "Pocket Book," induced not to complete the purchase. Now, my lord, if I should hear that it was intended to make a commander of some stupid fellow who was also a coward, would it not be right in me to expose his stupidity and his cowardice, and thereby prevent, if I could, his being made a commander, and his bringing injury upon the public? Suppose me to see a man appointed to any office, who, in my opinion, is totally unfit for it, and who, of course, must produce an injury to the public by remaining in it; should I not, upon the principle laid down by your lordship, have a right to censure and ridicule him, to endeavour to bring others over to my opinion, and thus to put him out of his office, and to destroy that false reputation, by the means of which he obtained it? Yes: I am sure your lordship will, and must, say yes; for you must perceive, that the higher the office, the more necessary it is that it should be faithfully and ably served. What was the work of this wretched knight? What was it to the public whether his trash continued to be circulated or not? Mr. Garrow, who seems to have been almost in as piteous a plight as his client, told the jury that Sir John had not meddled with politics, or parties. I'll be sworn for the poor soul, that he had no earthly object in view other than that of gaining a comfortable livelihood; and, his works could not have made a very great noise in the world, as even the bare name of them or their author never reached me, until I read the account of the trial. Now, my lord, of what importance was this work to the public? Not a millionth part of so great importance as one single word in any one of the dispatches or proclamations or speeches of any one of the ministers; and, if we are not freely (that is to say without being liable to be tried for it) to censure and ridicule them, when, in our opinion, they merit it, of what service is it to the public that men of sense and wit are allowed to fall upon a poor defenceless thing like Sir John Carr? Would it not be à sad mockery to call that liberty of the press? Liberty of the press means liberty of opposing, as far as the press will go, the views of those who are in power. It has been called "an arm "in the hands of the people," it has been called "the guardian of freedom;" but, how in all the world is it to guard freedom, if it be allowed to touch nothing but acts like those of poor Carr ? I trust, my lord, that the consequence of this trial will be, a right way of thinking with regard to the use of the press. Your lordship has got through a great part of the difficulty, and I am confident, that another decision or two of this sort, will make the rogues and fools shy of courts of law. Their pretensions were at war with nature. All honest men hate rogues, and all men of sense laugh at fools. It always has been so; and it ought always to be so. It is the only means of preventing roguery and folly from becoming predominant. The practice of IN AN ACTION, IN WHICH SIR JOHN CARR, DOWN IN JENKINS. the law of libels has given rise to a sickly | ABRIDGEMENT OF THE TRIAL, This abridgement shall contain all that is material. The reader will find in it every principal point touched upon by Mr. Garrow, the leading counsel for the plaintiff'; the whole of sir Richard Phillips's evidence; and the whole of what was said by the Judge, and by the Attorney General, who was the leading counsel for the defendants, with the sole exception of what the latter said by way of return for the trade-like compliments paid him by Mr. Garrow, and which interchange of compliments I omit for the sake of decency. With great gratitude towards your lordship for the promulgation of your doctrine of the Liberty of the Press, as applied to authors, and with a sincere wish that you may live to apply it to all persons and all cases whatso ever, I am your lordship's most humble and Botley, 15 September, 1808. CHEAP EDITION OF THE 241AL, CARR versus In my last number, I expressed a hope, that the Booksellers, who are so deeply interested in the event of the above Trial, would form a Fund for the circulation of it all over the kingdom. I have now the satisfaction of informing my readers, that the hint has been taken, and that a Cheap Edition of the whole Trial is now printing off, to sell for three pence cach, or eighteen shillings and mine pence per hundred, to those who purchase for distribution. Thus, if the business is properly managed, as I am confident it will be, not fewer than Fitty Thousand Copies will be cintulated throughout the country. The case, as stated by Mr. Garrow, wa this. That sir John Carr (whom hereafter I shall call Carr, not perceiving that he has any right to claim the cramming up of my pages with his lengthened name), was the author of several works, which he had sold for considerable sums of money; that he was about to publish a new work of the nature of his former works, which had hitherto been well received by the public; that, at this juncture the defendants published the libel in question, called "My "Pocket Book;" that the evident object of this work was utterly to destroy Carr as an author, in which object it must succeed unless censured by the verdict of the jury; that the "Pocket-Book," besides ridicule in words, contained several caricatures, exhibiting Carr in the most ludicrous light; that i he was here represented as a stupid writer, a gleaner of insipid stuff, a fool, a lunatic, and as so nearly like a mere vagabond, as to carry about his wardrobe in a pocket hand kerchief; that the defendants had said, that they had a rod in pickle for Carr, and that they would do for him; that the effect of all this had been a clearly proved damage to Carr; that sir Richard Phillips had, merely from the effect of this attack, been deterred from purchasing the intended new work, for which, otherwise, he would have given £700; and that there must necessarily have arisen to the plaintiff other damages, of which it would be impossible to estimate the amount. The evidence first given was to prove the publication of the "Pocket Book," and then evidence was produced of a continuation |