The Sun.
London, England, 1834-02-11 00:00:00

it made on the House of Commons. Was it
judicious, then, for Mr. O'CONNELL to advise
his friend to remain silent ? Would it not
have been more satisFactory to the Honour-
able Gentleman himself, still more becoming
towards the House, and more consistent with
the character and rank of Mr. SHEIL, to have
given the fullest explanation ? Mr. O'CONNELL
but last session praised the conduct of the late
LORD MAYOR in questioning persons accused,
and now, by his practice, condemns it. Such
inconsistency, however, is not rare in some per-
sons ; and we can only hope, for the sake of
Mr. SHETL, whom we should be delighted to
see acquitted of all blame, that he will not have
occasion to exclaim—" GOD defend me from my
friends !"

The French Papers of Sunday are destitute
of any news of interest. A dispute, it seems,
took place on Saturday in the Chamber of
Deputies, between M. CABET and M. d'AR-
GOUT, a Cabinet Minister, (not unlike that
between Lord ALTHORP and Mr. SHELL, in
the early part of last week,) which terminated
in M. CABET being delivered over by the
Chamber for prosecution to M. PERSIL. Private
letters from Madrid, dated the 31st ult., con-
tained in these papers, mention that the
proclamation for the assembling of the Cortes
would appear in the Madrid Gazette
of the 4th inst. It is full time that some
official announcement of this sort should
appear, to set at rest the state of suspense and
anxiety under which the Spanish Liberal party
must be labouring, especially as an opinion was
hourly gaining strength in Madrid, that M.
MARTINEZ DE LA ROSA was leaning rather
too much to the Doctrinaire, or expediency
system of Government.

German papers give the reply of his Majesty,
WILLIAM IV., to an Address of the Estates of
Hanover, which is of no earthly interest to our
English readers. The Prussian authorities have
forbidden the students of the public universities
to travel into foreign countries, except on cer-
tain rigid conditions.

A case of libel was tried yesterday, by Mr.
Baron BOLLAND, in the Court of Exchequer,
which is of more public importance than at first
sight it may appear to be. We mean the case
of DlcAs v. ONWHYN, in which the plaintiff
(an attorney) charged the defendant, who is a
newsvender, with having " published in the
Satirist a false and malicious libel concerning
him and his profession"—whereby his fair fame
had sustained grievous wrong, to the extent—
as the Jury seemed to think—of one farthing!
We leave the reputation thus triumphantly esta-
blihed to answer for itself; there can be no
two opinions on the very serions nature of its
sufferings, when these are estimated at the lowest
coin of the realm ; our business, just now, is
with higher matters—the spirit of a law which,
as it at present stands, has a direct tendency, not
merely to crush the Freedom of the Press, but
absolutely to annihilate it. There can be no
vestion, that if the venders of Papers are to be
made responsible for their contents—if they are
to he placed on the same hazardous footing as
Editors and Proprietors—the main channel
through which political, and other public
intelligence, is conveyed to all parts of the
empire, is at once dammed up. For who
would embark in such a trade—precarious
at all times, and never over-remunerated—
if, in addition to its other hazards, an
order of affiliation were to be made on him for
all the illegitimate paragraphs that might appear
in the different journals which he sells ? The
law, so far as we understand it, punishes the
newsvender, on the plea that he is the means of
giving circulation to libels; on the same prin-
ciple, the stage coachman, who is another agent
of circulation, should he liable. We protest we
see little or no difference between the two cases.
If the newsvender, who has no earthly connec-
tion with the paper which he sells, is to he
made responsible for its contents, so should he
the stage coachmen and guards of his Majesty's
mails. Yet we recognise an absurdity in the
one instance, while we hold the other as sound
constitutional law !

But, besides the injustice of this law, think
only of its flagrantly ridiculous character ! First,
consider the vocation of a newsventler, then
think of the vast reach of sagacity that is pro-
posed to be entailed upon him. Why, such a
man, to be at all safe tinder the present libel
law, must not only combine, in his own per-
son, the tact and experience of a veteran jour-
nalist, but he must add also the legal skill and
lore of a lawyer. Nay, more, he must be able
to sound the almost unfathomable depths of the
libel law—to reconcile its inconsistencies, and
make sense of its absurdities—an Herculean
task, under which Sir JAMES SCARLETT sunk,
and which Sir THOMAS DENMAN, we are
convinced, already finds too much for him.
If the responsibility of newsvenders is to be
insisted on—in other words, if the innocent is to
be confounded with the guilty—we can see no
end to the " frivolous and vexatious" obstacles
that will be thrown in the way of the press. As
to the speedy transmission of intelligence, on
points in which the whole empire may happen
to be interested,—such a vast public benefit will
be at once put an end to. Instead of circulating
their papers as expeditiously as possible, news-
venders will be engaged in poring over their
contents, with a Blackstone on one side of theM,
and a Peel's Statutes on the other. In fact,
they will be placed in the invidious position of
a dramatic licenser, and will sanction the circu-
lation of such journals only as give no shock to
their sense of responsibility.
Under a Government like the present, pledged
to liberal principles, we feel that we have every
right to insist on a revision of this most absurd,
this most hateful libel law. It is the rogue's
shield, which covers and protects him when
every thing else has failed. The greater the
scoundrel, the greater his chance of deriving be-
nefit from it. Has our Lord Chief Justice no