ADAMS versus COLERIDGE.
WE confess ourselves gravely dissatisfied with the tone of public comment upon the Coleridge Libel Case. In the first place, the enormous importance given to the case, the minute reporting, the extra editions, the leading articles, the letters from Jurors, the letters from friends, all reveal not only a delight in malicious gossip about known people which is of itself base, but a disposition to make of the opinion of the market- place an appellate tribunal, which might be fatal to the passion- less administration of justice, If the Coleridge family had been well-to.do merchants, we should not have heard a word of it all, and the case would hardly have excited comments even in the professional journals. Cases exactly like it occur in the country everyday, the letters produced being sometimes of the most savage character, yet they evoke none of this fuss, which is, in fact, due solely to an unreasonable suspicion that when a Judge is concerned no Judge will do impartial justice. Why not P Do all Judges love one another,—Lords Lyndhurst and Campbell, for example,—or can Lord Coleridge promote or depose Mr. Justice Manisty ? What has the latter unlucky old gentle- man, who certainly was a sound lawyer once, done to bring down this torrent of newspaper indignation on his unhappy head ? He has "shown bias," it is said, by ruling-out irrelevant allusions to parties not in Court a little too imperi- ously. But all Judges just now are plainly inclined to these roliags, which tend to suppress a frightful and growing abuse, —the coercion of defendants or plaintiffs by threats that if they go on with their legal proceedings, all manner of dirty linen shall be washed in public. We have noticed the new tone in such rulings several times lately; and if obscure people are entitled to the benefit of it—which nobody denies—why are not the Coleridge family also entitled? Just because the public enjoys a scandal, as the old lady enjoyed her murders, and hates to be done out of it, either by justice or by pity. But then, it is whispered, look at the motive, the fellow-feeling of one Judge for another. Nonsense ! Judges are as jealous as other great officers ; and Sir H. Manisty and Lord Coleridge have notoriously maintained contrary opinions against each other, with an acerbity which, if healthy, does not conduce to over- friendship. But then, it is urged, the Judge overrode the Jury. What are Juries, that they should not be overridden when they are wrong P If that is such a heinous offence, it is one which is committed every day, often with the delighted approval of the public, which, on occasion, likes very much to seethe" twelve honest men" sent back to see if they cannot reconcile their opinions with the evidence. That Mr. Justice Man isty mismanaged the case is likely enough—Judges and great Barristers are always mis- managing cases, in the opinion of critics—but nobody contends that he has acted illegally, and that is the point at issue. It would have been wiser, no doubt, to nonsnit the plaintiff if there was no evidence to-go to the Jury, but the decision not being illegal, who has been.injared by the unwise oourse adopted ? Mr. Bernard Coleridge may have been, for he loses the protection which, if, as lawyers say, a nonsnit was the usual course, the Judge should
have afforded him, but certainly Mr. Adams is not. He has obtained the most perfect clearance he could obtain from a Jury's verdict; and if the verdict is upheld he will, without a newtrial and doubled expenses, obtain three times the damages given on the same day to a blameless old lady of seventy for being accused of adultery. As for the injury to the Jurors of which they complain so piteously, it consists, at the outside, in their being over- ridden by the authority legally invested with the power to over- ride them, just as Mr. Justice Manisty may himself be over- ridden by the Court of Appeal. That the Judge, in his sur- prise and chagrin, was a great deal too short and _peremptory, and avoided the detailed explanation of the law which he should have given, is true ; but if a Judge is to be declared dishonest because he has been, on one occasion, a little bad-mannered or ill-tempered, the authority of the Judicial Bench will soon be at a low ebb. As long as a Judge does not blunder into an illegality, an occasional blunder must be allowed to him as to all human beings.
The second point on which we are discontented is the obvious inclination of the public, and, as we believe, of the Jury, so far as they reveal themselves in their ill-judged letters to the Telegraph., to inflict damages on Mr. Bernard Coleridge for using ill-conditioned, and, indeed, extraordinarily violent, language to his sister. We have not the slightest intention of defend- ing his letter, which, whatever the provocation received or imagined—and women can be at least as provoking as men—altogether transgressed etiquettes necessary to keep society together, as well as that supreme etiquette which teaches us that, as women cannot defend themselves by force, their offences are not to be punished by words which are equivalent to bludgeons. But Mr. Bernard Coleridge was not being prosecuted for writing an angry letter to his sister, nor is a fine of three thousand pounds a proper penalty for such an offence. Juries in such cases ought to be as much bound by law as Judges are, and not at their own discretion to inflict the" cruel and unusual fines" which are expressly declared to be contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, but are, we regret to see, again becoming part of the machinery of the law. Mr. B. Coleridge's condition of mind towards his sister had nothing to do with the question before the Court, which was solely whether there was such evidence of legal malice on his part towards Mr. Adams as should suffice to override his undoubted privilege of cautioning his sister against her suitor in any terms he could honestly use. Defendant's bearing in his letters was a question of manners, and not of law; and has been misused in the most decided way to incline the public towards a verdict which the Judge, until overruled, has adjudged to be in defiance of the law. So far from " equality " being vindicated by this course, we venture to say that if a working carpenter were fined a year's wages, for expressing himself too savagely in a letter of advice to his sister, every newspaper would be full of condemnations of the " oppressive " Judge. Yet that is precisely the offence which public opinion is committing, so far as it justifies the verdict by adducing the savage tone of the letter to Miss Coleridge as proof of Mr. Coleridge's legal malice against Mr. Adams.
And, finally, we dislike the visible tendency of the public to restrict the area of privilege, and insist that every body shall write to their nearest relatives, and those they are most bound to protect, as carefully and guardedly as if they were lawyers stating their reasons for dismiss- ing a clerk. The reason for a law of libel is the happi- ness of society, and society is gravely injured when the naturalness and unrestraint of family intercourse is need- lessly restricted. It is absolutely necessary in all such inter- course to state impressions, very often without giving reasons for them ; and to make such impressions penal offences —for such they are made in practice, by straining the law of libel—tends only to destroy the little spontaneity left in the world. Is a father never to warn his daughter that he thinks her lover no gentleman, or a partner to warn his firm that he considers an intending debtor a rogue, without being compelled to secure legal evidence, and producible evidence, for his un- favourable judgment? There must be occasions on which the simplest and most direct view of duty demands that libels shall be written ; and it must often happen that the libels shall be both unproved and nnproveable. Is a father never to write to his son,—" I know that man to be a thief, I know it by the look in his eyes," without being heavily fined ? The publication of any such caution would, of course, be monstrous ; but, then, who is responsible for the publication,
the father, who is discharging a duty—carelessly, it may be, but in good-faith—or the son, who shows, and therefore publishes, the letter, as an illustration of his father's temper or weak-mindedness ? It seems to us that where there is so strong a bond of reciprocal duty that not to give advice woulil be shameful, the moral offence of publication, where there is any, rests with the receiver who shows the letter, instead of destroying it, and not with the original writer. Why should it be shown, except under guarantee of secrecy ? Household bonds are weak enough already, without weakening them still further by restricting communication, and enabling any angry man or woman, who is annoyed with a privileged letter, to inflict & lawsuit on its writer as a penalty ; that is, in fact, to inflict any line which a Jury may take it into its head, often a thick sort of head, ought to be inflicted. Surely the freedom of correspondence is restricted enough by the modern habit of inordinate publication, without desiring to whittle away, as the trial under discussion tends to do, the pro- tection of the law of privilege. Suppose Mr. Bernard Coleridge had said to his sister everything contained in the incriminated letter about Mr. Adams, could anything have been done to him for in that way doing his duty ? Nothing ; but because he writes his accusations, and adds ill-tempered words to his sister, public opinion is inclined, and the Jury tried hard, to fine him 0,000. And this, although he not only never published the letter, but never wished it published. We see neither justice nor wisdom in such a straining of the intention of the law, which is clearly that a letter written in good-faith to a close relative on an important subject of interest to both parties cannot be made the subject of a legal action.
Previous page
