Those who think that the judges living and dead are to be condemned, that your tribunals of justice are to be dishonored, that their acts and judgments on this business are to be rescinded,—­they will undoubtedly vote against this bill, and for another sort.

I am not of the opinion of those gentlemen who are against disturbing the public repose:  I like a clamor, whenever there is an abuse.  The fire-bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it keeps you from being burned in your bed.  The hue-and-cry alarms the county, but it preserves all the property of the province.  All these clamors aim at redress.  But a clamor made merely for the purpose of rendering the people discontented with their situation, without an endeavor to give them a practical remedy, is indeed one of the worst acts of sedition.

I have read and heard much upon the conduct of our courts in the business of libels.  I was extremely willing to enter into, and very free to act as facts should turn out on that inquiry, aiming constantly at remedy as the end of all clamor, all debate, all writing, and all inquiry; for which reason I did embrace, and do now with joy, this method of giving quiet to the courts, jurisdiction to juries, liberty to the press, and satisfaction to the people.  I thank my friends for what they have done; I hope the public will one day reap the benefit of their pious and judicious endeavors.  They have now sown the seed; I hope they will live to see the flourishing harvest.  Their bill is sown in weakness; it will, I trust, be reaped in power.  And then, however, we shall have reason to apply to them what my Lord Coke says was an aphorism continually in the mouth of a great sage of the law,—­“Blessed be not the complaining tongue, but blessed be the amending hand.”

LETTER

ON

MR. DOWDESWELL’S BILL FOR EXPLAINING THE POWERS OF JURIES IN PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS.[2]

An improper and injurious account of the bill brought into the House of Commons by Mr. Dowdeswell has lately appeared in one of the public papers.  I am not at all surprised at it, as I am not a stranger to the views and politics of those who have caused it to be inserted.

Mr. Dowdeswell did not bring in an enacting bill to give to juries, as the account expresses it, a power to try law and fact in matter of libel.  Mr. Dowdeswell brought in a bill to put an end to those doubts and controversies upon that subject which have unhappily distracted our courts, to the great detriment of the public, and to the great dishonor of the national justice.

That it is the province of the jury, in informations and indictments for libels, to try nothing more than the fact of the composing and of the publishing averments and innuendoes is a doctrine held at present by all the judges of the King’s Bench, probably by most of the judges of the kingdom.  The same doctrine has been held pretty uniformly since the Revolution; and it prevails more or less with the jury, according to the degree of respect with which they are disposed to receive the opinions of the bench.