The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-31 00:00:00

LIABILITY OF THE PRESS.

Our columns of yesterday furnish another proof of
the enormous risk, or rather certainty, of expense en-
tailed by a faithful record and investigation of daily
occurrences. It is our contract with the public, and one
which they expect to see discharged to the letter, to
state every event of any interest or consequence that the
day may bring forth, and, inasmuch as mere insulated
facts are mere gossip, it is part of our contract to state
them in their most probable and most profitable con-
nexion. The moment we confined ourselves to a mere
registration of calamity, the public would speedily ob-
serve, " There is no speculation in thine eye," and
transfer their patronage to those who endeavoured to
fulfil the just expectations of rational men, and who
commented on disaster with a view to obviate its recur-
rence. Yet many disasters are obviously of that sort,
that it is impossible to trace them and account for them,
'without criminating individuals. The moment you
touch on a cause, you elicit the human defendant.
Somebody finds himself at the bar of the public, who
may very probably find it
easier to show that an
allegation has been made without. irresistible proof,
than that it is utterly without foundation. As
we are expected to be perfect, it is useless to
hint at the chance of error in some hundreds of new
communications every twenty-four hours. We will just
mention a case or two to illustrate the unavoidable ne-
cessity of implicating human agents, and interfering
with particular interests. We have been absolutely
obliged to show up the abominations of the Spa-fields
burial-ground. That exposure has been ruinous to the
lessees, who are now adding only two or three bodies a
Sunday to their mass of putrefaction, instead of 30 or
40. If we do but extract from a blue book the account
of a row of houses built in wanton disregard of the
rules of decency and health, of course we injure that
property; and though Parliament cannot do wrong, the
pre*, which records its proceedings, can. An agricul-
tural meeting the other day resolved that the present
murrain came in with the foreign cattle. Had we
thought that opinion probable, we should have said so,
and thereby done a mischief to the importers, perhaps
themselves the breeders. The press has published
much information on the rot in sheep, very useful
to farmers generally, but very prejudicial to
the name of certain districts of pasturage. The cider
of certain counties Las been denounced for the lead it
had acquired from the cisterns, and that publicity has
secured a better mode of preparation. Many writers
have brought various charges against the several water
companies. M'Culloch, for example, says, after some-
body else, that none of them do as much to purify their
water as they might do, and ought to do. This of course
is a statement likely to affect their custom and their divi-
dends. We are occasionally obliged, in our accaunt of
the markets, to designate the butchers who sell unsound
meat, and the fishmongers who offer unseasonable fish.
And of course in many instances we are obliged to be
content, not with an ex parte statement, but a state-
ment on one respectable authority. Now, then, to the
case in question. The member of a respectable house in
the City brings to our office information of the utmost im-
portance, and which he has had the best opportunity of
learningcorrectly. Through the medium of their mother,
with whom he resides, he is in daily domestic communica-
tion with two gentlemen who havejust arrived from India,
and who are both suffering a very serious and very re-
markable complaint, which, in common with the rest of
their fellow-passengers, they ascribe to some water
shipped from a floating tank at St. Helena. Their pe-
culiar symptoms first sh Aved themselves after touching
at that island—they seemed to indicate metallic poison,
and could be ascribed to no other cause. Either mis-
informed, or accounting for the impurity of the tank
water by a hasty hypothesis of his own, he adds that
the tank was coppered—a circumstance which, of course,
while it made the whole statement less literally true,
made it also more credible. lle adds other minute ex-
planatory details. With the facts, the sufferers, the
symptoms, the authority, all so prompt, so recent, so
unexceptionable, there really was no alternative but to
accept the statement, if important enough. But
its importance was incalculabe. There is nothing
of a material nature over which a State exer-
cises so jealous a control as water. It is most
delicately susceptible of deleterious admixtures or infec-
tions, and then becomes death instead of life. At all
our ports at home we take every possible care to provide
pure water for our shipping. So, publishing, as a
Journal does, every wreck, every new-discovered shoal,
every impediment as well as every assistance to naviga-
tion, we could not but insert a letter which merely re-
lated an unforeseen result without throwing real blame
on any party. We will answer for it that no person, not
otherwise informed as to the facts of the case, read that
announcement without a startling sensation of its vast
importance, and without also a feeling of gratitude to
the means which had given it publicity. Immediately
on the appearance of the letter, we receive a peremptory
request to do what no journalist could do either wisely
or honourably—what would put an end to all freedom of
communication, to publicity and truth itself—to give up
the name of the writer, without it being at first even
pretended that he had said anyth:ng for which he should
be particularly answerable. We ob'erve our own ne-
ussery rules, and decline. Meanwhile oar authority
finds himself in error as to the ownership of the tank,
and writes to correct his statement, but certainly bring-
ing the cause, not the b:ame, more expre sly home to
the true owner. On the same day we are visited with a
lawyer's letter, informing us now for the first time that
the tank was not copper, and demanding the name of
cur correspondent, isith a view to legal proceedings.
Our reply is twofold, and comprehends all the sati fee-
tion that justice could po,sibly require. We offer to
give the name of our correspondent, on a guarantee that
we shall be lh _Teby absolved from the resp.msibility of
his statement ; and, at the same time, we publish an
analysis of the water, which proves its entire freed an
from copeer in any form. Most of our readers would
probably conclude, on the appearance of this document,
that the original statement or surmiso (tOre.l by
" Nauticus" had entirely f.llen to the gnetnil, and that
there was ro party which could feel itself any further
aggrieved Far from it. In common apprehensions,
the Tiestien had end. d ; in tlw hands of agents and
lawyers, the case had only b .gun. The grievance is
duly fo tercel and brought to a trial. What now does
the trial add to our own immediate contradiction of our
correspondent's error, contained in the result of the
analysis ? Nothing. All the other facts of the case
arc proved, and more added. By the testimony of ;all,
even by the reluctant netiinony of the Captain, it
appears that, soon after taking in two hundred pounds'
worth of water, wine, and other provisions, at St
Helena, the pessengers, ten then in improved health, were
attacked, as the Chief Justice expresses it, "certainly
in a vary ream-kale manner." They- all conceived
their symptoms to be metallic; they did not refer it
to Sinde, to a stray Arab, to a few oranges, to sleeping
on the deck, hut to something peculierovith them, in the
ship—something in their diet—in fact, they appear to
have had no doubt whatever that it eas in the water.
True, the water was filtered, but %%hat process of filter-
ing will avail against chemical solution? They thought of
heal and of iron, and very naturally included copper in their
suspicions. liut why is :t so unpardonable to think of
copper ? Le there a moral gradation in metals ? The
Lord Chef Justice adds his powerful authority to the
opinion, that something remained to be accounted for
beyond the reach of oranges :—" I confess, if I were to
hazard a conjecture upon this point, I eheuld say that
probably the free, and perhaps the careless, use of mer-
cury, with the addition, probably, of drink and some de-
gree of imprudence, may have induced the disease
with which they were attacked." We only inserted
and immediately disproved a statement that a
copper tank was at the bottom of this mysterious
visitation ; the Lord Chic f Justice ascribes it
to the carelessness of the doctor and the intem-
perance of the passengers. For cur part, we canno
see why the tack-owners' interest should be more in-
violable than the Doctor's, especially as it appears that
the latter is in a scrape already, and will feel all the more
weight of a fresh charge. For the mere difference be-
tween mercury and copper—mercury still persisted in,
and propounded from the seat of justice—copper stated
in a moment of misapprehension, and at once disowned
are condemned to pay 5001. to redress the injured
reputation of this unlucky tank ; and everybody knows
the additional tail of expense that verdict carries.
Meanwhile there is not an atom of evidence to show
that our correspondent, and the whole body of passen-
gers, may not have been, after all, nearer the truth than
the mercurial Chief Justice. Mr. Solomons' wine is not
vindicated from lead, or his provisions from other possi-
ble ills. Perhaps time will show that his tank ought to
have been charred, as water-barrels usually are in the
navy. Throughout the east, and all warm climates,
there is a well-founded prejudice against tanks, which
ate never used but from necessity. A few years may
vindicate us, and show the sacred value of impartial, un-
flinching publicity ; but meanwhile we are martyrs.—
Times.