CIVIL WAR SKETCHES.
II.
CONFEDERATE FINANCE IN ALABAMA
SPECIAL APPROPRIATIONS AND SALARIES.
Besides the regular appropriations for the usual expenses of the government, there were many extraordinary appropriations. These, of course, were the war expenses and were far greater than the ordinary expenses. The chief item of these extraordinary appropriations was for the support of the indigent families of soldiers, and for this purpose about $11,000,000 was provided. For the military defense of the State several million dollars were appropriated, much of this being spent for arms and clothing for the Alabama troops, both in the Confederate and the State service. Money was granted to the University of Alabama and other military schools on condition that they furnish drill masters for the State troops without charge. Hospitals were furnished in Virginia and in Alabama for the Alabama soldiers. The gunboat Florida was bought for the defense of Mobile, and $150,000 was appropriated for an ironclad ram for the same purpose. Loans were made to commanders of regiments to buy clothing for their soldiers, and the State began to furnish clothing, $50,000 being appropriated at one time for clothing for the Alabama soldiers in Northern prisons. By March 12, 1862, Alabama had contributed $317,600 to the support of the army of Northern Virginia.[[3]] Much was expended in the manufacture of salt in Alabama and in Virginia, which was sold at cost or given away to the poor; in the purchase of salt from Louisiana to be sold at a low price, and in bounties paid to salt-makers in the State who sold salt at reasonable prices. The State also paid for medical attendance for the indigent families of soldiers. When the records and rolls of the Alabama troops in the Confederate service were lost, money was appropriated to have new ones made. Frequent grants were made to the various benevolent societies of the State whose object was to care for the maimed and sick soldiers, and the widows and orphans. Cotton and wool cards and agricultural implements were purchased and distributed among the poor. Slaves and supplies were taken for the public service and the owners compensated.
The appropriations for the usual expenses of the government were light, seldom more than twice the appropriations in times of peace, notwithstanding the depreciated currency. The public officers who received stated salaries ranged from $1,500 to $4,000 a year in State money. In 1862, the salaries of the professors in the State University were doubled on account of the depreciated currency, the president receiving $5,000 and each professor $4,000.[[4]] The members of the General Assembly were more fortunate. In 1864, they received $15 a day for the time in session, and the clerks of the Legislature, who were disabled soldiers or exempt from service, or were women, were paid the same amount. The salt commissioners drew salaries of $3,000 a year in 1864 and 1865, though this amount was not sufficient to pay their board for more than six months. Salaries were never increased in proportion to expenses. The compensation, in December, 1864, for capturing a runaway slave was $25, worth probably 50 cents in coin. For the inaugural expenses of Governor Watts in 1863, $500 in paper was appropriated.[[5]] Many laws were passed regulating and changing the fees and salaries of public officials. In October, 1864, for example, the salaries of the State officials, tax assessors and collectors, and judges were increased 50%. Besides the general depreciation of the currency, the variations of values in the different sections of the State rendered such changes necessary. In the central part, which was safe for a long time from Union raids, the currency was to the last worth more, and the prices of the necessaries of life were lower, than in the more exposed regions. This fact was taken into consideration by the Legislature when fixing the fees of the State and county officers in the various sections.
TAXATION.
As a result of the policy adopted at the outset of meeting the extraordinary expenses by bond issues,[[6]] the people continued to pay the light taxes levied before the war, and paid them in paper money. Though falling heavily on the salaried and wage-earning classes, it was never a burden upon the agricultural classes, except in the poorest white counties. The poll tax brought in little revenue. Soldiers were exempt from its payment and from taxation on property to the amount of $500. The widows and orphans of soldiers had similar privileges. A special tax of 25% on the former rate was imposed on all taxable property in November, 1861, and a year later, by acts of December 9, 1862, a far-reaching scheme of taxation was introduced. Under this poll taxes were levied as follows:
| White men, 21 to 60 years | $0 75 |
| Free negro men, 21 to 50 years | 5 00 |
| Free negro women, 21 to 45 years | 3 00 |
| Slaves (children to laborers in prime) | $0 50 to 2 00 |
| More valuable slaves | $2 00 and up |
| And other taxes as follows: | |
| Crop liens | 33⅓% |
| Hoarded money | 1% |
| Jewelry, plate, furniture ½% | |
| Goods sold at auction | 10% |
| Imports | 2% |
| Insurance premiums (companies not chartered by State) | 2% |
| Playing cards, pack | $1 00 |
| Gold watches, each | 1 00 |
| Gold chains, silver watches, clocks | 50 |
| Articles raffled off | 10% |
| Legacies, profits and sales, incomes | 5% |
| Profits of Confederate Contractors | 10% |
| Wages of Confederate officials | 10% |
| Race tracks | 10% |
| Billiard tables, each | $150 00 |
| Bagatelle | 20 00 |
| Ten-pin alleys, each | 40 00 |
| Readings and Lectures, each | 4 00 |
| Peddler | 100 00 |
| “Spirit rapper,” per day | 500 00 |
| Saloon Keeper | $40 to 150 00 |
| Daguerreotypist | 10 to 100 00 |
| Slave trader, for each slave offered for sale | 20 00 |
In 1863 a tax of 37½% was laid on Confederate and State bonds not in the hands of the original purchasers;[[7]] 7½% was levied on profits of banking, railroad companies, and on evidence of debt; 5% on other profits not included in the act of the year before. The tax on gold and silver was to be paid in gold and silver; on bank notes, in notes; on bonds, in coupons.[[8]] In December 1864, the taxes levied by the laws of 1862 and 1863 were increased by 33⅓%. Taxes on gold and silver were to be paid in kind or in currency at its market value.[[9]] This was the last tax levied by the State under Confederate rule. From these taxes the State government was largely supplied.
A number of special laws were passed to enable the county authorities to levy taxes-in-kind or to levy a certain amount in addition to the State tax, for the use of the county. The taxes levied by the State did not bear heavily upon the majority of the people, as nearly all, except the well-to-do and especially the slave owners, were exempt. The constant depreciation of the currency acted, of course, as a tax on the wage earners and salaried classes and on those whose income was derived from government securities.
While the State taxes were felt chiefly by the wealthier agricultural classes and the slave owners, this was not the case with the Confederate taxes. The loans and gifts from the State, the war tax of August 19, 1861, the $15,000,000 loan, the Produce Loan, and the proceeds of sequestration—all had not availed to secure sufficient supplies. The Produce Loan of 1862 was subscribed to largely in Alabama, the secretary of the Treasury issuing stocks and bonds in return for supplies,[[10]] and $1,500,000 of the $15,000,000 loan was raised in the State. Still the Confederate government was in desperate need. The farmers would not willingly sell their produce for currency which was constantly decreasing in value, and, when selling at all, they were forced to charge exorbitant prices because of the high prices charged them for everything by the speculators.[[11]] The speculator also ran up the prices of supplies beyond the reach of the government purchasing agents, who had to buy according to the list of prices issued by impressment commissioners. So in the spring of 1863, all other expedients were cast aside and the Confederate government levied the most drastic sort of a tax. No more loans of paper money from the State, no more assumption of war taxes by the State because the people were opposed to any form of direct taxation, no more holding back of supplies by producers and speculators who refused to sell to the Confederate government except for coin—the new law stopped all that.[[12]]
First there was a tax of 8% on all agricultural products in hand on July 1, 1863, on salt, wine and liquors, and 1% on all money and credits. Second, an occupation tax ranging from $50 to $200 and from 2½% to 20% of their gross sales was levied on bankers, auctioneers, brokers, druggists, butchers, “fakirs,” liquor dealers, merchants, pawn-brokers, lawyers, physicians, photographers, brewers, and distillers; hotels paid from $30 to $500 and theatres, $500. Third, there was an income tax of 1% on salaries from $1,000 to $1,500 and 2% on all over $1,500. Fourth, 10% on all trade in flour, bacon, corn, oats, and dry goods during 1863. Fifth, a tax-in-kind, by which each farmer after reserving 50 bushels of sweet and 50 bushels of Irish potatoes, 20 bushels of peas or beans, 100 bushels of corn or 50 bushels of wheat out of his crop of 1863, had to deliver (at a dépôt within eight miles,) out of the remainder of his produce for that year, 10% of all wheat, corn, oats, rye, buckwheat, rice, sweet and Irish potatoes, hay, fodder, sugar, molasses, cotton, wool, tobacco, peas, beans, and peanuts; 10% of all meat killed between April 24, 1863 and March 1, 1864; and 1% of the horses, mules and cattle held on November 1, 1863.[[13]]
By this act $9,500,000 in currency was raised in Alabama. Alabama, with Georgia and North Carolina, furnished two-thirds of the tax-in-kind. Though at first there was some objection to this tax because it bore entirely on the agricultural classes, yet it was a just tax so far as the larger planters were concerned, since the depreciated money had acted as a tax on the wage-earners and salaried classes, who had also some State tax to pay. The tax-in-kind fell heavily upon the families of small farmers in the white counties, who had no negro labor, and who produced no more than the barest necessaries of life. To collect the tax required an army of tithe-gatherers, and afforded fine opportunities of escape from military service. The State was divided into districts for the collection of all Confederate taxes, with a State collector at the head. The collection districts were usually counties, following the State division into taxing districts. In 1864, the tobacco tithe was collected by Treasury agents and not by the quartermaster’s department, which had formerly collected it.[[14]] The tax of April 24, 1863, was renewed on February 17, 1864, and some additional taxes laid as follows:
| Real estate and personal property | 5% |
| Gold and silverware and jewelry | 10% |
| Coin | 5% |
| Credits | 5% |
| Profits on liquors, produce, groceries and dry goods | 10% |
On June 10, 1864, an additional tax of 20% of the tax for 1864 was laid, payable only in Confederate Treasury notes of the new issue. Four days later an additional tax[[15]] was levied as follows:
| Real estate and personal property and coin | 5% |
| Gold and silver ware | 10% |
| Profits on liquors, produce, groceries & dry goods | 30% |
| Treasury notes of old issue (after January, 1865) | 100% |
The taxes during the war, State and Confederate, were in all five to ten times those levied before the war. Never were taxes paid more willingly by most of the people,[[16]] though at first there was opposition to them. It is probable that the authorities did not in 1861 and 1862 give sufficient consideration to the fact that conditions were much changed, and that in view of the war the people would willingly have paid taxes that they would have rebelled against in times of peace.
Of the tax-in-kind for 1863, $100,000 was collected in Pickens county alone, one of the poorest in the State. The produce was sent in too freely to be taken care of by the government quartermasters, and, as there was enough on hand for a year or two, much of it was ruined for lack of storage room.[[17]] An English traveller in East Alabama in 1864 reported that there was abundance; that the tax-in-kind was working well, and that enough provisions had already been collected for the Western armies of the Confederacy to last until the harvest of 1865.[[18]] There were few railroads in the State and the rolling stock on these was scarce and soon worn out. So the supplies gathered by the tax-in-kind law could not be moved. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef and bacon, and bushels of corn were piled up in the government warehouses and at the dépôts, while starvation threatened the armies and the people also in districts remote from the railroads or rivers. At the supply centers of Alabama and along the railroads in the Black Belt there were immense stores of provisions. When the war ended, notwithstanding the destruction by raids, great quantities of corn and bacon were seized or destroyed by the Northern troops.[[19]]
IMPRESSMENT.
The State quite early began to secure supplies by impressment. Salt was probably the first article to which it laid claim. Later the officials were authorized to impress and pay for supplies necessary for the public service. In 1862, the Governor was authorized to impress shoes and leather, and other shoemakers’ materials for the use of the army. The Legislature appropriated $250,000 to pay for impressments under this law.[[20]] In case of a refusal to comply with an order of impressment, the sheriff was authorized to summon a posse comitatus of not less than twenty men and seize double the quantity first impressed. In such cases no compensation was given.[[21]] The people resisted the impressment of their property. By a law of October 31, 1862, the Governor was impowered to impress slaves, and tools and teams for them to work with, in the public service against the enemy, and $1,000,000 was appropriated to pay the owners.[[22]] Slaves were regularly impressed by the Confederate officials acting in co-operation with the State authorities, for work on fortifications and for other public service. Several thousand were at work at Mobile at various times. They were secured usually by requisition on the State government, which then impressed them. In December, 1864, Alabama was asked for 2,500 negroes for the Confederate service.[[23]] The people were morbidly sensitive about their slave property and there was much discontent at the impressment of slaves even though they were paid for. As the war drew to a close, the people were less and less willing to have their servants impressed.
In the spring of 1863, the Confederate Congress authorized the impressment of private property for public use.[[24]] The Confederate President and the Governor each appointed an agent, and these together fixed the prices to be paid for the property taken.[[25]] Every two months they published schedules of prices, which were always below the market prices.[[26]] Evidently impressment had been going on for some time, for, in November, 1862, Judge Dargan, member of Congress from Alabama, wrote to the President that the people from the country were afraid to bring produce to Mobile for fear of seizure by the government. In November, 1863, the Secretary of War issued an order that no supplies should be impressed when held by a person for his own consumption or that of his employees or slaves, or while being carried to market for sale, except in urgent cases and by order of a commanding general. Consequently the land was filled with agents buying a year’s supply for railroad companies, individuals, manufactories, and corporations, relief associations, towns, and counties—all these to be protected from impressment. Most speculators always had their goods “on the way to market for sale.” The great demand caused prices to rise suddenly, and the government, which had to buy by scheduled prices, could not compete with private purchasers; yet it could not legally impress. There was much abuse of the impressment law, especially by unauthorized persons. It was the source of much lawless conduct on the part of many who claimed to be Confederate officials, with authority to impress.[[27]] The Legislature frequently protested against the manner of execution of the law. In 1863, a State law was passed which indicates that the people had been suffering from the depredations of thieves who pretended to be Confederate officials in order to get supplies. It was made a penal offense in 1862 and again in 1863, with from one to five years’ imprisonment and $500 to $5,000 fine, to falsely represent oneself as a Confederate agent, contractor or official.[[28]] The merchants of Mobile protested against the impressment of sugar and molasses; it would cause prices to double, they said.[[29]] There was much complaint from sufferers who were never paid by the Confederate authorities for the supplies impressed. Army quartermasters would sometimes seize the necessary supplies and would leave with the army before settling accounts with the citizens, the latter often being left without any proof of their claim. In North Alabama, especially, where the armies never tarried long at a place, the complaint was greatest. To do away with this abuse resulting from carelessness, the Secretary of War appointed agents in each Congressional district to receive proof of claims for forage and supplies impressed.[[30]] The State wanted a Confederate law passed to authorize receipts for supplies to be given as part of the tax-in-kind.[[31]] The unequal operation of the impressment system may be seen in the case of Clarke and Monroe counties. In the former, from sixteen persons, property amounting to $1,700 was impressed. In Monroe, from thirty-seven persons, $60,000 worth was taken. The delay in payment was so long that it was practically worthless when received.[[32]]
(Concluded next month.)
THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS
IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO CONDITIONS IN THE ROYAL COLONY OF NEW YORK.
CHAPTER I
THE PRESS IN ENGLAND BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Immediately on the introduction of printing the Church assumed towards it an attitude at once intimate and watchful. Since all that affected the welfare of the mind and the health of the soul was of importance to the Church, it was not at all surprising that the demand was at once made that nothing should be put forth by the press save that which had received the sanction—the “Imprimatur”—of the Diocesan authority, or later of the official delegated by the personal representative of the Papacy. The rules that were laid down for the direction of the printer were full and explicit, and no resistance seems to have been attempted at the period of the Reformation in England, the power of supervision over all forms of printing passed from the hands of the Church to the civil authority. This followed naturally from the theory that the King, as Head of the Church, inherited all rights of oversight in matters of opinion and morals formerly pertaining to the Pope, and exercised in England by the Bishops in his name. The Henrician and Elizabethan Bishops still gave the “Imprimatur,” but it was now as representing the King. The fact of publication without authority was in itself a crime deserving of severe punishment.[[33]]
A further step in the restriction of printing was the establishment (in line with the general tendencies of the time), of monopolies by patent. In 1557 the Stationers’ Company was formed of ninety-seven London stationers, and to it was committed the sole right to print books licensed by the proper authority.[[34]] As representing the Sovereign, the Star Chamber exercised a supervision over the manner in which the law was carried out; in 1559 it ordered that all books were to read by a Bishop or a member of the Privy Council before going to the press, and in 1586 gave permission for a printing press to be set up in each University, the licenser in this case being the Vice Chancellor. In the same year the Star Chamber ordered that all books were to be read and licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London, with the exception of law books which were to be read by the Chief Justice of either Bench or the Lord Chief Baron.
Proclamations issued by Queen Elizabeth from time to time,[[35]] indicate the difficulty found in enforcing this monopoly and requirement of licensing, and a proclamation issued by Elizabeth[[36]] against “bringing into the realm unlawful books” indicates that the statute of Henry VIII[[37]] repealing the permission given in the reign of Richard III to import books from abroad[[38]] was being systematically disregarded. Attorney-general Popham gives witness to the same effect when in his speech before the Star Chamber in the prosecution of Sir R. Knightley and others he says, “Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, in her great wisdom, hath issued proclamations that no pamphlets or treatises should be put in print but such as should first be seen and allowed; and further, lest that were not sufficient, she ordained that no printing should be used anywhere but in London, Oxford, or Cambridge. Notwithstanding all this served not, but they would print in corners and spread abroad things unprinted: wherefore Her Majesty set forth a proclamation in anno 25 that all Brownist books, and such other seditious books should be suppressed and burnt.[[39]]
The Star Chamber continued to exercise control over printing during the reign of James I, but with increasing difficulty, not lessened by the arbitrary and cruel ways in which it acted towards those whom it believed to be breaking its rules and regulations. The flood of books printed abroad continued into the reign of Charles I, and in 1637 we find a Star Chamber decree, “for reducing the number of master-printers, and punishing all others that should follow the trade, and for prohibiting as well the impression of all new books without license, and of such as have been licensed formerly without a new one, as the importation of all books in the English tongue, printed abroad, and of all foreign books whatever, till a true catalogue has been presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of London, and the books themselves had been received by their chaplains, or other learned men of their appointment, together with the masters and wardens of the Stationers’ Company.” A printer disobeying this order was to be fined, disabled from printing thereafter and the printing press forfeited.
The quarrel between Charles I and the Long Parliament resulted in the abolition of the Star Chamber, but the only result, as far as the press was concerned, was a change in masters, the Crown giving place to Parliament. From time to time orders were issued by the Parliament[[40]] similar in tone to those of the Star Chamber. One dated June 14, 1643, directs that “no book, pamphlet, paper, nor part of any such book, pamphlet, or paper, shall from henceforth be printed, bound, stitched, or put out to sale, by any person or persons whatsoever unless the same be first approved and licensed under the hands of such persons as both, or either, of the Houses, shall appoint for licensing of the same, and be entered in the Register Book of the Company of Stationers, according to ancient custom, and the printer thereof shall put his name thereto.” It was in reply to this action by Parliament that Milton produced in 1644 his “Areopagitica,” that matchless plea for freedom of speech and the liberty of the press. “We should be wary therefore,” he writes, “what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life.”[[41]]
But these stirring words fell on ears dulled by the clamor of contending battalions. It is true that from time to time a report of proceedings in Parliament appeared under the title of “Diurnal Occurrences in Parliament,” but in general Parliament was ever ready to crush at its first appearance any spirit considered by the members to be dangerous to constituted authority. On Sept. 30, 1647, Parliament, at the instigation of Fairfax, passed an ordinance, “for the better regulation of printing,” by which the restrictions were increased and a licenser appointed to whom before printing, all manuscripts had to be presented for approbation.
With the Restoration of Charles II the control of the press was continued by means of the Licensing Act of 1662, passed several times for periods of two years, finally expiring in 1679.[[42]] This was essentially a republication of the Star Chamber order of 1637, but since the Star Chamber no longer existed the scene was changed from that Court to the Old Bailey. In 1679, at the trial of Henry Carr,[[43]] indicted for some passages in a weekly paper, the Lord Chief Justice Scroggs declared it criminal at common law to “write on the subject of government, whether in terms of praise or censure, it is not material; for no man has a right to say anything of government.” In 1685, on the accession of James II, the Licensing Act was passed for a period of seven years, and in 1692, (during the reign of William and Mary), it was renewed for one year and the session of the following Parliament. In 1695 the House of Commons refused to again pass it, and in this way the Act expired, never to be renewed, and the press was placed on a footing of equality before the law with all other trades and occupations. And yet, as has been well pointed out by Macaulay,[[44]] the reasons given by the Parliament for their action did not in any way touch on the question of the rightfulness of a free press, but rather dealt with certain complaints in regard to the provisions of the law and the mode of application. “This paper,” he writes, “completely vindicates the resolution to which the Commons had come. But it proves at the same time that they knew not what they were doing, what a power they were calling into existence. They pointed out concisely, clearly, forcibly, and sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, the absurdities and iniquities of the statute which was about to expire. But all their objections will be found to relate to matters of detail. On the great question of principle, on the question whether the liberty of unlicensed printing be, on the whole, a blessing or a curse to society, not a word is said. The Licensing Act is condemned, not as a thing essentially evil, but on account of the petty grievances, the exactions, the jobs, the commercial restrictions, the domiciliary visits, which were incidental to it. It is pronounced mischievous because it enables the Company of Stationers to extort money from publishers, because it empowers agents of the government to search houses under the authority of general warrants, because it confines the foreign book trade to the port of London, because it detains packages of books at the Custom House till the pages are mildewed. The Commons complain that the amount of the fee which the licensers may demand is not fixed. They complain that it is made penal in an officer of the Customs to open a box of books from abroad, except in the presence of one of the censors of the press. How, it is very sensibly asked, is the officer to know that there are books in the box until he has opened it?” Such were the arguments which did what Milton’s “Areopagitica” had failed to do. But what we mean to-day by the term, the liberty of the press, is much more than the mere right to print without a previous application to a censor. The position which the press holds in this generation is the result of a slow but steady growth. After the refusal by Parliament to renew the Licensing Act the courts still did their best to prevent the reaping of any benefit from this. Newspaper reporting, and especially the reporting of Parliamentary debates was frowned on by Bench and Parliament alike. In 1722 the House of Commons passed the resolution “That no printer or publisher of any printed newspaper do presume to insert in any such papers any debates or other proceedings of this house or any committee thereof” and when Edward Cave in 1731 began to publish in his “Gentleman’s Magazine” a report of the debates he had to resort to the fiction of a “Senate of Great Lilliput” and even then lived in continual fear of prosecution.
As time passed Parliamentary reporting came to be tacitly recognized, but the law of libel still retained all its terrors. Bentham told the truth when he said “Anything which any man for any reason, chooses to be offended with is libel.” Lord Mansfield in the case of Henry Sampson Woodfall, prosecuted for publishing a seditious libel, enunciated the theory that the work of the jury began and ended with deciding the fact as to whether the accused was or was not responsible for the publication of the matter complained of, the crown, through the court, to decide whether the matter was libellous. For twenty years the question was fought over, and at last in 1791, Fox having changed his views in the matter, introduced his famous bill to amend the law of libel, and in 1792 the bill became law. The importance of this act can hardly be overestimated. After stating that “doubts have risen whether on the trial of an indictment or information for the making and publishing any libel, where an issue or issues are joined between the king and the defendant or defendants, on the plea of not guilty pleaded it be competent to the jury empanelled to try the same to give their verdict upon the whole matter in issue.” It goes on to enact that “the jury may give a general verdict of guilty or not guilty upon the whole matter in issue, and shall not be required or directed by the court or judge to find the defendant guilty merely in the proof of the publication by such defendant of the paper charged to be a libel, and of the sense ascribed to it in the indictment or information.” In the same spirit Judge Fitzgerald told a jury[[45]] “You are the sole judges of the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The judges are here to give any help they can; but the jury are the judges of law and fact, and on them rests the whole responsibility.”
Thus the idea of legal restrictions on the press passes away, and the law of libel becomes a law of the press in any case where defamation or false report is charged, and to a jury is committed the task of deciding whether the statement made was justified and proper. As Prof. Dicey aptly puts it,[[46]] “freedom of discussion is, then, in England, little else than the right to write or say anything which a jury, consisting of twelve shopkeepers, think it expedient should be said or written.... Whether in any particular case a given individual is to be convicted of libel depends wholly on their judgment, and they have to determine the questions of truth, fairness, intention, and the like, which affect the legal character of a published statement.”
But this point of view, which is the position in England, and to a large extent in our own land, has not been reached without a struggle, and it is to that struggle, so far as it was carried on in the American Colonies, that we must now turn out attention.
Livingston Rowe Schuyler.
New York City.
(To be continued.)