nizable overt act. Here however a difficulty presents it self. Theft, Robbery, Murder, and the like, are easily defined the degrees and circumstances likewise of these and similar actions are definite, and constitute specific offences, described and punishable each under its' own name. We have only to prove the fact and indentify the offender. The Intention too, in so great a majority of cases, is clearly implied in the action, that the Law can safely adopt it as its' universal maxim, that the proof of the malice is included in the proof of the fact, especially as the few occasional exceptions have their remedy provided in the prerogative of the supreme Magisrate. But in the case of Libel, the degree makes the kind, the circumstances constitute the criminality; and both degrees and circumstances, like the ascending Shades of Color or the shooting Hues of a Dove's Neck, die away into each other, incapable of definition or outline. The eye of the understanding, indeed, sees the determinate difference in each individual case, but Language is most often inadequate to express what the eye perceives, much less can a general statute anticipate and pre-define it. Again in other overt-acts a charge disproved leaves the Defendant either guilty of a different fault, or at best simply blameless. A man having killed a fellow-citizen is acquitted of Murder- the act was Manslaughter only, or it was justifiable Homicide. But when we reverse the iniquitous sentence passed on Algernon Sidney, during our perusal of his work on Government; at the moment we deny it to have been a traitrous Libel, our beating Hearts declare it to have been a benefaction to our Country, and under the circumstances of those times, the performance of an heroic Duty. From this cause therefore, as well as from a Libel's being a thing made up of degrees and circumstances (and these too discriminating offence from merit by such dim and ambulant boundaries) the Intention of the agent, wherever it can be independently or inclusively ascertained, must be allowed a great share in determining the character of the action, unless the Law is not only to be divorced from moral Justice, but to wage open hostility against it. Add too, that Laws in doubtful points are to be inter According to the old adage: you are not hung for stealing a Horse, but that Horses may not be stolen. To what extent this is true, we shall have oc◄ casion to examine hereafter, preted according to the design of the Legislator, where this can be certainly inferred. But the Laws of England, which owe their own present Supremacy and Absoluteness to the good sense and generous dispositions diffused by the Press, more, far more, than to any other single cause, must needs be presumed favourable to its' general influence, and even in the penalties attached to its' abuse we must suppose the Legislature to have been a tuated by the desire of preserving its' essential privileges. The Press is indifferently the passive Instrument of Evil* and of Good: yet the average result from Henry the 8th to the first Charles, was such a diffusion of religious Light as first redeemed and afterwards saved this Nation from the spiritual and moral death of Popery; and in the following period it is to the Press that we owe the gradual ascendancy of those wise political maxims, which casting philosophic truth in the moulds of national laws, customs, and existing orders of society, subverted the Tyranny without suspending the Government, and at length completed the mild and salutary Revolution, by the establish • There is some Good, however, even in its' Evil. "Good and Evil, we know in the field of this world, grow up together almost inseparably: and the knowledge of Good is so intervolved and interwoven with the knowledge of Evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that these confused seeds which were imposed or. Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed.- As, therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to chuse, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of Evil? He that can apprehend and consider Vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, that never sallies out and sees her Adversary—that which is but a youngling in the contemplation of Evil, and knows not the utmost that Vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank Virtue, not a pure.Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of Vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human Virtue, and the scanning of Error to the confirmation of Truth, how can we more safely and with less danger, scout into the regions of Sin and Falsity, than by reading all manner of Tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?" Milton's Speech for the Liberty of unlicenced Printing. Againbut, indeed the whole Treatise is one Strain of moral wisdom and political prudence-"Why should we then affect a rigor contrary to the manner of God and of Nature, by abridging or scanting those means, which Books, freely permitted, are both to the trial of Virtue and the exercise of Truth? It would be better done to learn, that the Law must needs be frivolous, which goes to restrain things uncertainly and yet equally working to good and to evil. And were I the Chuser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing. For God sure esteems the growth and completion of one virtuous person, more than the restraint of ten vicious."-Be it however observed, that nothing in these remarks countervenes the duty and necessity of choice and watchfulness on the part of Parents and instructors. It is prettily said by one of the Fathers, that even in the Scriptures there are parts where the Elephant must swim, as well as others which the Lamb may ford. ment of the House of Brunswick. To what must we attribute this vast over-balance of Good in the general effects of the Press, but to the over-balance of virtuous Intention in those who employed the Press? The Law, therefore, will not refuse to manifest good Intention a certain weight even in cases of apparent error, lest it should discourage and scare away those, to whose efforts we owe the comparative infrequency and weakness of Error on the whole. The Law may however, nay, it must demand, that the external Proofs of the Author's honest Intentions should be supported by the general style and matter of his work, by the circumstances and mode of it's publication, &c. A passage, which in a grave and regular disquisition would be blameless, might become highly libellous and justly punishable if it were applied to present measures or persons for immediate purposes, in a cheap and popular tract. I have seldom felt greater indignation than at finding in a large manufactory a sixpenny pamphlet, containing a selection of inflammatory paragraphs from the prose-writings of Milton, without a hint given of the time, occasion, state of government, &c. under which they were written-not a hint, that the Freedom, which we now enjoy, exceeds all that Milton dared hope for, or deemed practicable; and that his political creed sternly excluded the populace, and indeed the majority of the population, from all pretensions to political power. If the manifest bad intention would constitute this publication a seditious Libel, a good intention equally manifest can not justly be denied its' share of influence in producing a contrary verdict. Here then is the difficulty. From the very nature of a Libel it is impossible so to define it, but that the most meritorious works will be found included in the description. Not from any defect or undue severity in the particular Statute, but from the very nature of the offence to be guarded against, a work recommending Reform by the only rational mode of recommendation, by the detection and exposure of corruption, abuse, or incapacity, might, though it should breathe the best and most unadulterated English feelings, be brought within the definition of Libel equally with the vilest incendiary Brochure, that ever aimed at leading and misleading the Multitude. Not a Paragraph in the Morning Post during the Peace of Amiens, (or rather the experimental Truce so called) though to the immortal honour of the then Editor, that Newspaper was the chief secondary means of producing the unexampled national unanimity, with which the war re-commenced and has since been continued-not a Paragraph warning the Nation, as need was and most imperious Duty commanded, of the perilous designs and unsleeping ambition of our neighbour the Mimic and Caricaturist of Charlemagne but was a punishable Libel. The Statute of Libel is a vast Aviary, which incages the awakening Cock and the Geese whose alarum preserved the Capitol, no less Charlemagne outre. This phrase will call to mind the assumption of the iron crown of Italy-the imperial coronation with the presence and authority of the Holy Father-the imperial robe embroidered with bees in order to mark the successor of Pepin-the late revocation of Charlemagne's grants to the Pope, &c. The following extract will place the Usurper's close imitation of Charlemagne in a newer and more interesting light. I have translated it from a voluminous German work which, it is probable, few if any of my Readers will possess the opportunity of consulting (Michael Ignaz Schmidt's History of the Germans: the conclusion of the second chapter of the third Book, from Charles the Great to Conrade the first.) But the passage itself contains so much matter for political anticipation and well-grounded hope, as well as for amusing comparison, that I feel no apprehension of my Readers being disatisfied with the length of the illustration. Let me, however, preface it with one remark. That Charlemagne, for the greater part, created for himself the means of which he availed himself; that his very education was his own work, and that unlike Peter the Great, he could find no assistants out of his own realm; that the unconquerable Courage and heroic Dispositions of the Nations, he conquered, supplied a proof positive of real superiority, indeed the sole positive proof of intellectual Power in a Warrior: for how can we mea、 sure force but by the resistance to it? But all was prepared for Buonaparte. Europe weakened in the very heart of all human strength, namely, in moral and religious Principle, and at the same time accidently destitute of any one great or commanding mind: the French People, on the other hand, still restless from revolutionary Fanaticism; their civic Enthusiasm already passed into military Passion and the Ambition of Conquest; and alike by disgust, terror, and characteristic unfitness for Freedom, ripe for the reception of a Despotism. Add too, that the main obstacles to an unlimited System of Conquest and the pursuit of universal Monarchy had been cleared away for him by his Pioneers the Jacobins, viz. the influence of the great Land-holders, of the privileged and of the commercial Classes. Even the naval successes of Great Britain, by destroying the Trade, rendering useless the Colonies, and almost annihilating the Navy of France, were in some respects subservient to his designs by concentrating the Powers of the French Empire in its Armies, and supplying them out of the wrecks of all other Employments, save that of Agriculture. France had already approximated to the formidable state so prophetically described by Sir James Stuart, in his Political Economy, in which the Population should consist chiefly of Soldiers and Peasantry: at least the Interests of no other classes were regarded. The great merit of Bounaparte has been that of a skilful Steersman, who with his Boat in the most violent storm still keeps himself on the summit of the waves, which net he, but the winds had raised. I will now proceed to my translation. That Charles was an Hero, his Exploits bear evidence. The subjugation of the Lombards, protected as they were by the Alps, by Fortresses and fortified Towns, by numerous Armies, and by a great Name; of the Saxons, secured by their savage Resoluteness, by an untamable love of Fredom, by their de art Plains and enormous Forests, and by their own Poverty; the humbling than the babbling Magpye and ominous Screech-owl. And yet will we avoid this seeming injustice, we throw down all Fence and Bulwark of public Decency and public Opinion; political Calumny will soon join hands with private Slander; and every Principle, every Feeling, that binds the Citizen to his Country and the Spirit to its' Creator, will be undermined-not by reasoning, for from that there is no Danger; but- by the mere habit of hear ing them reviled and scoffed at with impunity. Were we to contemplate the Evils of a rank and unweeded Press only in its effect on the Manners of a People, and on the general tone of Thought and Conversation, the greater love we bore to Literature and to all the means and instruments of human Improvement, with the greater earnestness should we solicit the interference of Law: the more anxiously should we wish for some Ithuriel Spear, that of the Dukes of Bavaria, Aquitania, Bretagne, and Gascony; proud of their ancestry as well as of their ample domains; the almost entire extirpation of the Avars, so long the terror of Europe; are assuredly works which demanded a courage and a firmness of mind, such as Charles only possessed. How great his reputation was, and this too beyond the limits of Europe, is proved by the Embassies sent to him out of Persia, Palestine, Mauritania, and even from the Caliphs of Bagdad. If at the present day an Embassy from the Black or Caspian Sea comes to a prince on the Baltic, it is not to be wondered at, since such are now the political relations of the four quarters of the World, that a blow which is given to any one of them is felt more or less by all the others. Whereas in the times of Charlemagne, the Inhabitants in one of the known parts of the World scarcely knew what was going on in the rest. Nothing but the extraordinary, all-piercing report of Charles's Exploits could bring this to pass. His greatness, which set the World in Astonishment, was likewise, without doubt, that which begot in the Pope and the Romans the first idea of the re-establishment of their Empire. Is it true, that a number of things united to make Charles a great Manfavourable circumstances of time, a nation already disciplined to warlike habits, a long life, and the consequent acquisition of experience, such as no one possessed in his whole Realm. Still, however, the principal means of his greatness Charles found in himself. His great mind was capable of extending its attention to the greatest multiplicity of affairs. In the middle of Saxony he thought on Italy and Spain, and at Rome he made provisions for Saxony, Bavaria, and Pannonia. He gave audience to the Ambassadors of the Greek Emperor and other Potentates, and himself audited the accounts of his own Farms, where every thing was entered even to the number of the Eggs. Busy as his mind was, his body was not less in one continued state of motion. Charles would see into every thing himself, and do every thing himself, as far as his powers extended: and even this it was too, which gave to his undertakings such a force and energy. PENRITH: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. BROWN; AND SOLD BY |