The Sun.
London, England, 1861-05-07 00:00:00

LAW IA T.ELLIGENCE.—May 6.

COURT OF COMMON PLEAS.

(Sittings in Banco, before the Lord Chief Justice
Erle, and Justices Willes, Keating, and Byles.)
TURNBULL V. BIRD.-MR. TURNBULL AND THE .
PROTESTANT ALLIANCE.
This was an action of libel against Mr. Bird, the
secretary of the Protestant Alliance, and it was
proceeded upon certain correspondence published
in reference to Mr. Turnbull, in connection with his

office of Calenderer of State Papers.
Mr. Prideaux (with him Mr. Felkard) said : He
had to move for a rule, calling upon the defendant
to show cause why so much of an order of Mr. Jus-
tice Williams, as allowed the 4th, 6th, and Bth pleas
to be pleaded, should not be rescinded. Mr. Turn-
bull was a gentleman of the Roman Catholic persua-
sion, who had been appointed by the Master of the
Rolls to the office of Calenderer of State Papers,
and Mr. Bird was the secretary to a self-consti-
tuted society, of which their lordships might
possibly have heard the Protestant Alliance.
The declaration contained two counts upon libels,
and he trusted that it would not be necessary for
him to read the whole of these two counts, because
he hoped to be able to show briefly that these three
pleas ought not to be allowed, and the force of the
application was that it was perfectly manifest that
whether the statements in these pleas were true—
as they might be in some measure—or whether
they were false, they were pleaded to parts of the
declaration that were not in themselves libellous.
The libel in the first count states in substance that
Mr. Turnbull was a gentleman of such prejudiced,
bigoted, and
,jesuitical principles, that he could not
be trusted with the care and custody of the State
papers, and that Sir John Romilly had felt it neces-
sary to have three gentlemen to keep watch over
him, in order that they might see he did not muti-
late or destroy such parts of these papers as hive
an apparent bearing against the Roman Catholic
interest ; and the fourth plea justified as being true
the following statement in this libel :—" I know
that Mr. Turnbull was appointed by Sir John Ro-
milly to prepare for publication a short abstract,
or outline, of the letters and documents received
from foreign parts from the reign of Edward VI. to
the Revolution in 1688,' a period in which occurred
the important religious struggles xi the Continent,
such as the 30 years' war, the war of independence
in Holland, the wars of the Huguenots, the Dra-
gonnades of Louis XIV., and the treasonable at-
tempts and plans of the Jesuits against the life of
Queen Elizabeth and the safety of the realm of Eng-
land." He, asserting that these statements were
true, raised, as he submitted, a perfectly immaterial
issue. The libel set out in the second count was

somewhat analogous to that in the first count; but
in addition to imputing to Mr. Turnbull that he
was so untrustworthy that the Master of the Rolls
was obliged to keep superintendence over him, it
went on to impute that he would if he could muti-
late, destroy, and throw into the fire such of the
State papers as militated against the Roman Ca-
tholic interest, and pretend that they were de-
stroyed by accident.
The Lord Chief Justice said that the objection was,
that the statements alluded to in the plea were im-
material, whether they were true or false; and it
seemed to the Court that their respected brother
Williams would never have allowed the pleas to be
placarded unless there was something more behind.
Mr. Prideaux assured their lordships that there
was nothing behind. The 6th plea justified the
following statement in one of the libels :—" Still
further to show the danger to our records, I will
direct Mr. Brewer to the following passages in
Mendham's Literary Policy of tha Church of
Rome,' second edition, page 360. It may afford
some useful illustration of the subject of the work
to observe that among many other specimens pro-
ducible, the Bodleian Library affords a signal
one of the execution of the directions of the papal
index in a copy of " Gesner's Bibliotheca," edited
by Senilor, fol. 1,574. The pages 485-488, contain-
ing an account of Luther and others, with their
works, have been cut away, and the lower part of
the last of these pages so dexterously united, that
the very catchword answers, and only the thickness
of the pasted portion betrays the abstraction. The
articles of Philip Melancthon, Martin Bucer, Jo.
CEcolampadius, the Beza are completely erased,
although Twingle is untouched. Was not that
mutilation the work of some zealous followers of
the Jesuits ? Again, the Rev. A. T. Russell in his
"Life of Bishop Andrews," published in 1860, states
that he had searched the State Paper-office for his
materials and had discovered that many important
documents are not now to be found, and adds, " It
is remarkable that precisely those papers which con-
stitute the most important evidence against Garnet
Ind the other Jesuits are necessary; so that if the
merits of the controversy respecting their criminal
implication in the Gunpowder plot depended upon
the fair effect of the original documents not now to
be found in the State Paper-office, impartial readers
w duld probably hesitate to form a decided opinion
.against them. It is undoubtedly a singular ac-
cident that, among so large a mass of docu-
ments precisely those should be abstracted
upon whose authenticity the question so
hotly disputed between Catholics and Protes-
tants mainly depended." Those parts of the
libel had reference to circumstances which were
supposed to have occurred long before Mr. Turnbull
was born, and, therefore, it was immaterial whether
the statements were true or false. The eighth plea
was in justification of the following statement :
"Upon what authority does he assert that not one
of the memorialists, in the very height of their
alarm, has visited the Record-office. I do not wish
to be too hard upon my clerical caliburn, but I beg
to inform him that he is quite wrong in his asser-
tion that many of the memorialists have visited the
Record-office, and that I have in my possession a
long list of papers in the Record-office, referring to
various plots by the Jesuits." This also he sub-
mitted was an immaterial circumstance; but
although immaterial, it would probably prejudice
the plaintiff if he did not traverse the pleas, and if
he did traverse them, he would raise issues upon
circumstances which occurred hundreds of years
ago, and this must lead to unnecessary expense.
Mr. Justice Byles asked whether the plaintiff was
prepared to strike out those allegations to which the
pleas referred.
Mr. Prideaux said he felt considerable difficulty
in doing that.
Rule granted.