The Sun.
London, England, 1833-11-21 00:00:00

encouraged by the infliction of fines, stimulated
by the promise of imprisonment, with sticks
lambent round his head and stones dancing about

virulence of falsehood with which these journal-
ists pursue their victims may produce another
fatal fruit. If from the precarious and unpopu-
lar working of the law of libel, and the frequent

reluctance to appeal to it, men find no substan-
tial redress from the Courts of Westmin4er, is

it to he supposed that tilt resentful feelings ge-
nerated by the attacks of unpunished miscreants
will subside without some sort of satisfaction ?
Offences in private life, which are not suscepti-
ble of legal remedy, have, for near two centuries,
in this country, been wiped out by an appeal
to the sword—a practical evil, nay, dreadful
in itself, but one to which we mainly owe the
improved spirit and amenity of modern conver-
sation. With vile and mean slanderers that
redress is out of the question, but will all at-
tempts at personal violence be laid aside ? Men
will have some satisfaction for their wounded
feelings, If they find that the law is an obso-
lete security, they will try the cudgel. If they
can have a legal remedy, well ; but if that be
impracticable, why then they will infallibly have
recourse to the violent and illegal. Civil so-
ciety will in that case be broken up into a state
of war. These considerations, however, can
have little weight with the transgressors on whom
we have been remarking ; yet, bad as they are,
we wish not to see them assaulted as a New-
castle journalist appears to have been, with
weapons no less audacious and lawless, though
possibly somewhat less envenomed, than those
by which Lord Durham has been systematically
persecuted. The public services of that Noble
Earl, which so abundantly entitle him to the
respect of every patriotic Englishman, have ex-
posed him in the same degree to the ran-
corous revenge of a faction which ill deserves the
name of English. The Noble Lord has ap-
pealed to the law of libel for redress,—all honest
men must sympathise with his injured feelings,
but many wise men will wish that he had rested,
as he could well afford, on a character which
might set such puny reptiles at defiance,—and
that he had been satisfied with a public denial
tinder his hand of the malicious and despicable
charges brought against him, which we are sure
would have more than answered all the purposes
of the most successful prosecution. We repeat
that the feelings of society must be with Lord
Durham ; but, guessing from our own minds,
we must question whether men's judgments arc
not adverse to the policy of this prosecution,
right or wrong, in point of rigid justice. We
shall say no more than express our concern that
the same of Lord Durham should be connected
with an act of hostility towards the periodical
press. Is it yet too late to drop this superfluous
prosecution ? Times.

We copy from the Durham Chronicle an ac.
count of a fracas at Newcastle, originating in a
hand-bill published at the office of the Newcastle
Journal. We are only acquainted with the
n attire of the hand-bill from what is stated in
the paragraph of our Durham contemporary. It
is described as conveying a false and malignant
account of the part taken by several gentlemen
at the dinner given to Lord Durham at Sunder-
land, and as assailing them in a quarter in
which men of any feeling are generally sensitive
—namely, their wives and families. There can-
not be a doubt that the attempt to do justice to
themselves, by personal chastisement, is a viola-
tion of the law, and the only question will be
the extent of the amercement. We will avail
ourselves of this occasion to notice some of the
expostulations with us of our liberal corres-
pondents on what we have lately written on the
subject of prosecutions for libel. It has been
said—Why, because the libel law is bad, do
you wish to screen from all responsibility writers
and publishers who state what is false, and what
they know to be false ? Supposing the libel
law were as perfect as you could wish it
to be—that it distinguished between inten-
tional and malignant falsehood and accidental
inaccuracies to which no malice can attach—be-
tween the originator of a falsehood and those
who take it on trust, having no means of verify-
ing statements derived from distant sources—
still, under such an improved state of the law,
writers would not surely be allowed to deal in
calumny and malignant falsehood with impunity.
If, then, under an improved state of the law,
neither the originator of a malignant falsehood
nor the writer who copies such falsehood, aware
of its character (for though malice is not in all
cases to he inferred, the proof of it is not to be
excluded), ought to escape punishment, why
should Lord Durham or any other individual,
conceiving himself aggrieved, be precluded from
seeking redress under the present state of the
law, for what under any state of the law would
be deemed an offence ? Lord Durham has pro-
ceeded by criminal information, as it enabled him
to contradict the assertion on oath. This course
allowed the parties to file affidavits, contradicting
any of the statements of his Lordship. It
may be true, that in the present state
of the libel law, statements may be pro-
ceeded against by criminal information which
no honest man can condemn ; but, surely,
if it can be shown that the statements pro-
ceeded against by criminal information are of an
Indefensible character, there can be no reason
why they should be suffered, because statements
of a very different character may be made the
subjects of criminal information. By making
' common cause with all who avail themselves of
the press to circulate false statements, you not
only bring discredit on yourselves, but you are
the cause of the apparent indifference occa-
sionally shown by Juries to the liberty of the
press. You blame men of the class of Jurors
for giving verdicts in trivial matters, which
enable prosecutors to ruin journals with heavy
costs ; but you should remember that many of
these Jurors may be smarting under improper
liberties taken with their feelings by a portion of
the press ; and if you treat their calamities as a
light matter, and suppose that they ought to
put up with their wrongs, you cannot be with
justice angry if they look with indifference to
your calamities. Such is nearly the substance
of several representations which we have re-
ceived on the subject. We have to say in
answer, that we have never justified attempts
to traduce, because the law which is appealed
to for redress may be made the instrument of
punishing the innocent. The Whigs, too, may
or may not be justified in having hitherto de-
layed to amend the law of libel (we think they
are justified); but whether that law be improved
next session, or be suffered to remain as it is,
we have never contended that an injured
man is bound to seek no redress so long
as it remains in its present state. All
that we said was, that it was peculiarly hard
on individuals who now sought redress
i"rom the law for unquestionable wrong, that
they should be obliged to " submit with patience
to the wrong, or have recourse to a law justly
detested on account of its being in general
called into operation only by the worthless, and
being equally efficient to crush the innocent and

the guilty." So long as human nature is human
nature, men will be more or less affected by the
general character of the law appealed to. 'We
will put the case, for instance, of a man who
has six times suffered severely for indifferent
actions. Let us suppose that a seventh prose-
cution is instituted for an atrocious libel. Would

a jury leave altogether out of consideration the
sufferings of the defendant, though, in strict
justice, the plaintiff's claim to redress was pre-
cisely the same, whether his prosecutionwris
seventh in order or first ? The elder Cato is
said to have ended all his speeches, on what-
ever subject, with the observation, a'eletula est
Carthago. Our object in dwelling, on the un-
just and mischievous character of the present
Libel Law was not written with a view to injure
one party or to favour another, by withdrawing
attention from particular cases to a general dis-
cussion. We conceived that public men,
knowing less of the noxious character of the Libel
Law than we do—indeed being in general
utterly ignorant of it, it was our duty to
seize every occasion, when the public was
alive to the subject, for exposing the monster
in all its hideousness. The present time is
peculiarly favourable for obtaining attention
to the subject ; for the English are a people
peculiarly led by great names; and the spec-
tacle of a great and justly popular States-
man, like Lord Durham, invoking the libel
law, is not an occasion that will occur every day.
We have not taken the ground of some of our
contemporaries, that an individual should put
up with false imputations, because his known
character gives the lie to them, or because if one
journal assails him, the columns of another are
open to his vindication. Procrustes's bed fur-
nished the hint for this sort of argument. All
men are not affected in the same manner by the
same kind of injury. One man of an iron
temperament may care nothing for what may
sting another to the quick. Besides, the feel-
ings of near and dear connections are to be
taken into consideration. A statesman seeks to
solace himself for the cares and anxieties of life
as well as others in the domestic circle. It is
nothing to him that he may see those suffering
by the circulation of slander who are connected
with him by the dearest of ties, and whose hap-
piness or misery must be shared by him ? So
much for one mode of seeking redress for the
wrongs suffered from the press. But the proceed-
ings in the journal office at Newcastle open ano-
ther view of the case. It is observed by the Presi-
dent Dupaty, a French judge, who travelled in Italy
before the breaking out of the revolution—that
in the then state of the law of Europe, which
was everywhere made by the rich, and in their
favour against the poor, that the Italians, by
trusting for their protection to their own arms,
and not to the law, had an advantage other the
other nations of Europe. This is strange lan-
guage in the mouth of a judge ; but he offers
some very ingenious arguments in favour of his
views. However this may be, it is quite clear,
that if men are precluded from having recourse
to law, they will become judges in their own
cause. Lord Durham is blamed for having
recourse to law. Here are five gentlemen who
redress their own wrongs, real or imaginary.
The publisher of the Xewcastle Journal com-
plains of this. He says, the law is open ; why
do not my assailants appeal to the laws of their
country ? Lord Durham says he is slandered,
and he does appeal to the laws of his coun-
try, and he is abused for it, not only by the
offending party, but by a very large portion of
the Liberal press. The Scripture says, " Ac-
cursed is he who deals with two measures." The
proprietor of the Newcastle Journal, by repudiat-
ing the law of the land, betakes himself to the law
of nature, and must be prepared with a force to
repel aggression. When he libels five men
another time, he must hire five as good men to
meet them. This is returning to the state of
things so well described by Sir Walter Scott,
when a Seaton or a Murray durst not walk the
streets of Edinburgh without a strong band of
retainers. The proprietor of a journal must
look as much to the sinews of his editors as
their brains. An editor must be prepared not
only to meet adversaries difficult, from the slight.
ness of their figure, to hit by one sort of weapon,
but to knock down the bully who may try to
crush him by superior bodily strength. The
law of the land may be bad, but, after all, we
suspect it is better than club or fist law. How-
ever, the proprietor of the Newcastle Journal
seems to have placed himself on the horns of a
dilemma. He cannot complain of prosecution
for injurious and false statements, and complain
of attempts to seek redress by other means at
the same time. He must be hit some way or
other, and he must not, like the soldier at the
halberd, complain of being hit too high one
moment, and too low the next.
FRACAS EXTRAORDINARY.—SUMMARY AND
EXEMPLARY PUNISHMENT.
(From a Correspondent in Newcastle to the Durham
Chronicle.)

On Wednesday last, an extraordinary sensation was
produced in Pilgrim-street, Newcastle, by a fracas which
took place in the office of the celebrated " lying Journal"
situated there. It appears, according to report (for no
official account has yet been published), that the spleen
of these veracious journalists not having had full vent in
their weekly discharge respecting the dinner given to the
Earl of Durham at Sunderland, they had recourse to a
hand-hill, which was pretty freely distributed among the
clique in Sunderland, in which malignancy and falsehood
are so conspicuous, that even Judas himself cannot tell
which predominates. The object of this miserable pro
duction was still further to malign some of the gentlemen
who attended that dinner ; and with the accustomed tact
of the party, at the same time to traduce their wives and
families, and bold them up to the derision of this degraded
and disgraceful faction. Immediately on the atrocious fa-
brication making its appearance on Wednesday, a party
of gentlemen who were attacked resolved to punish the
heartless instrument who gave the trash publicity, if they
could not reach its skulking and cowardly author. They
immediately came to Newcastle, and five of them repaired
to the office, where they found its much-to-be-pitied
proprietor. They inquired if be was the printer of
the calumny, which he avowed ; but, on his declining to
give up the writer, two of them immediately bestowed
upon him a tremendously severe castigation, regardless of
his cries for mercy or assistance. Mr. Jonathan Walton,
who has figured there as an assistant since the commence-
ment of their foul career, thought it his duty to assist his
patron, when unluckily he transferred a smart portion of
the punishment to his own shoulders, and, report says,
found it necessary, to avoid further chastisement, to hide
himself underneath the counter. The justice of the party
becoming satisfied, they left their howling victims to
soothe each other's sores, retired to their inn, and subse-
quently left the town. Of course legal proceedings will
be the first step which the libellers will take ; and though
there cannot be a doubt that the other party have laid
themselves open to arnercenient, yet the Land of every
honest man must be raised to applaud the meritorious
deed.—Morning Chronicle.
1)r. Lushington, in his address to his consti-
tuents on Monday night, reminds us of the
painter in Horace, who painted what in them-
selves might be pretty enough, but not what
were required. The Doctor pledged himself,
according to one of the speakers, who was not
contradicted, at a meeting at Mile-end during
his canvass, to vote for the repeal of the assessed
taxes. He says he voted for the ballot, triennial
Parliaments, and against the impressment of
seamen. This is good ; but what becomes of

the pledge ? It may be right or wrong to give
pledges, but having given the pledge, was it right
to break it ? The Doctor says, that if he had
voted against the repeal of the assessed taxes, he
would have thrown out the Ministry. This
would have been an evil, but we do not believe
that the repeal of the assessed taxes would have
had any such effect. In fact, they must and will
be repealed. But does not Dr. Lushington see
that he is sapping the foundation of all morality
by doing evil that good may come of it ? It
destroys all confidence between man and man to
disregard pledges. Why do we preach patience
to the people ? Why do we tell them—you
have now a Reformed Parliament, w hat tnadness
to seek that by anarchical means, which you may
obtain by constitutional means, if the men whom

the people depute to represent them on the faith
of pledges to obtain that on which they have set
their hearts, violate their pledges in this manner ?
We condemn all attempts to combine against
the law, but we must equally condemn all at-
tempts to delude the people by pledges which
are not kept. If we wish men to obey the law,
we must not drive the people to do without it.
—Morning Chronicle.

The history of the Romish Church is one
continued display of spiritual domination in civil
concerns, and that such is still its characteristic
the contest which has long been going on in
Portugal, that which has just arisen in Spain,
and the unhappy state of Ireland, are proofs
abundant and irresistible. Among the inscru-
table designs of Providence, this, perhaps, comes
the least within the reach of man's finite capacity
—that religion, which was given to insure his
happiness both here and hereafter, should become
so often the bane of his present existence, and
the parent of enormities least of all calculated to
smooth his passage to a world to come. We
should ourselves partake of the bigotry which
we thus condemn were we insensible of two facts

—the one, that there are among the Romish
priesthood many highly exemplary characters to
whom this imputation does not apply ; the other,
that too many of the clergy of the Protestant
faith have been found to prefer an interference
in civil concerns to the performance of their
spiritual duties. But even admitting this latter
fact to whatever extent it may be desired, what does
it prove, but that the genius and spirit of Protes-

tantism has that within which resists the too evi
dent effect which Catholic priestcraft produces
upon a Catholic community. With a show of liberty
such persons are at once the greatest slaves
and the greatest tyrants. From persons who
have recently travelled through Spain and
Portugal we are happy to learn that this
priestly dominion is by no means so extensive as
it was ; that in the former country, especially,
the number of Monks is greatly diminished,
and the influence of those remaining neither so
great, nor submitted to so implicitly, as here-
tofore. Our informants, too, agree in stating
that this alteration is most apparent in such
parts of the country to which commercial in-
tercourse has found its way ; in short, that
where light is let in, darkness claims no longer
the dominion. How strikingly does this apply to
the cultivation and improvement—we might say
to the civilization of Ireland—to the misgovern-
ment and neglect of which may be attributed the
long reign of priestly dominion under which that
limb of the empire Las long suffered. Error,
while fostering by neglect, is not to be rooted
out by violence. Of all wars those which are
undertaken to induce men to change their re-
ligious opinions have been the most senseless,
intolerant, and fruitless. Would we destroy the
political dominion of priestcraft, it must be done
by ameliorating men's condition, by enlightening
their minds, and fitting them to enjoy that free-
dom to which those who profit by their bodily
and mental vassalage would have them to be for
ever strangers.—Morning Herald.
It affords us pleasure to learn that " a circu-
lar has been transmitted from the Home Office
to the different revising Barristers, calling upon
them to say whether any, and s,‘ hat objections
have occurred to them to the working of the Re-
form Act on their respective circuits," because it
evinces, in the first place, a desire on the part
of the Government to amend whatever has been
found to be amiss in the operation of the Act,
and, because, in the second, we trust that it
may be taken as the certain forerunner of some
of those extensive alterations being made in it,
which are now so unanimously called for by
the public, and more especially that which re-
gards the payment of taxes and rates ? The ne-
cessity of these taxes being paid up to a certain
period, in order to qualify the renter of a house or
piece of land to vote at the election of Members
of Parliament, has been justly complained of,
as an injustice to individuals, and a narrowing,
beyond the extent comtemplated by the framers
of the Act, of the number of qualified electors.
The first substantial improvement, therefore, to
which the public has a right to look, and
which we trust the Government will not fail to
effect, will be the blotting out of this disquali-
fying clause, and the consequent throwing open
of the franchise to all who are nominally in-
cluded in its multifarious, but well meant pro-
visions. The speech of Lord Durham on this
subject, at Gateshead, leads us to believe that
our hopes are not misplaced, and that the rec-
tification alluded to will be one of the first mea-
sures of the session.—Morning Advertiser.
Lord Durham, as our readers are already
aware, is prosecuting three newspapers in his
zeal for the liberty of the press. His friends in
the north became alarmed, with some reason,
lest the triple exertion should be too much for
his physical force, and proceeded to effect a
diversion in his favour. A detachment of them
about half a score strong marched on the 13th
ultimo to the office of the Newcastle Journal,
and succeeded in establishing the liberty of the
press there by the infliction of sundry blows,
bruises, stripes, and kicks on the body of the
obnoxious editor. He is a bold man who
meddles with Lord Durham. His Lordship is
armed at all points—happy, tarn Marte quails
illercurio. See with how formidable an array
he marches into action. Here frowns a crafty
attorney ; their scowls a sturdy pitman. A cri•
urinal information is discharged from the right ;
a brickbat is volleyed from the left. Sir John
Campbell wields a weighty brief ; Mr.
John Coal Carr wields a weightier bludgeon.
Vi et arrnis completes what Brnco Regis
begins. A rule is to be made absolute
to-day, and a head is to be broken to-
morrow. Lord Durham loves the liberty of
itth.e I
they
ee syi ss , (al t
hne
ed he has .
airs
utrheelyyt abuwrgeeahtt his friends
ahree biofut
hnedy tthoo love
a vceonit
_
gnr°attulate the Noble Lord and the Noble Lord's
noble imitators upon the success of their simul-
taneous efforts in this great cause. Henceforth
the author whose task is to enlighten mankind
shall be free from the fears and the anxieties
with which Toryism surrounded him. He
shall pursue his honoured vocation in peace,

his windows.

As for the Editor of the New-

castle Journal, we are unwilling to judge harshly

of any man, but we must say appearances are
___

sadly against him. We are afraid he must
stand convicted of a fatal honesty, an unfortu-
nate virtue ; for who but one incorrigibly in-
dependent and treasonably loyal could be,
within one short week, horsewhipped by Lord
Durham's admirers and prosecuted by Lord
Durham ?—Morning Post.
The refusal of the great Company of Mer-
chant Tailors to bow down before the illegal
behests of the Corporation Commissioners, the
dignified language in which that refusal is con-
veyed, and the learned and constitutional
opinions (albeit incomprehensible to Mr.
Sampson Augustus Rumball or Mr. Joseph
Parkes) on which it rests, have naturally enough
attracted the " thunder" of our Ministerial
Contemporaries. The Radical Press would
fain emancipate itself from the law's restrictions.
No wonder, then, that it is equally anxious to
deprive the rest of the world of the law's protec-
tion. Accordingly, in their utter inability (for
which we are far from blaming them) to combat
the arguments by which the illegality of the
Royal Commission is established, and eager to
vilify all resistance to unlawful authority, the
Whig journals, with the baseness of their party's
character (so signally contrasted with that party's
ancient creed), at once fling aside all pretence to
the countenance of the laws, in their crusade
against the rights of property, wisely reflecting,
doubtless, that in the arena of public justice
they must expect to encounter such cumbersome
and, peradventure, inconvenient obstacles as
untainted evidence in the place of ex parte fic-
tion, direct proof instead of vague calumny, and
in lieu of clamour and intimidation a fair field
and an impartial tribunal. With a spirit wor-
thy of Scroggs or Jefferies, they resent the no-
tion of " questioning the King's witnesses" as
an affront to the good cause of confiscation in
which they wish to embark the King's name.
The insolent railing of the Times, the dull
malignity of the Chronicle, and the vulgar rant
of the Herald, are all, therefore, called into play
to scoff at the presumptuous proposition that an
accused party is entitled to be heard in his de-
fence in due course of law ; and the pains and
penalties of ex post facto enactments are trip-
pingly and fluently appealed to by these shame-
less advocates of pretended freedom. All this
would in other times and different circum-
stances have been simply ridiculous, or at worst
offensive ; and such gentle epithets as " rot•
ten," " jobbing," " swindling," &c., applied too,
be it remembered, to untried persons, might
have passed as the natural effluvia of the kennel
from which they rise. Not such, however, is
the case now. Feeling as we do, and as indeed
the very nomination- of the band of" Rovers"
but too sadly demonstrates that the Crown and
the Government, upon the new patent Durham
principle of "goipg," are but too likely to lend
a willing car to this audacious appeal of their

partisans, we cannot let the occasion slip with.
out a few words of warning, however fruitless—
a brief expression of indignation, however inef
fective. We need not say that our hopes o
success are anything but sanguine ; for have
we now to learn how feeble are the expostula-
tions of reason amidst the storm of innova-
tion, how forlorn the chances of real liberty
when the authority of the Crown is prosti-
tuted to the vilest purposes of faction, and
sedition swaggers through the land tricked
out in the trappings of prerogative ? Still
vve cannot quite persuade ourselves that die
Monarch can in reality be a willing
agent in this pernicious scheme, or even
aware of the necessary result to which these
arbitrary proceedings tend. " True," say the
Vhig organs, " we have no law to justify us,
but, then, we can easily obtain power to defy
the law. If the right be not with the Govern-
ment, a reforming Parliament will not refuse
them the means of trampling on the right.
Granted, that the Royal Commission is at best
waste paper, and the edicts of its bearers mere
blank cartridges, which, though they may ter-
rify the timid, and here and there perhaps
frighten a nervous magistrate into self-destruc-
tion, are yet impotent against those who have
" nothing to fear" for themselves, and would
rather brave the vengeance than surrender the li-
berties of their country ; but then an Act of
Parliament will soon supply the wanting ainmu-
; nition ; the representatives of the people will
gladly forge bolt and bullet to bring down new
victims for the popular appetite ; and the people
themselves, in their present temper, will
exult over those who have dared to vindicate
their rights against the mandates of the execu-
tive." Alas ! all this may be so. Would to
God we could meet the insinuation with the
same indignant shout of scorn with which in
other days it would have been greeted. But
we have outlived surprise, and can, at most,
only be shocked by whatever degradation it
may please a House of Commons (for of the
House of Lords we of course hear not one
word) to submit to. It may be then that the
Executive will be armed with power to compel
the production of deed and document, on
which an Attorney-General's ingenuity is to be
tortured to detect or to devise a flaw—that the
property and good name of every man in Eng-
land (for the principle is equally good for indi-
viduals and for Corporations) may be prostrated
by Parliament at the foot of the Throne. What
then will be the conduct of him who sits
upon the throne, whose interest is most vital,
as his assent is most indispensable, in any
trafficings with public or private rights ? Is
there no one to whisper in the royal ear that
there are
us,so that leas
thewel
blow which
l a s aggregate
to be found among
levels one can scarcely miss the other, that each
are built on the same basis of law, and that one
part of the foundation cannot be disturbed with-
out straining the whole edifice ? The preroga- '
tives of the sovereign, the privileges of the
subject, the franchises or the freeholds of a
corporation, are all bound together by one com-
mon chain of law ; snap but one link, and the
severance is fatal. Once more we would entreat
his Majesty's attention. The Royal eye cannot
be the only one closed to the gigantic strides
the House of Commons is making and medi-
tating towards universal dominion. It will
readily lend him aid against corporations.
There is a fable of the man having assisted the
horse against the stag ; the moral may not be
without value. But, come what will, those
who, like the Merchant Tailors, have had the
manliness to refuse submission where no one
was entitled to exact obedience, will have, at
least, this comfort in addition to their self-
approbation. They will have escaped the
taunts of their assailants, with which their inure
supple brethren have been unsparingly visited,