The Sun.
London, England, 1833-11-28 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TIIE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We yesterday alluded to an advertised reso-
lution, passed by a meeting of the friends of
political freedom at Brighton, towards promot-
ing a subscription to indemnify Mr. Cohen,
editor of the Brighton Guardian newspaper.
for a fine to which he was sentenced by the
Court, in consequence of the verdict of " guilty"
found against him in a prosecution by a certain
magistrate of Sussex, at the last Summer As-
sizes at Lewes, as likewise to repay him the
costs of the said prosecution. On reading over
the report of the trial in question, there ap-
pears matter abundantly sufficient to confirm all
our worst impressions of the state of the libel
law in this country, as it affects the liberty of
speech and writing with regard to political
subjects. The Brighton Guardian, in No-
vember, 1832, inserted a paragraph, wherein,
after enumerating some incendiary fires which
had occurred about fifteen or twenty miles from
Brighton, the writer took occasion to remark
the exemption from such fires of those districts
in whose neighbourhood certain magistrates
resided, while the vicinity of other magistrates
had b .en deplorably tormented by them ;
more( vsr, that in some places the magistrates
had persecuted the people, and would not let
them expresstheir opinionsby meetings or unions,
but had applied the term " mob" to parties
so applying for a redress of grievances, and had
transported them ; further, that the oppressed
labourers had no way of making their wants
known but by burning the stacks of those who
were obnoxious to them ; that at Horsham the
case was different, for there the middle classes
had refused to abet the Magistrates, or to be
sworn in special constables, to prevent the la-
bourers from making known their grievances,
and that the consequence was, the labourers
considering the middle classes as their friends,
that therefore the middle classes, instead of
assisting the upper classes to oppress the lower,
ought to make common cause with the peasantry
for the protection of their property, &c. Against
the Brighton Guardian, for the above para-
graph, bills of indictment were found by a grand
jury of magistrates, which bills set forth a great
deal about its being the purpose of the journalist
to vilify the administration of justice—to cause
it to be believed that Justices of the Peace were
guilty of persecuting the King's subjects—to
excite hatred and ill-will in the lower classes
against the upper—to persuade them that
they were despised by the upper classes—
to instigate them to set barns, &c., on fire—
to deter Magistrates from doing their duty—
and to discourage the middle classes from taking
on them the office of special constables, and so.
forth. Now, all we shall say is, that if such a
congregation of enormous offences were neces-
sarily or rationally to be inferred from the lan-
guage recited as having been employed by the
Brighton Guardian in reference to the conduct
of Magistrates and to the incendiary fires, there
is, not a journal of any character in the metro-
polis, or throughout the entire kingdom, which
might not, any titne these two years past, have
been hooked into a prosecution for libel, nor, in
fact, would there be a shadow of security. or
protection for the press of England in venturing
to utter one syllable about the abuse of power
or the wants or sufferings, the errors or offences,
of the poor. Who has not thought, who has
not a thousand times repeated, that country
Magistrates have in many instances oppressed
and degraded the labouring classes ? Who has
not said a thousand times, that some Magis-
trates, by their harsh and unfeeling spirit, have
rendered themselves obnoxious to the poor,
and that the exasperation of the latter has
shown itself in every form of crime and mis-
chief ? Who, again, would not advise the middle
classes, as we ourselves do conscientiously
and deliberately, to make common cause with
the labouring poor, or indeed with any other
order of the King's subjects, for the resistance of
oppression, whenever oppression is exercised? It
will be allowed by every one who read the report
of the trial, that a fairer, more creditable, or
becoming defence was never made than by Mr.
Cohen in reply to the counsel for the prose-
cuting magistrate ; and that it would be impos-
sible for any Judge to have summed up with
grew er integrity or candour, or to have submitted
a case to the Jury with a more anxious desire
that the defendant should have ample justice.
On a careful perusal of that charge, had we
known nothing more of the matter, it would
have been our full persuasion that the verdict
must hare been in favour of Mr. Cohen ; yet
he was not only found guilty by a Sussex Jury,
hut, on the 18th inst., when brought up for
judgment, although the Judge himself had dis-
carded from the case all the trash about exciting
the lower classes against the upper, and although
a crowd of affidavits, attesting the honourable and
oseful conduct of the Brighton Guardian at
the time of the fires, were laid before the Court,
Mr. Cohen was sentenced to pay a fine of 50/.,
should be imprisoned for six months in the
county gaol of Sussex, should give bail for his
/food behaviour for three years, himself in 100/.
and two sureties in 50/. each, and that he should
be further imprisoned until such fine was paid.
Now, without insinuating the slightest suspi-
cion that the Court of King's Bench has not
administered the law of this case in the most
discreet manner, according to its judicial con-
science, we beg leave to ask whether the law
itself, which so visits with severe fine and pros
Jonged imprisonment such an expression of
political opinion as that for which Mr. Cohen
has been punished, can by possibility, under the
reformed Legislature of a free country, be suffered
to endure tor one other ses,ion, nay, for one month
of the session now approaching? All the bad qua-
lities of the libel law have been exhibited in this one
instance,—its uncertainty, its occasional cruelty,
its revolting subserviency to vindictive purposes.
it is, we say once more, impossible that such a
state of law should endure, or that under it any
thing like freedom of opinion should prosper.
'We may take this opportunity of noticing a
gross misrepresentation of our obvious meaning
in the article of Tuesday on some late libel pro-
secutions in the North. We stated that the
Tories, who made such an outcry about Lord
Dot ham s proceedings against his libellers, had
no indignation to vent against the lamentable
case of' an unfortunate lady who had been sub-
jected to imprisonment by the unnecessary rigour
of Lord Lonsdale's agent, for a libel with which
beyond the circumstance
she had nothing to do,
of her being part proprietor of the journal in
which it appeared. Could any person not
blinded by malice or stupidity call this a justifi-
cation of one prosecution by a reference to an-
other ? We have expressed and repeat our
disapprobation of Lord Durham's proceeding
against the press, but we repeat that the prose-
cution of the Carlisle journalist has been con-
ducted with a severity of which Lord Durham's
nature is wholly incapable.—Times.