the guise of meeting together to discuss public matters, attempts have been made to assemble immense masses of people (sometimes armed with offensive weapons, and sometimes with partial military organization), and by violent language to excite them to acts of treason and breaches of the peace,-whenever this, or anything similar, has been done or attempted, the common law has justly held all implicated in such proceedings to be liable to punishment for the obvious peril that they cause to society, and the iniquitous intimidation which such proceedings, if unchecked, must exercise on the freedom of opinion in others. But the right of men to meet peaceably and discuss public matters openly and fearlessly, is "as undoubted as it is invaluable." It is for a jury to determine, if necessary, whether this right has been fairly exercised, "making full allowance for the zeal of speakers, though they may sometimes exceed the just bounds of moderation," or whether, in the opinion of rational and firm men, it has been abused so as to endanger the public peace, and make the commission of crime and outrage a natural and probable consequence.

The freedom of the press in this country cannot be said to have commenced before the reign of William III. It was then that the last licensing Act expired. And even after the withdrawal of that restriction, and when men were able to print and publish their thoughts without obtaining the "imprimatur" of a Government official, the law of libel pressed heavily on writers, and still more on

* See the excellent chapter on the subject in Mr. Wise's little book on "Riots and Unlawful Assemblies."

See Chief Justice Tindal's

address to the grand jury at the Stafford special commission in 1842, cited in Mr. Wise's book.

newspaper proprietors. The growing importance of the press, as an organ both for expressing and for exciting public opinion, was felt and used by all parties; but men in power, who were most exposed to the wounds of newspaper warfare, often sought eagerly to crush their assailants by putting in force the criminal law against libels. The judges felt naturally little predilection for a press that generally seemed presumptuous to men in authority, and which often was most licentious and calumnious. They established the doctrine, that to possess the people with an ill opinion of the Government was a libel; and they further established, that in a criminal proceeding for libel the truth of the matters stated was no defence. Jurors were naturally, under such circumstances, unwilling to convict; and a controversy grew up as to the province of a jury in a trial for libel. The courts sought to establish the rule that the province of the jury was simply to determine whether the defendant published the libel, and whether the libel had the meaning assigned to it in the indictment. But it was contended by many that the jury were also at liberty to consider whether that meaning was criminal or innocent, and whether the thing which was said to be a libel was a libel or not. This controversy was determined in favour of the more extended power of the jury by Mr. Fox's Act, in the 32nd year of George III. A great protection was thereby given to writers and publishers, against arbitrary and harsh prosecutions; and the benefit of it to the public has been amply proved by the increased respectability and high intellectual merit of the English press. But still the monstrous restriction remained by which a man who was indicted for a libel was forbidden to show that what he had published was true, even though no unfair malice had made him publish a

cruel truth, as sometimes might be the case.

The maxim

of "the greater the truth the greater the libel" continued long to be the stigma of the English law. This has been finally removed in the present reign by an Act which was framed and introduced by Lord Campbell, now chief justice of England. By that statute (6 & 7 Vic. c. 96), on the trial of any indictment or information for a defamatory libel, the accused party, having notified by his plea the defence that he is about to set up, may defend himself by showing the truth of the matters charged, and also that it was for the public benefit that the said matters charged should be published. If he can satisfy a jury of these points, he is to be acquitted; if not, he is justly punishable. It would be impossible to provide better for the objects which are stated in the commencement of the Act:-"For more effectually securing the liberty of the press, and for better preventing abuses in exercising the said liberty." Lord Campbell's Act, though last in date, deserves to be classed as not least in merit among the constitutional treasures of the statute-book.

We have now traced the origin of the English Constitution, and the first development of its principles, at a time when the newly-formed English nation consisted of not more than two millions of human beings; onehalf at least of whom were in an abject state of serfdom, while the other half, the freemen of the land, the "liberi homines" of Magna Carta, were divided into proud and powerful barons, each girt with his band of armed retainers and personal dependants; into smaller landowners, equal in birth but inferior in possession to the great peers; into a class of still smaller owners of land, our free yeomanry, and into citizens and burgesses, who were beginning to revive the old Roman system of municipal

354 RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTION.

self-government, and to reawaken the spirit of commercial energy and enterprise. First framed in those troubled times, and for that scanty and ill-assorted population, our constitution has expanded with the expanse of civilization, numbers, and power; and while it has preserved all its integral parts and all its primary attributes, it has become the Government of and for us, the eighteen millions of this mighty English nation, whose language, laws, arts, arms, and institutions are overspreading every region of the world. On the blessings of that Government, on the security and order which it guarantees, and on the independent energy and freedom which it sanctions and inspires, it is surely needless to dwell further in addressing the men of 1848, who have witnessed the misery and degradation which anarchical violence and despotic coercion have caused in other lands. Our constitution must from time to time require remedial changes; and at present the anomalies of the distribution of the suffrage, and the shameful corruption with which its exercise is too often accompanied, are pressing on our statesmen's anxious attention. He, who has studied our constitution the most deeply, will venerate it the most; and, while he vigorously extirpates abuses, and steadily works out its vital law of growth and development, he will religiously guard its primary institutions from the experiments of the conceited theorist and the assaults of the disloyal destroyer.

INDEX.