CONTEMPT OF COURT ' SIR,—Even at this distance of time
and space I can- not forebear to reply to your comments upon my letter in the issue of the Spectator for August 26. First, I was neither extolling nor denigrating the present law of contempt. I was merely endeavouring to state what 1 believed to be the law. Your editorial, as an exercise in propounding de lege ferenda, is to many lawyers unexceptionable.
In your editorial footnote to my letter the words, 'simply to enable the accused to have a fair trial,' imply that the contempt rules operate against the prosecution, My own view of those words was that no such implication was justified. I suggest you used that phrase advisedly because if you were asserting anything else the word :accused' could safely he omitted. The sentence would then read that the law of contempt 'ensured a fair trial,' a phrase apt to cover the protection for both prosecu- tion and accused.—Yours faithfully,
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