for at the time of making the grant were not faithfully performed by the grantees, in fuch cafes no compenfation fhould be allowed; and the non-performance of the conditions vitiated the grant; but where it appeared a confideration was given, and the conditions for it faithfully preferred, he thought a compenfation in refunding what the Crown had received, could be properly allowed.

The Queftion then being loudly called for, the House divided; when there appeared

For the Motion,

Against it,

Adjourned.

83

87

Majority,

HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Wednesday, April 4.

LAND TAX COMMISSIONERS.

Mr. W. Bird complained that a lift of the names of perfons appointed to Act as Commiffioners for collecting the Land Tax in Coventry, had lately been clandeftinely made out, without confulting the members who ferved for that place. The number of thefe, who confifted of lower mechanics, amounted to 830. In confequence of their appointment, the collection of the tax was retarded, and an unusual fcene of confufion took place when the bufinefs of the collection was entered upon. He would therefore move for leave to bring a Bill for appointing additional commiffioners for putting in effect the Bill for the collection of the land tax, as far as it related to the county and town of Coventry.

Mr. Long faid, that the lift alluded to had been put into his hands by an Honourable Gentleman who was then abfent, and on that account he wished the Honourable Gentleman might poftpone his motion, or move to have the lift he complained of referred to a Committee, in order to fee if it deferved the defeription he gave of it. He did not conceive that it was neceffary to confult the members for any particular district about the names of the commiffioners who were to be appointed to collect the land tax in such places; and as to the infinuations that the lift alluded to had been carried clandeftinely through the Houfe, he muft deny that fuch had been the cafe. An Honourable Gentleman gave it to him as containing the names of very refpectable perfons, and he accordingly, when the Bill was in a Committee, had it put into the Bill.

Mr. Wilberforce wifhed that this difcuffion might be put off to another day.

Mr.

Mr. Hobhoufe recommended the appointment of a Committee to fee whether the lift in queftion contained the names of perfons qualified.

Mr. Bird then withdrew his motion.

NEWSPAPERS.

The Attorney General faid, he rofe for the purpose of stating to the Houfe, the regulations of which he had given notice, refpecting the publication of Newspapers. Thefe regulations were not intended to intrench upon the principle which had fo effectually fecured the liberty of the prefs, but were perfectly confiftent with it, and therefore he fhould not trouble the Houfe with any obfervations on that fubject. But, before he ftated the nature of the meafure which he intended to bring forward, he would beg leave to notice, for the purpofe of refuting them, ome mifreprefentations which had gone abroad in confequence of his notice founded upon idle rumour and fpeculation.

In the first place, it had been ftated, that his purpose was to cause the names of the writers of all anonymous paragraphs to be published. Secondly, that it was his intention to make the proprietors, printers, and publishers of newfpapers refponfible in a higher degrec, and fubject to feverer pains and penalties than those to which they were at prefent liable. Both thefe ftatements he pofitively and diftinctly denied. The regulations he meant to propose had not, directly or indirectly, any fuch tendency, and for thefe two reafons; firft, it was unneceffary; and, fecondly, no previous reftraint whatever was intended in freedom, from which he conceived the liberty of the prefs chiefly confifted. Whether a libel be of a public or private nature, if it be profecuted by indictment, and that indictment be found by a grand jury of the country, the party must be held to bail, and the profecutor would take care that fuch bail were fufficient. Here, then, there was a high degree of refponfibility already provided; and if the fame fecurity did not extend to the cafe of an information filed, ex officia, by his Majesty's Attorney General, on behalf of the crown, he did not mean to contend that it fhould have fuch extenfion, or to alter the law of the land in that particular. He, therefore, difclaimed all idea of previous reftriction, and avowed confequent refponfibility to be his great object. To facilitate the proofs of the proprietors, printers, and publishers of newspapers, which are now hard to be got at; in order that in cafes of libels of a feditious tendency, or which affected the honour and character of individuals, the parties offending might be amenable to juftice, and rendered unable to efcape the penalties of the law from the deficiency of the proofs against them. This was his

great

great and principal object. There was alfo another which was intimately connected with it, but of very inferior importance, namely, the protection of the revenue. With this view he intended to prevent, n the first place, the publication of unftamped newspapers; fecondly, to prevent the exportation of fuch unftamped papers to foreign parts; and, thirdly, to prevent their exportation, whether ftamped or unftamped, to any country with which we might be at war, during the continuance of hoftilities. Such was the general outline of the Bill he meant, with the leave of the Houfe, to bring forward, on the neceffity of which he would take the liberty of making a few obfervations.

At prefent, if a person finding himself libelled in a newspaper, could purchase the publication, this would be, in a court of juftice, prima facie evidence against the printer whose name was annexed to it. From this circumftance, one would imagine that the requifite proofs against the party offending might be attained with the utmost facility, and yet the contrary was the fact; the injured were frequently without redress, and neither individuals or the public had the proprietors of papers anfwerable to the law. Such was the imperfect ftate which he propofed to redrefs. If a remedy was not applied by the Gentleman who preceded him in office, the neglect was probably imputable to the mischief not having existed in an equal degree as at prefent. But when he looked back to a period of five and twenty or thirty years ago; when he looked back to the inundation of private flander which had poured in during that time, and borne down every reftraint of truth or justice; when he confidered that the evil had gradually rifen to its prefent alarming state, and that, in the profufion of private slander, which teemed from every prefs, honour and virtue funk unfupported beneath the overwhelming tide, and the individual was left unable to refift it. He would put it to the House, and he would ask them, ought there not to be a fair and honourable fecurity against its fury? As matters then stood, the public had a fpecies of fecurity, though not fufficient; but of this fecurity, weak and frail as it was, the individual had not the advantage. This diftinction was not owing to a difference in the laws as applicable to each; it arofe from a precaution ufed on the part of the public, of which the individual could not avail himself. Government, for its own protection, employed a perfon to purchase every newspaper that was published; by this means they were always fupplied with prima facie evidence against the printer. This was the precaution to which he alluded. But how ftood the cafe with respect to individuals? They went into the rooms of their friends and acquaintances;

acquaintances; they might go into coffee-houfes, where they faw the tables loaded with bundles of newfpapers filled with private abuse and defamation: they might there fee themfelves libelled in every form that flander could fuggeft; their best actions mifreprefented, or attributed to motives whofe influence they had never felt. Now, fhould any of the individuals, thus wantonly and daily abufed, feek legal redrefs, and confult a lawyer on the subject, the first question he would be asked was, could he prove the purchase of one of the papers, in which the libel was contained? Now, the libel, in all probability, he had not feen until the day after the publication; fhould he then fend a perfon to the office of the printer to purchase one of the fame impreffion, he could not be accommodated. The publithers of newspapers could generally form an opinion of the number they daily fold, and therefore would not be likely to have any on hand; and even though they should have one of the previous day remaining, would not be likely to part with it, if they fufpected the purpofe for which it was fought to be purchased. Under thefe circumftances the answer must be no. This then being an effential point beyond his reach, however great the injury, and however meritorious the fufferer, the law muft continue inactive, and the injured party remain without redress. Such was the difficulty under which the individual might labour, though refident in the fame place where the libel was published; but if Gentlemen would look into the vast number of provincial papers, if they would confider that every great town publifhed a newfpaper, in every one of which a man might be libelled, and his character traduced, without the fmalleft chance of obtaining the neceffary proofs against the printers, publifhers, or proprietors of the vehicle in which the flander was conveyed, the regulation must appear to them of infinite importance, and they would fee the most cogent and irrefiftible reafons for its adoption.

The public had another fecurity. It was an indirect one he confefied, and on that ground he thought it objectionable. He alluded to the 5th of George the Third, which required that fome perfon should give fecurity for the payment of the ftamps, but that being found not fufficient, a ftatute was made in the 29th, which required that the printer fhould give fenerity for the duties payable on advertisements. Thefe Acts, however, were paffed, not with a view to facilitate proofs in cafes of flander in thefe publications, but merely for the fake of the revenue. But the individual had endeavoured to draw fome advantage from them, and, after proving the first step, was permitted in a court of justice to produce the bond exe

cuted

cuted by the proprietor, as co-obligor with the printer, for the payment of the duties as evidence against him.

This happened in the cafe of a Mr. Topham, formerly proprietor of a paper called The World, on an information against him for a libel on the deceafed Earl Cowper. He would not here enter into the merits of the queftion, whether a man could or could not be profecuted for a libel on a perfon that was dead. The merits of that point were not connected with the prefent queftion. There was a flaw in the indictment, and it was on that ground that it failed. The authority of that cafe fully eftablished the principle that this bond, which was executed for the fecurity of the revenue, might be produced in evidence upon a trial for a libel; but he conceived it to be objectionable, as the Legiflature had it not in contemplation. when it paffed the act, and therefore it was perverting it to a ufe for which it never was intended. But further, there might be many joint proprietors; it was confequently defective in another point of view, as there was no principle which fhewed that one proprietor fhould be anfwerable, that did not also prove that all others fhould be equally fo.

As

But the regulation was important for another reafon. the laws ftood at prefent, there might be papers of great circu lation, without the parties connected with them being refponfible in any degree whatever. He alluded to a recent cafe of univerfal notoriety. It was in the memory ofevery Gentleman prefent, that an account of the treatment of French prifoners was published in a London paper, which, if true, was difgraceful to this country, but if falfe, he had no difficulty in ftating, that the perfon who publifhed it, if he knew it to bet falfe, and fo wilfully published it, deferved to be punished in the most exemplary manner the laws of his country, fo libelled and infulted, could warrant. Gentlemen would alfo recollect, that a contradiction of this statement was afterwards publifhed by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, and alfo by the perfons who had contracted to fupply the French prifoners with provifions, which were stated to be of the most inferior kind. When he read that paper, he was not furprised to hear Gentlemen afk, Why did not the Attorney General profecute? Gentlemen however would be pleafed to confider his fituation. He had not only to confider whether it ought to be profecuted, but alfo whether it could be done with effect. For his part he was not fond of profecutions, but he fhould not confider himself worthy of the office which he filled, if he did not endeavour to bring to juftice the perfons guilty of fuch a libel. He accordingly inftituted a profecution; but look to the cafe, he had the metfenger, who bought the newspaper in which it was contained

No. 23.

and