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I shall not directly fall on the many gross errors, nor expose the notorious absurdities of this prostituted libeller, until I have let the Learned World fairly into the controversy depending; and then leave the unprejudiced to judge of the merits and justice of my cause.
Smiley was announced; and it was well that she made a diversion by her arrival, for words were beginning to run high. "A jury of her countrymen has found her innocent," Moulder had said with much heat; "and any one who says she's guilty after that is a libeller and a coward, to my way of thinking. If a jury of her countrymen don't make a woman innocent, what does?"
My article was avowedly nothing but a defence against this libel, and, as such, was necessarily addressed to the responsible editor of the "Journal of Ethics," not to the sub-editor of one of its special departments most assuredly not to the libeller himself.
Were you, therefore, determined to decree the motion for this dangerous and impolitic liberty, I make this amendment, that conviction of having written a libel carries with it capital punishment, and that a label be fastened on the breast of the libeller, when carried to execution, with this inscription: 'A social murderer, or 'A murderer of characters!"
To our continual representation against the liberties which the American newspapers take with our Government, with our Emperor, with our Imperial Family, and with our Imperial Ministers, the answer has always been, "Prosecute the libeller, and as soon as he is convicted he will be punished."
Henceforward popular judgment and the general good sense and right feeling of the community constituted the only licensing authority of the Press of England. Occasionally, when a publisher or author makes too free with the good name of an English citizen, the restraint of a prison cell is imposed upon the audacious libeller.
"Which is the least criminal, a bad action joined with a good intention, or a good action with a bad intention? "Is it inconsistent with the principles of liberty in a free government, to punish a man as a libeller when he speaks the truth?" The foregoing Rules and Questions show that it could not have been an ordinary class of young men to meet and discuss such subjects.
Joab was a Rye House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honest but misguided old Cavalier.
Nothing could be conceived more unfair or more absurd. A libel had been published by Dr. Adler, and Dr. Adler sent the defence against this libel to be edited by the libeller himself! Protest was in vain.
At that period the tongue of the libeller was not tied by fear of the law; for the man insulted or libelled there existed no means of redress other than that of shedding, or trying to shed, his insulter's blood. It was a rough and ready mode of obtaining justice; and if it had its manifest disadvantages, it was at least not wholly unsuited to the rough and ready times.
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