The Sun.
London, England, 1833-08-24 00:00:00

" That notwithstanding your petitioner was thus released
by the plaintiff's own prayer; and notwithstanding the question
he had asked in his own defence, could not by any possibility
be tortured into an improper question, or requiring the inter-
ference of the strong arm of the law ; yet your petitioner was
saddled with costs and expences amounting to 2731. 103. Bd.
" Your petitioner, therefore, must humbly prays of your
Honourable House, that as the law of libel as it now stands,
can be brought into operation to the ruin of any man, however
virtuous and praiseworthy his intentions and conduct may be,
that your Honourable House will therefore lose no time in
amending this law ; that henceforward it may be powerless as
an engine of injustice and oppression,
" And your petitioner will ever pray.

" London, Aug, 14."
This is what is called administering justice in an
unexceptionable manner. We find an action brought
against a newspaper proprietor of so ridiculous a
nature that the Court will not allow its time to be
wasted in going into it ; but we find also that the
poor newspaper proprietor, who, on the principle
that de snininzis non curat le.r, is deemed beneath
the consideration of the Conrt, is, without trial,
fixed with the enormous sum of 273/. 10s. Bd. of
costs. The petitioner places this evil to the ac-
count of the law of libel. He ought to have placed
it to the defective procedure of our Courts, and to
the distance of the suitors from the place of trial.
Every case is more or less in the same predicament.
The parties must convey all the witnesses to prove
the most trifling matter from Leeds or Manchester
to York or Lancaster, and they must maintain them
at these places, at a heavy expense, till the cases
come on. They who see no evil in this system are
determined to see nothing. They are afflicted
with a moral blindness, which is beyond cure. Had
this case been brought before a Local Court, the ex-
pense to either party might have been, at most, a
matter of 5/, If a prosecutor lay his damages
above the sum which the Local Court can enter-
tain, a verdict for a sum below the competency of
the Local Court ought to saddle the plaintiff with
the costs of the defendant beyond what would be
incurred in the Local Court. It is easy for a Judge
to say that a case is trifling. The expenses, how-
ever, are not trifling but ruin ills. In the present
state of the law, any man whc, has money at com-
mand may ruin most of those whom he dislikes by
vexatious actions. The provincial press, in parti-
cular, is at • mercy of every assailant. We
-idle known several newspaper proprietors abso- '
lutely crushed by the expenses of actions for libel,
in which the damages were trifling. The assizes
were no doubt a good contrivance for checking the
power of the Barons in rude times, and we have no
doubt that England is much indebted to the incur-
sions of the King's Courts into the territories of the
feudal Lords. But what monstrous absurdity it is
to continue this system in our times. Jury trials
are only tolerable when parties and witnesses are in
the neighbourhood of the place of trial. If there
are aay bona fide opponents to the establishment of
Local Callas (which we doubt), we would have
them to reflect that the case of Mr. Foster has
nothing singular in it. In almost all the cases tried
at the assizes, the property contended for is a very
secondary affair—the costs are the main business.
Those who argue that time is valuable, and that
heavy costs operate as prevention to unnecessary
law suits, would he more consistent in making it
necessary for the parties to pay a sum of, say 500/.
to the King, before being entitled to enter a Court.
—Morning Chronicle.

The instances which will be found below of the
slovenly and inaccurate manner in which the
stamp returns of newspapers are drawn up for
Parliament will teach the public what reliance to
place on the authority of such returns, as showing
the relative circulation of newspapers. In the
case of the Sunday Times and Essex Mercury the
error detected amounts to 204,000 stamps—those
papers having had 439,500 stamps affixed to their
names in the official returns, instead of 64.3,500.
With regard to the Town, the error committed
amounted to the whole difference between 28,100
and 86,100. A little mere searching will probably
lead to the (Fscovery of other blunders of no less a
magnitude. Besides, while certain journals pursue
the practice of taking out stamps to supply country
papers, which, of course, are set down to the credit
of their own sale, the stamp returns, independently
of such errors as are here exposed, though they may
serve as puffs for pipers, whose conductors adopt
this practice, yet can afford no fair criterion whereby
their circulation can be ascertained, as compared
with papers whose conductors scorn to practice such
an imposition upon the public.
regret exceedingly to find that there is an error in
the return of_ the number of stamps supplied to the Town
.i_ournal for the period from the Ist January, 183., to June 30,
t. 53-
appears The number should have been 86,100, and not 28,100, as
ini the return made to the House of Commons on the
7th instant.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOHN FRANCK, pro-Registrar of Newspapers.
Stamps and Taxes, Aug 23 1833 •
BY a similar error on the part of the Stamp-office
the number of stampsaptaken out by the Sunday
Times, sod Kent n
sscx Mercury, was stated
in the return to have' been 439,500, instead of
643,500, which was the actual number.—Morning
Herald.

The Bill which has just been introduced by the
Peers for the pur-
'Lord Chancellor to the House
ttitor.is to the new
pose of giving municipal con:ift
thinkis undoubtedly
boroughs created by the Reform:el
as hasty
hßill through
es most important measure.
Chancellor right in not pressing the
.the Lord
Parliament in the present sessiogn
tion on such a subject is not likely to bae.stYthe best.
But, admitting the principle to be good, it was also
contents
of right to put Parliament in possession of ;
of the Bill this session, that there might
and opportunity to consider them well before time
the
next. Whenever this measure comes to be dis'e•
cussed we do hope it will be viewed upon its own
merits, and not in reference to party politics, with
which it has necessarily no connection. It may ap-
pear strange at first sight to many that, at a time
when corporations in general are in any thing but
good odour with the public, and when a commission
is on foot to inquire into their manifold abuses, a
batch of 30 new corporations should be ready to be
drawn from the Ministerial oven; but it shouldbe
borne in mind that those municipal bodies, which
have in so many places become hot-beds of jobbing
and, sinks of corruption, were originally 4150'