Judgment was given on Thursday in the Dublin Court of
Exchequer on the appeal of the Law Officers of the Crown from the decision of Mr. O'Donel, the Police-Magistrate, to the effect that it was necessary for the prosecutors of a newspaper report- ing the meeting of a suppressed Branch of the League, to prove not only the publication of a report of the Branch League meet- ing which had been suppressed by the Government in the paper prosecuted, but that such a meeting was actually held and was what the report professed to make it, the meeting of a sup- pressed Branch. The decision of the Court of Appeal was that the evidence afforded by the statement in the paper itself that the meeting reported was a meeting of the suppressed Branch, was evidence which the Magistrate was bound to consider, and which, if not contradicted by counter-evidence, might be quite sufficient to show that the offence charged against the paper had really been committed. The case was therefore referred back to Mr. O'Donel to determine on the evidence, the Court of Appeal alleging that the evidence of the paper itself as to the nature of the meeting could not be excluded. Whether Mr. T. D. Sullivan, M.P. and Lord Mayor of Dublin, will actually be punished for publishing the reports of suppressed Branch League meetings, Mr. O'Donel will have to decide. But be can no longer refuse to take into account the evidence furnished by the report itself as to what was the character of the meeting reported.
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