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of a libel was criminally liable for the acts of his sevants, unless proved to be neither privy nor assenting thereto; and afterwards the Judges decided that exculpatory evidence was inadmissible, and that publication of a libel by the servant was conclusive proof of the criminality of the master. (2) Lord Mansfield laid it down that it was the province of the judge alone to determine the criminality of a libel, leaving to the jury to determine merely the fact of publication, and whether the libel meant what it was alleged in the indictment to mean. On the trial of Wood- Trial of fall, the original publisher of the 'Letter to the King,' the for publishjury, in order to defeat this interpretation of the law, found ing the the defendant 'guilty of printing and publishing only,'-a King, 1770. verdict which the Court held to be uncertain, necessitating a new trial. Miller and other printers who were subsequently tried for printing the same letter were boldly declared by the jury to be 'not guilty.'

Woodfall

Letter to the

The doctrine held by the Judges in these trials was strongly animadverted upon in both Houses of Parliament; and the rights of juries in cases of Libel were nobly and Dean of St. Asaph's eloquently maintained by the advocacy of Erskine in the case, 1779. cases of the Dean of St. Asaph, in 1779, and of Stockdale, Stockdale's in 1789, the latter being a prosecution for publishing what case, 1789. was charged as 'a scandalous and seditious libel' concerning the conduct of the House of Commons in its impeachment of Warren Hastings. At length, in 1792, the ruling of the Judges as to the province of juries was in effect reversed by Mr. Fox's Libel Act, which declared Mr. Fox's Libel Act, their right, on any trial or information for Libel, to give 1792. a general verdict of guilty or not guilty on the whole matter.1

period in

growth of

But the signal advance made by liberty of opinion Reactionary during the first thirty years of George III.'s reign was about to receive a decided check. The proceedings of liberty of the French revolutionists created a wide-spread terror of 1792-1832.

opinion,

1 32 Geo. III. c. 60.

the Press

Democracy among the great body of the English people, which was aggravated by the extravagance of a small but turbulent body of social and political reformers in England itself. With the publication by the Government in 1792, of a proclamation warning the people against wicked and seditious writings industriously dispersed among them, and commanding magistrates to discover the authors, printers, and promulgators of such writings, began a reactionary period in the growth of the liberty of opinion which cannot be said to have entirely passed away until after the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. During this period, prosecutions of the press abounded; seditious speaking was severely restrained; and the regulation of newspapers frequently occupied the attention. of the Legislature. But from the year 1832, at latest, the Freedom of freedom of the press has been completely established. The utmost latitude of criticism and invective has been completely established. allowed it in discussing the actions of the Government and of all public men and measures. By Lord Campbell's Libel Lord Camp- Act, passed in 1843, the defendant on an indictment or information for a defamatory libel is allowed to plead its truth, and that its publication was for the public benefit; and the harsh extension of the ruling in Almon's case,1 as to the criminal liability of a publisher for the unauthorised acts of his servants, has been altered by allowing the defendant in all cases to prove that such publication was made without his authority, consent, or knowledge, and that it did not arise from want of due care or caution on his part. State prosecution for Libel is now as much a thing of the past as the Censorship itself. The policy of repression has been finally discarded; and rulers have at length recognised in practice the truth and wisdom of Lord Bacon's maxim, that the 'punishing of wits enhances their authority; and a forbidden writing is thought to be

bell's Libel Act, 1843.

1 Supra, p. 772.

2 6 & 7 Vict. c. 96.

a certain spark of truth, that flies up in the faces of them that seek to tread it out.'1

We have now traced the English Constitution from its germ in the free institutions of our Teutonic forefathers, and have marked the course of Freedom, as it slowly

"broadens down from precedent to precedent,"

and has finally assumed that special form of Parliamentary Government under which it is our privilege to live. Amidst the vicissitudes of its growth and development, during the ten centuries spanned by the several dynasties which have ruled us from Egbert to Victoria, its birth-right of freedom has ever been maintained. Even under Tudor autocracy, the external forms of Constitutional government were observed; and the heritage of liberty was thus handed on to the generations yet to come, who were once more to make it all-powerful in the State. The preservation of that heritage has been mainly due to the combination of sturdy independence, reverence for law and order, and practical common sense, which so pre-eminently distinguish the English people. Actuated by this spirit, they have been enabled, under the guidance of some wise and great Sovereigns, and of a long line of illustrious statesmen, to adapt the English Constitution to the varying needs of successive ages, while preserving its fundamental principles intact. The retrospect of the crises through which our Constitution has safely passed, and of the dangers which it has triumphantly surmounted, may well enable us to look forward with confidence to a happy solution of the difficulties which perhaps yet await its further development in the Future.

1 On liberty of the press see Hunt, Fourth Estate; Andrews, Hist. of British Journalism; Hallam, Const. Hist. iii. 2-6, 166-168; May, Const. Hist. ii. 238-379; Macaulay, [Hist. Eng. 1861, iv. 542–3, 603-9].

APPENDICES.

A.

FRANK-PLEDGE, OR COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY,
IN ENGLAND AND BOHEMIA,

DOUBTS appear to have crossed the mind of some recent writers respecting the antiquity of this Institution, and its existence in England before the Norman Conquest. These doubts were, I believe, not present to the mind of the author of the present work, and I have as yet seen no adequate reason for altering his language on this point. I am content to leave Langmead's text in harmony with Palgrave and Hallam, and to wait till time shall show how far the seeming hesitation of Bishop Stubbs is warranted.

It is probable that the Institution is one which cannot be claimed as of Teutonic origin, or peculiar to the Teutonic race. That seems to arise from the fact, which has possibly escaped general notice, of its existence among at least the medieval Institutions of the Bohemian Kingdom. How far back it may be traceable in this branch of the Slavonic Race, and whether it may also be found in other branches, are points which have probably still to be worked out, though the language used by M. R. Dareste, in analysing the Codex Legum Slavonicarum of Jirecek, in the Journal des Savants for 1885, would lead to the inference of its existence as a general feature in Slav Customary Law. 'The ancient Bohemian Law,' says M. Dareste, 'does not differ appreciably from that of the other Slav countries.'

The particular text of Bohemian Law in which it appears to us that the Frank-Pledge system, or system of Collective Responsibility, emerges, is the following: Pour remplacer la solidarité de la famille,' says M. Dareste, op. cit., 1885, p. 419, ‘et en attendant que le pouvoir social fût assez fort pour maintenir partout l'ordre et le respect de la loi, on eut recours en Bohême à un moyen qui a été employé en beaucoup d'endroits, mais qui n'a jamais été qu'un expédient; celui de la responsabilité des villages pour les crimes commis sur leur territoire. Si le coupable n'était pas livré par les habitants, chacun d'eux était condamné à payer 200 deniers d'amende. Un décret de l'an

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