New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1852-06-09

of your serious mistake. fou Will be ar
raiened as a slanderef, and by the Judges
compelled to prove, not the truth of what
YOU said, which is undenied but Of what
you did not say and had no thought of
saying-namely, that jerks was actually
guilty of the theft charged and, if you
cannot prove what you never asserted nor
imagined, you are doomed to be let in :
for heavy score of damages and costs, if
jury can any how be pettifogged or bull
lied into subservience to the judicial will.
We cannot say how tins process strikes
the public mind: but we, who have been
repeatedly victimized by it, regard the JUS
tice which prevails in any Peter Funk auc-
,;ion-shop in town as of decidedly better
quality than that which is dealt out by our
Courts of Law to the Press in the DISPOSE
ton of these trumpery libel-suits. Having
had ample experience of the mean, merce-
nary motives in which they originate, and
of the unprincipled character of the legal
harpies by whom they are instigated and
prosecuted, it puzzles US to see how Judges
who must have some idea of their intrinsic
character, can allow them to block the way of
honest suitors and waste the time of unpaid
jurors. Of all the thirty or forty libel-suits
which we have been called to respond to,
we cannot remember one wherein the al
legged sufferer manifested the least earnest
desire for refutation in our columns of the
erroneous statements by which he held
himself aggrieved. In one or two cases,
where the alleged SANDER was the work of
some correspondent, we have had the name
of said correspondent demanded pro lorna;
but, on offering to surrender it, we were
uniformly met by quirks and bubbles,
which clearly proved that compliance with
the request was never desired, but only
better chance to victimize US. Repeated
ly, when complaint of libel has been pre-
ferred, we have said to the complainant,
Be good enough to give as a true version
of the matter, so that we may at once
make just reparation in our columns if
I'VE do not, we will cheerfully submit to
any reclamation which jury may deem
'just." But no reparation, the correc-
ton Of mistakes, the removal of wrong i'm
pressions, is not what these gentlemen and
their legal bottle-holders desire, but ex-
smplary damages'-plunder-pelf. Like
Mawworm, they love to be prosecuted.
Incompetent or too lazy to earn the money
they require in any honest and useful way,
they seek to levy it out of The hard earn
iDgs of others,-and unhappily, they are too
apt to find ready and potent accomplices in
the Judges of our Courts.
Ii were sheer affectation to seem not to
perceive the jealousy and aversion with
which the growing power of the Press is
habitually regarded by the Bench-the
soreness with which the fact is realized by
the latter that their relative positions are by
no means what they were in the days of
Coke end Blackstone. No longer, at least
in this country, is the Press dreaded but
tolerated nuisance-tolerated by Govern
ments because they are not sure of their
power to suppress it. Strong in its consti-
tutional rights and in the affections of the
People, it exposes corruption and rebukes
iniquity in high places; isreyiews arbitra-
ry judgments, explodes tyrannical maxims
and remodels outgrown institutions. In
the work of preventing and Furnishing
crime, its labors are as essential as those of
the Courts themselves nay, it is clear that
where one greenhorn is saved by our
Courts frsm the snares Of the watch-stuffer,
the pocket book book-dropper, the panel
thief, and the myriads of sharpers who In
fest great city like this, many are saved
by the exposures, the descriptions, the eau
tons, of the Press. And of this good work
we could and should do much more but for
the fact that the jealousy and hatred of the
Courts compel US TO prosecute it with a
halter about our necks. We are perpetu-
ally exposed to convictions and damages
for simply stating the literal fact that the
Courts of Justice have held Swipes or
Shocks to answer the charge of swindling
or stealing, and obliged by them to prove
that the accused actually did svindle or
steal-of which We have affirmed nothing
and know nothing. The People, the Insti-
tutions, the Laws, the Press of our coun-
try, are very different from those of Grea,
Britain two centuries ago; but the Courts
have learned nothing, forgotten nothing,
sove on absolute and unnnistakable co-nnnI-