The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-13 00:00:00

Libel Bill.

The following is the arrangement of the clauses
of the bill to amend the law of libel, and thereby to
secure more effectually the liberty of the press, pre-
pared and brought into the House of Commons by
Sir Colman O'Loghlen and Mr. Baines :-
1. No proprietor of a newspaper or periodical
publication shall be liable to an action or prosecu-
tion for a faithful rerort of a speech at a public
meeting unless he shall decline to publish, if re-
quired, an explanation or contradiction of the state-
ments complained of.

2. A speaker at a public meeting shall be liable
to be sued and prosecuted for defamatory matter
spoken by him at such meeting, as if he had written
and published the same.
3. The privilege of Parliament or other public
bodies shall not be affected by this act.

4. In actions for libel the defendant shall be at
liberty to pay money into court in discharge of the
action.

5. When the sum paid into court is not accepted
by the plaintiff in discharge of his action the de-
fendant may require the plaintiff to give security
for costs.

6. When the damages in an action of libel do not
exceed £5 the plaintiff shall not get more costa than
damages.
7. Without the sanction ofathe law officer of the
Crown no private prosecutor shall be at liberty to
prefer an indictment for any libel other than a libel
published with intent to extort.
8. The defendant on the trial of an indictment
or information for libel may offer himself as a wit-
ness, and so may the defendant's wife or husband.

9. The truth of a libel may be pleaded in a short
form.

10. When so pleaded the plaintiff may get a bill
of particulars of what is intended to be relied upon
by the defendant.

The act is not to extend to Scotland.

aR eTf ehr
Theatre
ai nt
rge to of
ARMINGrd LI tßi InT aOt F t
hSeA trCrAi
Princess's
c.
Cc
elnl t
the Are
the new drama, called " Shadow Tree Shaft,"
the
well-known dramatic critic of the Examiner, while
commenting upon the fact that " Mr. F • Lloyds,
the painter of the scenery, was called between acts,
and sometimes also in the course of the perform-
ance " again and again, goes on to remark that
" The author, Mr. T. W. Robertson, appeared,
by misconception perhaps, also between the
the curtain, and gathered a few crumbs
of applause from the scene-painter's table."
About the ability as a dramatic writer of the author
of Ours and of Society, there cannot, of course, be
two opinions, any more than there can be two
opinions as to Mr. King's versatile poems as an actor
and his really remarkable enterprise as a theatrical
manager—but for all that the Examiner critic can-
not, for the life of him, resist the temptation to
enter very familiarly as follows, in regard
to the Shadow-Tree Shaft of Wednesday :
There was no harm init except Stupidity. In the
first act there was a certain movement in the busi-
ness of a sort of "London Journal" story that, with
the good scenery and stage management, promised
success. In the second act the business began to
flag, and a scene in a coal mine with coming down
and going up of the bucket, overdone with stage
mechanism, and flat, as the whole piece is, in
dialogue, was very tedious. But the great and, to
us, incomprehensible failure of the author is in the
third act. Here, after a scene of the old Coburg
sort showing a villain suffering pangs identical with
those of stomach-ache, and how a villain with a
knife and a peasant heroine in danger from him in
a lonely wood may play at puss in the corner from
one tree stump to another, there is a long scene,
meant to be comic, of which the inventions and the
dialogue hardly reach up to the intellectual level of
a boy of 15. A Jacobite lady whose husband has
escaped from prison and is supposed to be dead and
gone to burial, has him concealed in her house.
She brings loose out of her pocket bread, a
leg of a fowl, salt, and a four ounce medicine
bottle of sherry, with which he regales him-
self while his funeral bell is tolling. An
officer enters who has, in fact, discovered that there
was no body in the coffin. He sits successively on
the leg of fowl, the bread, the salt, and wo believe
the bottle. When the noble lady, who has to main-
tain the character of an afflicted widow, is taxed
with the bottle, she says, Captain, I confess to
you I have been drinking. Consider my grief." But
a four-ounce medicine bottle—" I always," she says,
" drink out of a small bottle when I am afflicted."
We cannot answer for the words, but they convey the
sense, and do not over-state the pitiable charac-
ter of the attempts at comedy' that make this scene
a wonder even to those whose experience has
seasoned them against surprise at almost anything
a manager can give the public in the name of litera-
ture. The stage-management of the play is very
good, the chief scenes, especially the winter scene
in a fir coppice, will increase the reputation of the
scene painter, as a contriver of stage pictures in
which mechanical ingenuity comes to the aid of
genuine artistic skill. As for the literature, if Mr.
T. W. Robertson be really the author of the play,
it is charitable to believe that he must have written
it while he was still in jackets.
The French programme for a regatta on the Seine
during the Exhibition has been abandoned, and
there will be instead an English regatta, open to
the world, under English rules and management.
The Committee will consist of Messrs. Selwyn,
Q.C., Denman, Q.C., Chitty, A. Morrison, Rev.
J. Rogers, and Mr. M'Gregor (Canoe Club.)

LIBERATION OF TIIE TORNADO'S CREW.—We
have the satisfaction to announce that the crew of the Tor-
nado were set at liberty on Monday. Those unfortunate
victims of Spanish injustice and cruelty, in their petition
to Parliament, demand not merely their liberation, but
compensation for their confinement as prisoners of war for
nearly six months, and the barbarous treatment to which
they have been subjected.—Pall Jlall Gazette.