United States or Vatican City ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He would say nothing concerning the defamatory letters and pamphlets of which he was the constant object, for he wished no heed taken of matters which concerned exclusively himself, Notwithstanding this disclaimer, however, he rarely omitted to note the appearance of all such productions for his Majesty's especial information. "It was better to calm men's spirits," he said, "than to excite them."
No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the States against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced; he who has time renders a service to public morals and public tranquillity in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law; but the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasoning and opinions on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness.
There were six libels in all, of so gross a character that Mr O'Brien, since reports of his speeches were systematically suppressed in every newspaper outside of Munster, was obliged to take his libellers into court and, before a jury of their fellow-countrymen at Limerick, to convict them of uttering six false, malicious and defamatory libels, and thus bring to the public knowledge the guilt of his accusers.
The shoes were willing to come off on one condition only, that they brought both sock and skin with them. Three men, with tears in their eyes, had pencils, and kept tally of his remarks as he danced about after each frantic tug at a glued-on shoe. One took down every wounding, malicious word. A second caught and preserved every defamatory word.
But Augustus, who was conscious to himself of so many crimes which he had committed, thought in the first place to provide for his own reputation by making an edict against lampoons and satires, and the authors of those defamatory writings, which my author Tacitus, from the law-term, calls famosos libellos.
And it is considered in law a publication of such defamatory writing, though communicated to a single person. A slander written or printed is likely to have a wider circulation, to make a deeper impression, and to become more injurious. A person may therefore be liable in damages for words in print or writing, for which he would not be liable if merely spoken.
Simply because scandalous and defamatory: and hence, from the interest which invested the case of an imperial court so remarkable, this oblique, secondary and purely accidental modification of the word came to influence its general acceptation.
He was to learn later on that this amiable, frank, unfailingly good-tempered acquaintance had made the most ill-natured, not to say defamatory remarks about him, before Pilar and her whole circle of friends. One afternoon Anne announced that "the consumptive poet was below, and begged to be allowed to pay his respects to Madame la Comtesse."
The person addressed, who was the Clerk or Secretary, rose hereupon from his seat near the centre of the table, and read "the information," which it is unnecessary to give at length, charging the prisoner with using most foul, scandalous, indecent, defamatory, and unseemly invectives, reproaches, and passionate speeches, toward and against the worshipful magistrates and godly ministers of the colony, thereby contriving and designing to bring into contempt, all law, order, religion, and good government, &c., and to subvert the authority of the magistrates and undermine the wholesome influence of the godly ministers, &c., to the disgrace and ruin of the colony and scandal of true religion, &c.
Madame has said that her sister-in-law bore her no extreme good-will; and the defamatory story he has got the start of us in spreading, will not tend to increase the favour in which your sister-in-law holds you.
Word Of The Day