THE PRESS AND THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH.

ON Saturday, June 11th, the second day affer the rule against the Sp.7ctator, at the instance of the Duke of BEAUFORT, was made absolute, the Court refused to make absolute the rule for a criminal information which had been granted for the following alleed libel in the Satirist, weekly newspaper, on Messrs. HEADLAND and CORK.

"It is absurd to class an attorney who advises his client to an act of criminality in the rank of respectability. Supposing, therefore, a being

to be found, base enough to swear to a debt which is not due to him, and which the attorney knows at the time the affidavit is made is not owing. Suppose, also, that attorney to be aware that a false abode, description, and addition, are given and sworn to, for the obvious purpose of escaping detection, can the attorney be less culpable than the wretch who thus commits himself by a double act of infamy ? We say, no ; the moral of- fence is the same, and the men are upon a par in point of delinquency. "Now, if Messrs. Headland and Cork, of Millman Street, or any other respectable men, were accused of such an act, the accusers would be said to be guilty of a libel. We do not accuse them of such a heinous offence ; but we put it to those individuals, by way of argument, whether, if they had such a client so debased,—so lost as not to pause at the commission of perjury,—those highly respectable gentlemen would not interpose to prevent him doing it? Assuredly they would : those gentlemen are too honourable, possessed of too much integrity, to countenance an offence of such black atrocity. But yet we know, and have the documents before us to prove, that such a base knave does exist—that he was countenanced by an attorney ; hut we say again, the attorneys cannot be supposed to be the in-

dividuals we have alluded to. Oh no ! those persons are so respectable, we say again, so honest, possessed of such unquestionable integrity, that it would be false, wicked, and malicious, to attribute an act of this kind to such men, men so honourable, and so just in all the■r dealings."—Times, Monday, July l3.

The decision of the Court in favour of the Satirist was given in the following words, also quoted from the Times.

"Lord Tenterden said, he hoped that by discharging the rule the Court would not be considered as countenancing libels, or as deciding upon the guilt or innocence of any of the parties. They discharged it solely on the ground that the applicants were not entirely blameless in the transaction re- ferred to, they having been aware that their client had failed to perform the conditions upon the due performance of which alone he could be- come entitled to the sum for which the other party had been arrested.— Rule discharged."

In this case, the alleged libel charges the complainants with ,advising their client to commit perjury. They do not fully rebut the

charge ; therdbre the Court refuses to lend its extraordinary power to them, but leaves them to deal with the Satirist either through a grand jury or by civil action. In the case of the Spec- tator, the complainant is charged with—absolutely nothing : therefore the Court does lend its extraordinary power to the com- plainant.

But it may be said—" Though the present Duke of BEAU- FORT was charged with nothing, there was a reflection on the late Duke in respect to his will, and on members of the family in respect to the large amount of public money received by them.

The Court might not choose to distinguish between the present and the late Duke, or between the complainant and those members of his family, some of whom are dead, and none of whom have com-

plained. The question is—did the complainant show that his father and his relations had been peefectly blameless in the trans- -actions referred to If they did, then the Court might, accord- ing to the principle set forth in the case of the Satirist, make the rule absolute; if they did not, the same principle demanded that the rule against the Spectator should be discharged."

Now, what was the answer of the complainant in our case?

First, as to the will, we stated (if an incidental allusion to a -common story may be called a statement) that the late Duke of BEAUFORT'S will "charged the estates of the present Duke with annuities to his brothers until they should be better provided for by Government."

The answer was, that the late Duke of BEAUFORT'S will pro- vided, . . . "That if any of the younger sons of the late Duke should at any time afterwards obtain preferment in the Church to the amount of 600/. per annum, then the yearly sum of 6001. thereinbefore provided for each such son, should cease ; and the will provided that the said yearly sum of 600/. should decrease in the same proportion as their respective annual incomes by preferment in the Church, until the annual income _arisine.° from such preferment should be equal to, or exceed, the sum of .6001. And the late Duke recommended the guardians of his younger sons to bring up two of them to the Church ; and he recommended to his son, the Marquis of Worcester, or the person or persons for the time being entitled thereto, to present his said younger sons, who should be duly qualified, to his livings of Langattock, Crickhowell, and Cromduy; in the county of Brecon; Mitchell Froy and Cromcarvan, in the county of Monmouth ; and Dedmartin, Oldbury, and Tormarton, in the county of Gloucester ; in such manner and proportions as he or they might find most prudent and convenient."

We charged a perfectly innocent provision : the answer admits, or rather sets forth, a simoniacal provision ; and the complainant goes on to say, that, to prevent any question, he and his son have nullified that clause of the will, by entering into a bond for the regular payment of the annuity, which the will ordered not to be paid. This, considering that nothing blameable was charged, is an odd way of showing that " the complainant was entirely blameless in the transaction referred to."

The second statement was, that the SOMERSET family had re- ceived, since the late Duke of BEAUFORT came of age, an amount of PUBLIC MONEY exceeding the value of the estates bequeathed by the late to the present Duke. To this alleged charge, the answer of the complainant is—.

" That he never received one sixpence of the public money ; and that not one of his brothers, or any of his family, have ever had any sinecures or pensions of any sort or description from the Government, save what his Grace's brother, Lord Fitzroy Somerset, receives in respect of the loss of an arm in the battle of Waterloo,—being the same as is received by any other officer under the same circumstances, who has lost a limb in the service of his country ; and that neither his late father since he came of age, nor any of his father's sons, to his knowledge, did ever receive any of the pub- lic money, except for pay as officers in the army, or salary during actual service to the public, and except the pension so received by Lord Fitzroy Somerset ; and that the whole of the sums together so received by all the members of his late father's family would, as his Grace believed, not much exceed the amount of one year's income of his paternal estates."

Here, again, we ask, supposing that what we said charged some- thing criminal, did the complainant show that he was " entirely blameless in the transaction referred to 9 " The accusation, if such it were, was not denied. It was cau- tiously evaded, by the use of the words " pensions " and " sine- cures," which we never used, and the substitution of the words "paternal estates," for the words "the estates which he bequeathed to the present Duke." Yet the Court lent its power to the noble complainant, forty-eight hours before it discharged a rule against the Satirist on the ground that the complainants had not shown themselves " entirely blameless in the transaction referred to." Lord TENTERDEN, on deciding against us, said, that,

"Acting upon th ose rules which had been adopted by their predecessors, and followed by themselves, in a variety of cases, he thought that the Court could not do otherwise than make the rule absolute. He had no difficulty in saying, that, connecting the paragraph with what went before it, the comment appeared to contain matter of strong imputation against the Duke of Beaufort and his family."

Our readers will compare the two cases and the two decisions thus laid before them in juxtaposition,—not failing, we trust, to observe the personal but injurious character of one alleged libel,

and the innocent but POLITICAL character of the other. If we had room, we should still be afraid to state fully our own opinion of the decisions in favour of the Satirist and against the Spectator. Although, however, in fear of the Judge who could make those two decisions within forty-eight hours, we are bound to say, that, if both decisions be right, the slanderous press is licensed, and the political press is not free. Surely the difference ought to be ex- actly the other way. It will be so when the Parliament is reformed. Since the above remarks were writ ten, we have read in the Morning; Post, that Sir JAMES SCARLETT and Lord TENTERDEN attended a party political dinner, at Merchant Tailors' Hall, on Saturday last ; when the following violent declaration against Reform and the Reformers was uttered by Lord anoN, and echoed in the words which we also give below, by the Chief Judge of the Court of King's Bench.

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From Eldon's Speech, as reported by the Morning Post.—" The School and the College connected with it were properly to be considered as among the ancient institutions of the country, of which they, and such as them, were not the least valuable. He trusted they were not doomed to fall beneath the daring and reckless hand of modern innova- tion. For himself he did not hesitate to say, that he was so well con- vinced of the value of all the ancient inAtilutions if the country taken collec- tively, that he would rather lay down his lift upon the scaffold to-morrow morning- than heft party to any measure which threatened their subver- sion. In alluding to the dangers which now hung over the country and all its institutions, he could not forget that they were in the very place in which the first grand and effective stand had been made against-the destruc- tive principles of revoltitionary France. It was in this Hall that, in the early days of the French Revolution, a body of loyal, and constitutional, and patriotic men assembled, and under the auspices of a name to which Eng- land owes a lasting debt of gratitude, stemmed by their influence and authority the torrent of disorganizing and revolutionary opinions which then, as now, threatened to avert the foundations of public order, and of national happiness and prosperity. By recollecting how the dangers which. formerly threatened them had been averted, they might learn to meet, to struggle against, and, he trusted, to overcome, the dangers which im- pended over the country at the present moment. As to those who imagined that they might overthrow some of the ancient institutions of a country like this, and yet leave the rest in a state of undiminished

security, he should only say, God forgive them, for they not what they do."

From Lord Tenterden's Speech, as reported by the Morning- Post.—" In the principles which had been so ably expressed by the Noble Earl Who filled for many years the highest judicial seat in this country, he entirely con- curred, and by those principles he should constantly be guided."