The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-24 00:00:00

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS.

Of all the friends of the press upon the legal bench,
none is greater than the Lord Chief Justice of Eng-
land. He is anxious to give more scope and liberty
to the journalist. Wherever the press seems to have
the worst of the argument on account of some
formality which has really become obsolete, the
Lord Chief Justice takes care to decide in
favour of more modern usage. Of all the
legal formalties which have fallen into desue-
tude, none is more apparent than the fiction which
supposes that there are no strangers in the Houses of
Parliament, and that the outside world does not
know what goes on before the Lord Chancellor and
before the Speaker. The theory is that "strangers "
may be told to withdraw. But for many years no
such theory has been put into practice, and every
morning paper throughout the United Kingdom gives
the proceedings of the Houses the night before. It
has become the duty of the journalist to present
these reports. When Mr. -Wason, therefore, out of
spite, first to the Lord Chief Baron, and subsequently
to the Times (which exonerated that hon. judge),
applied for damages against the leading journal.
Sir Alexander Cockburn demonstrated the folly of a law
which made it imperative on a newspaper to do that
which would afterwards incur a penalty. Mr. Wason,
nothing abashed, has brought his case up before the
court again. Judgment will certainly go against
him ; but he has raised a point which is one of the
mostimportant of modern times.

MR. ROEBUCK AND THE "SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT."
Mr. Roebuck has failed to win at Sheffield, but he
nas had his revenge. The journal which had hitherto
supported him, when he turned so independent as to
vote Conservative on everyoccasion, took up aposition
against him. But the said journal was indiscreet, and
published things which the world ought not to know.
It hunted up papers which are supposed to be
known only to Chancery. It deal red secrets which
were intended to be disclosed for the first time
to Lord Romilly. And Lord Romilly was appealed
to by " the late member for Sheffield" to punish it.
So its proprietors have to apologise to the court.
The precedent was laid down b. y the late Vice-
Chancellor, the present Lord Justice Wood ; so that
had the defendants appealed they would have
obtained no redress from the Lords Justices, for even
if Sir Charles Selwyn differed the judgment of the
court below would have been affirmed. The law as
laid down is a salutary one. In the Tichborne
case, for instance, the local journals were taking
sides and prejudicing the case before it had come for
decision.

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