An action for libel has been going on during a
great part of
• the week, brought by the Rev. George Drury, the Rector of Claydon, in Suffolk, against the Editor of the East Anglian Times, for an article referring to the rector's refusal to read the Burial Service over an unbaptised child, in which the writer spoke of Mr. Drury in very strong terms, as one who insulted his parishioners and treated them "like dogs and swine," who had "sacrificed the gentleman to become a heartless priest, than whom no viler creature exists," and declared that one might almost fancy "toad-stools growing up where this priest stood, uttering his maledictions over the tiny coffin." It seems clear enough that no such maledictions were uttered, unless it be a malediction to say that an nnbaptised infant cannot be a Christian, and obviously I Mr. Drury, though a narrow and not very wise priest of the Ritualist school, had only acted on his own narrow theological principles in burying the child without a service, and excluding -the Independent minister who was willing to read a service from the churchyard. The case, however, was complicated by the reference to Mr. Drury's High-Church proclivities, to the neglect of his church which he seems to have oddly combined with these proclivities, and his connection with a nunnery in the neighbourhood. The jury found a verdict for Mr. Drury, with 40s. damages, and Mr. Justice Denman, refusing -to make any order as to costs, the plaintiff obtained his costs.
I Probably the justice of the case was fairly satisfied by the con- 'elusion. Mr. Drury is not a very sensible nor a large-minded man, and it was not at all unnatural that the Independent minister who, after the conflict in the churchyard, wrote the 1 article against him in the Bast Anglian Times, should have been angry. But his language went far beyond the limits of any
justification he was able to produce, and was certainly intemper- ate, and as it seems to us, full of an exaggeration whidh seems to have been conceived with an eye to literary effect. Neither the libeller nor the libelled came out of the case with any credit.
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