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crime for any one to persuade the city to assert its right to the isle of Salamis, and Solon was thought to do a bold thing in obtaining a repeal of that law.' And Socrates was charged with contempt of the law for saying how foolish it was to elect their magistrates by beans; when they would never think of so electing a pilot or an architect. And Phidias the sculptor was imprisoned for representing on Minerva's shield something that detracted from the fabulous importance of Athens.3 A Roman matron, Vilia, was accused of treason for doing no more than lamenting at her son's funeral. And Cremutius Cordus was punished for treason in calling Brutus and Cassius the last of the Romans.*

Early views as to comments on public affairs.In our own country it was long deemed impertinent for any citizen to criticise the Government or the laws. A statute of Henry VIII. made it high treason even to believe, that his marriage with Anne of Cleves was valid.5 In the time of Elizabeth any book which professed to dispute the details of Church government was without argument assumed to be an attempt to overthrow all Government." Cromwell indeed acted differently, and magnanimously conceded, when urged to interfere with Harrington's Oceana, that if a Government was fit to stand it ought to be above the fear of that kind of paper shot. The courts as well as

2 Xen. Mem. b. i., c. 2.

1 Plut. Solon. 3 Plut. Pericl. 419 Parl. Deb. 600. 532 Hen. VIII. c. 25. 6 R. v Udall, 1 St Tr. 1291. 7 In 1629 the Star Chamber tried Mr. Chambers, a merchant whose goods had been seized, as he thought unjustly, and who in the heat of his resentment had said, upon an inquiry about customs before the Privy Council," that the merchants are in no part of the world so screwed and wrung as in England; in Turkey they have more encouragement." The court of twenty-four persons, including chief justices, and earls, and bishops, had no doubt whatever, that these words tended to the dishonour of the king by comparing his Government with that of the Turks, and so to create discord between him and his good people. And they fined him 20007., and committed him to the Fleet prison till he signed an abject submission, which he resolutely refused to do.-R. v Chambers, 3 St. Tr. 374. And Floyd was fined, whipped, and imprisoned for saying, that he was glad the Elector was driven out of Prague.-A.D. 1621.

In a book criticising the policy of the stage, which was then patronised by the Queen of Charles I., the author said "dancing was the devil's profession, and fiddlers were the minstrels of the devil." The judge said this was a seditious libel, which made his blood boil.

the legislature long indulged in the narrowest views of the relations between the governed and their governors. The Seven Bishops were indicted for publishing a libel, namely, a petition to the king, when all that was proved was, that they merely refused to read and publish during divine service a declaration which was believed by them to be illegal, and that by reading it they would become parties to it. One of the judges held, that for a private man to write anything against the Government was a scandalous libel. In 1706 a country rector was too glad to go on

The author was sentenced to lose his ears, to be pilloried, to be fined 50007.. and be imprisoned for life - R. v Prynne, 3 St. Tr. 561.

In 1630 Leighton was prosecuted in the Star Chamber for slandering prelacy, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life, the pillory, branding, slitting of the nose, and cutting off ears.-R. v Leighton, 3 St. Tr. 385. Richard Baxter was charged before Jeffreys, C. J., with sedition and reflecting on the prelates of the Church in his Commentary on the New Testament, and was fined, imprisoned, and bound over to good behaviour.-11 St. Tr. 494. He was, it is true, afterwards pardoned, and the fine remitted. 3 Mod. 63. The holding of a conventicle, that is to say, a peaceable meeting of people to join in public worship, was deemed seditious; and the attendance of adults at such a meeting was declared by statute punishable with three months' imprisonment.-(A.D. 1644), 15 Ch. II. c. 4. And the courts were expressly directed by a later act to construe all clauses of that Act most largely and beneficially, for suppression of conventicles.-22 Ch. II. c. 1.

1 R. Seven Bishops, 12 St. Tr. 183. In this case the law officers had informed James II. that the honestest paper relating to matters of civil government might be a seditious libel when presented by persons who had nothing to do with such matters, as the bishops had nothing to do with it but in time of Parliament.--Clarendon's St. Lett. 317. The same JUSTICE ALLYBONE, one of the judges at the trial of the Seven Bishops in 1688, thus discoursed to a jury on this topic: "No private man can take upon him to write concerning the Government at all, for what has any private man to do with the Government, if his interest be not stirred or shaken? It is the business of the Government to manage matters relating to the Government-it is the business of subjects to mind only their own properties and interests. If my interest is not shaken, what have I to do with matters of Government? They are not within my sphere. If the Government does come to shake my particular interest, the law is open for me, and I may redress myself by law. And when I intrude myself into other men's business. that does not concern my particular interest, I am a libeller. If every private man shall come and interpose his advice, I think there can never be an end of advising the Government."-12 St. Tr. 429.

And 110 years after the Seven Bishops' Case, another bishop told

his knees to a Secretary of State, and beg pardon for having criticised the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns.1 And so late as 1808, when a publisher of a newspaper was indicted for a severe article on military flogging, the judge told the jury, it injured the military establishment of the country to have such a subject discussed," and it was not to be permitted to any man to make the people dissatisfied with the Government under which he lives." 2 And even Lord Ellenborough told the House of Lords, that he saw no possible good to be derived to the country from having. statesmen at the loom and politicians at the spinningjenny.3

One great advantage of a free press is, that it tends to disperse the dangers that culminate in sedition. Bacon said that the surest way to prevent seditions, if the times do bear it, is to take away the matter of them. A great writer has also observed, that "Violence exerted towards opinions, which falls short of extermination, serves no other purpose than to render them more known, and ultimately to increase the zeal and number of their abettors. When public discontents are allowed to vent themselves in reasoning and discourse, they subside into a calm; but their confinement in the bosom is apt to give them a fierce and deadly tincture. The reason of this is obvious. As men are seldom disposed to complain till they at least imagine themselves

the House of Lords, that "he did not know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with any laws but to obey them, with the reserve of their undoubted right to petition against any particular law."-32 Parl. Hist. 258.

1 2 D. Manchester Court & Soc. 210. Drakard, 31 St. Tr. 535.

2 Wood, B., R. v

8 41 Parl. Deb. 1591. In France those who wrote on public affairs had been long so harassed with prosecutions that in 1799 DUCLOS said: "Gentlemen, let us speak of the elephant; it is the only rather important animal, of which we may speak without danger."-Rapport Lib. de la Presse, 1879.

4 Bac. Ess. 15. BURKE, with more discrimination, said: "It is right, that there should be a clamour whenever there is an abuse. The fire-bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it keeps you from being burned in your bed. The hue and cry alarms the country, but it preserves all the property of the province. But a clamour made merely for the purpose of rendering the people discontented with their situation, without an endeavour to give them a practical remedy, is, indeed, one of the worst acts of sedition."-17 Parl. Hist. 54.

injured, so there is no injury which they will remember so long, or resent so deeply, as that of being threatened into silence. This seems like adding triumph to oppression and insult to injury. The apparent tranquillity which may ensue is delusive and ominous; it is that awful stillness, which nature feels while she is awaiting the discharge of the gathered tempest. There is a buoyancy in the public mind, which, the moment an unnatural pressure is removed, seldom fails to rise up with an irresistible force and a terrible majesty." Sedition often borders closely upon high treason. Lord Mansfield said, that any meeting or insurrection by force and violence to open prisons, destroy meeting-houses, raise the price of wages, alter the established religion, or to compel the legislature to repeal a law, was high treason 2 But while sedition treads sometimes closely on the heels of treason, in modern times words are not construed as overt acts of treason, and so are not indictable as such.3

How far a seditious libel can be defined. The difficulty of defining a seditious libel has often been felt and pointed out as a weakness in this part of the law. Lord Ellenborough, when the peers were complaining of the impossibility of defining a blasphemous or seditious libel, volunteered to define it thus-"A libel calculated to bring his Majesty's person or the Government and constitution or either House of Parliament into hatred or contempt, or calculated to excite his Majesty's subjects to attempt any alteration of any matter in Church or State, as by law established, otherwise than by lawful means."4 Lord Camden also said, he had long endeavoured to define what a seditious libel was, but had not been able to find any definition which either met the approbation of his own mind or could be deemed satisfactory to others. Some would have every censure on the measures of Government considered as a libel. If this was the case, every channel of public 1 R. Hall, Apol. Press, Sect. 2. 2 R. v Lord G. Gordon, 21 St. Kelyng, Treas. 29; Foster, Cr. L. 200.

Tr. 646.

4 41 Parl. Deb. 966. Mackintosh and others complained of this as a confused definition, and ended by saying it was impossible to give any definition.-41 Ibid. 1540. "Those who slowly built up the fabric of our law never attempted anything so absurd as to define by any precise rule the obscure and shifting boundary which divides libel from history or discussion."-Sir J. Mackintosh, R. v Peltier, 28 St. Tr. 529.

information would be converted into a mere vehicle of panegyric. The voice of truth would cease to be heard. amidst the notes of adulation. Others again would have only groundless calumnies on Government regarded as libels. But who were then to decide? To whom was it left to pronounce, whether what was called calumny was well or ill founded? It was of consequence that this power should be placed in hands, where it was neither liable to abuse nor open to corruption. By being placed in the hands of juries, it afforded the most probable means of safety, and became the best instrument of justice.' Hence Lord Kenyon observed, that practically all that could be said was, that whatever twelve of his countrymen thought blamable was libellous, and what they thought not blamable was not libellous.2

What is the essence of seditious libel.-From what has preceded it will be obvious, that sedition is more than a vague general discontent with the mode of government

1 29 Parl. Hist. 732.

2 "After all, the truth of the matter as to the liberty of the press is very simple when stripped of all the ornaments of speech, and a man of plain common sense may easily understand it. It is neither more nor less than this, that a man may publish anything which twelve of his countrymen think is not blamable, but that he ought to be punished if he publishes what is blamable. This, in plain common sense, is the substance of all that has been said upon the subject."-L. Kenyon, C. J., R. v Cuthell, 27 St. Tr. 675.

Another experienced statesman also observed: "The most eminent judges had been able to give no clearer definition of a seditious libel than that it comprehended whatever was calculated to bring the Government into hatred and contempt. Such a description, it was obvious, would be thought to apply or not to any particular writing, according to the different views and various reasonings of various minds; and where such various judgments might be formed it was evident, that jurymen would exercise their judgments and modify their sentence by a reference to the consequences which should attach to it."-M. Lansdowne, H. L., 41 Parl. Deb. 715.

A Protest of the Peers in 1819 well stated, that the "offence of publishing a libel is, more than any other that is known to our law, undefined and uncertain. Publications which at one time may be considered innocent and even laudable may at another, according to circumstances and the different views of public accusers, of judges, and of juries, be thought deserving of punishment, and thus the author or publisher of any writing dictated by the purest intentions on a matter of public interest, without any example to warn, any definition to instruct, or any authority to guide him, may expose himself to a long imprisonment and a heavy fine."-41 Parl. Deb. 747.

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