I have heard the late Chief Justice Holt[14]affirm, that in all criminal cases, the most favourable interpretation should be put upon words, that they can possibly bear.  You meet the same position asserted in many trials, for the greatest crimes; though often very ill practised, by the perpetual corruption of judges.  And I remember, at a trial in Kent, where Sir George Rook[15] was indicted for calling a gentleman knave and villain; the lawyer for the defendant brought off his client, by alleging, that the words were not injurious; for, knave in the old and true signification, imported only a servant; and villain in Latin, is villicus; which is no more than a man employed in country labour; or rather a bailiff.

[Footnote 14:  Sir John Holt (1642-1710) held the recordership of London, in 1685, and was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in 1688.  In the celebrated case, Ashby v..  White, Holt strongly upheld the rights of the voter as against the House of Commons.  He was distinguished, in his time, for the fair and impartial hearing he always accorded a prisoner, and he even personally assisted the accused in cases where the law did not allow him to be represented by counsel.  Many of Holt’s opinions did become “standard maxims.” [T.S.]]

[Footnote 15:  Admiral Sir George Rooke (1650-1709), who, with Rear-Admiral Byng, captured Gibraltar in 1704. [T.S.]]

If Sir John Holt’s opinion were a standard maxim for all times and circumstances, any writer, with a very small measure of discretion, might easily be safe; but, I doubt, in practice it hath been frequently controlled, at least before his time; for I take it to be an old rule in law.

I have read, or heard, a passage of Signor Leti, an Italian; who being in London, busying himself with writing the History of England, told King Charles the Second, that he endeavoured as much as he could to avoid giving offence, but found it a thing impossible; although he should have been as wise as Solomon:  The King answered, that if this were the case, he had better employ his time in writing proverbs as Solomon did:  But Leti lay under no public necessity of writing; neither would England have been one halfpenny the better, or the worse, whether he writ or no.

This I mention, because I know it will readily be objected, “What have private men to do with the public?  What call had a Drapier to turn politician, to meddle in matters of state?  Would not his time have been better employed in looking to his shop; or his pen in writing proverbs, elegies, ballads, garlands, and wonders?  He would then have been out of all danger of proclamations, and prosecutions.  Have we not able magistrates and counsellors hourly watching over the public weal?” All this may be true:  And yet, when the addresses from both Houses of Parliament, against Mr. Wood’s halfpence, failed of success; if some pen had not been employed, to inform the people how far they might legally proceed, in refusing that coin, to detect the fraud, the artifice, and insolence of the coiner; and to lay open the most ruinous consequences to the whole kingdom; which would inevitably follow from the currency of the said coin; I might appeal to many hundred thousand people, whether any one of them would ever have had the courage or sagacity to refuse it.