THE PRESS.
THE GOVERNMENT PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBEL.
MORNING CHRONICLE.—The libel on his Majesty is a statement which surely did not require to be refuted by an Attorney-General and Jury, for it refutes itself. A King must be governed by circumstances, like other men. He holds his power in trust for the benefit of the nation ; and if it should appear to him on any occasion that the Lords and Commons are disposed to support the course which his Ministers recommend, it can be no reproach that he sacrifices his own opinion to that of his Ministers. There is no disgrace in this but wisdom ; for a
Sovereign is bound to sanction the measures of his Ministers ; and :though he may withdraw his 'confidence from them, and give it to others, yet, taking the circumstances of the country into consideration, he may think that another Ministry would not possess the confidence of Parliament, and that more harm than good would result from the change. Political fear, however, is quite die. had from personal thraldom, which carries absurdity on the face of it.
TIMES—Respecting the libels on the Lord Chancellor, there could not be two opinions; and the prompt decision of the Jury, according perfectly with the con. victions with which every one has since risen from reading the report, showed that not a doubt existed. The writings brought to judgment on Wednesday are of a very different character, and we confess we are surprised that the Juries, particu- larly the last, have decided as they have done. Unhappily, the current had set strongly against the defendant Alexander on the first day, and it required greater powers than his to stop its sway or arrest its course I.
MORNING HERALD—SUCI1 a number of ex-officio informations against the press are likely to fix upon a professedly " Liberal Government" the stigma of more illiberal hostility to free opinion than has distinguished any of their prede- cessors since the Revolution. Such proceedings may end in the ruin of a few individuals, but can be of no public benefit whatever. They will not tend to re- trieve for the country a particle of that prosperity which it has lost; they will not alleviate the sense of suffering among all the industrious classes of the coin. munity ; they will not impress the public with a higher notion of the political virtues, capacity, or wisdom of his Majesty's Ministers, than they before enter- tained. We are sorry that the statesmen of the " age of intellect" do not show more magnanimity of character than those of less enlightened times.
CLOSE—We do not affect to suppose that the liberty of the press is in any he. mediatedanger from the verdicts we have witnessed; nor do we think that even a succession of such Attorneys-General as Mr. Scarlett, or of such verdicts as those of yesterday, would prevent occasional or even frequent boldness of writing. 'Phere would be, under any system of prosecutions, some firm, or some hair- brained men—some who would brave, and seine wino would delight in, the ven- geance of the Government. But we should speedily see a manifest corruption in the ordinary course of discussion. There would be bold writers, and there would be reasonable writers ; but tbe bold would not he reasonable, and the reasonable would not he bold ; and whita we should hays the Gibbses and Scarletts of the day holding up to the vengeance of the law this or that extravagant declaimer, in proof of the licentiousness of the press, the ordinary style of public writing would be base and crawling.
STANDARD—Our opinion of the press is, that the more free and extended it is, the purer it will be. One very strong man has great temptation to be the bully of the hamlet ; the arrival of another Man of equal strength much corrects the arrogance of the first; a third or a fourth coining in reduce still more the ascen- dancy of thewes and muscles; thus the extension of the common power of the little society protects from insult each, even of its feeblest .sonstituents. This is the history of the newspaper press, which, in its infancy, was unprofitable to the public, and the scourge of individuals ; now, in the plenitude of power, ills the strength of the people, and harmless to the private man.
GLOBE—The utter needlessness of the prosecutions, as far as policy is con- cerned, is shown in some measure by the unanimity of the Juries ; out of all the Juries of the two last days, there has not been found a single individual who would countenance the bombastical attacks on the administration which have been the subjects of prosecution. This shows an opinion all but unanimous in disapprobation of the attacks, which nothing indeed but the prose- cutions prevented from being long since forgotten. What more would the Minis- ters desire ? The press alone did not produce this result, but the greatest part of it, in number and power, was labouring in aid of the conduct of the Ministers themselves to produce it. If this was the general operation of the press, why are the Ministers to feel annoyed at the crying and creaking of the machine ? But we will go further, and say that besides being aided by those who professedly supported them, the Ministers were in reality served by those parts of the press which opposed them, and especially by some of the things they have prosecuted. When phrensy and slander began to revel in the ranks of intolerance, the sober opponents of the Ministry shrunk from the alliance. Prudent persons would not identify themselves with the prognostications of Sir Harcourt Lees, or march through Coventry with Mr. Crosbie ; they would not make it an article of their faith that the Duke of Wellington was aiming at the crown. Time violence of lan- guage which the Duke of Wellington has thought a fit subject for prosecution was in part, the cause as well as the effect of the disappointment of the party from which it proceeded. When the intolerant Opposition found themselves losinmb ground (instead of suspecting, which is the last thing fanatics suspect, that their failure was owing to time faculty of reason which the people whom they were addressing happened to possess), they redoubled their violence of style and the extravagance of their assertions, and these qualities shocked more and more the sense of the community. At last the vulgar herd of rational beings having been entirely driven off by noise and nonsense, the sacred band who still adhered to the cause were prepared for any absurdity. It was in this last desperate crisis that the Rev. John Lytton Crosbie began to rave, and (would that we were not obliged to add it !) the Duke of Wellington began to prosecute.
MORNING CHRONICLE—No other Minister of his rank, for the last half century, would have noticed such nonsense. Sir Robert Walpole and Lord North would have made themselves merry with the mock.heroics of the writer. Mr. Pitt would have despised the letter. Lord Liverpool would have pitied the author. As to Mr. Canning, though of an exceedingly irritable temperament, he had too much tact to call in the aid of an Attorney-General. Ewell Lord Sidmouth would have been ashamed of countenancing such a prosecution.
STANDaao.—In the mean time, what are the Tories about ? We can remind them of a time when they set, or affected to set, great value upon the exertions of a Protestant press. Yet, if they had but expressed their disapprobation,—we mean expressed as a party—of private whispering and private negociatiou there has been more than enough,—if they had expressed time slightest disapproba- tion of Sir J. Scarlett's proceedings, the press, which they so lately affected to caress and prize, would have escaped ill present danger. It is not yet too late. Let meetings be called to canvass the justice and constitutional propriety of these state prosecutions—not to canvass the conduct of Judges or Juries, which per- haps was what, in the circumstances, it was necessary that it should be, and which is certainly no fit subject for popular animadversion—but to canvass the motives which only can actuate him v. ho has suggested, and the doctrine and prac- tice of him who has commenced the war against public opinion. Let the Tories do this if they are, or ever were, in earnest : it is a noble opportunity for than to place themselves once more in the ft-omit of " liberty's war," and at the head of the people. We are not accustomed to entertain gloomy views, but we think, after the deepest deliberation, that this is, perhaps, their last chance,
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