We fear that Sir FRANCIS VINCENT'S Libel Bill is cushioned
for this session ; but in case it should be revived during the next, we would suggest the propriety of inserting in it a new clause, to the effect that it shall not be deemed libellous, as it appears that it is at present, to call the King a Reformer. Mr. Justice PARK has decided that it is not only " most unbecoming and improper," but libellous, to speak of his Majesty as " William the Reformer." This sage dictum was delivered at a trial at the late Warwick As- sizes,where an unlucky printer was found guilty of I ibel ling the Street Commissioners of Birmingham ; and had the Attorney-General been so minded; he would also have subjected himself to pains and penal- ties for asking whether certain malpractices "could exist under the Government of William the Reformer ?" We have often heard that "any thing is a libel ;" but to discover that styling a man, oven though he be a King, an enemy to corruption and a promoter of good, is libellous, was left to the ingenuity of Mr.Justice PARK. If this is the way to libel a Monarch, how are we to laud him? This learned Judge is art admirer of bygone days and politics, and thinks that to call a man a Reformer, is synonymous with proclaim- ing him a bosom friend of Hum. or COBBETI: He is evidently of another age than the nineteenth century : he does not love the world nor the world's ways; and should retire with JOHN Earl of Eldon to some secluded nook, where " with claret and madeita they may irrigate the dryness of decline."
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