[101] Lord Mansfield’s words were,—“I have always understood, and take it to be clearly settled, that evidence of a public sale, or public exposing to sale in the shop by the servant, or anybody in the house or shop, though there was no privity or concurrence in the master, is sufficient evidence to convict him, unless he proves the contrary, or that there was some trick or collusion.”—(“Trial of John Almon,” 8vo., London, 1770.)—The motion for the new trial was made on the 27th of June following, on the ground that the master was not liable for the acts of his servant in a criminal case, where his privity was not proved. The motion was refused. The Court then expressed an unanimous opinion that the pamphlet being bought in the shop of a common known bookseller, purporting on its title-page to be printed for him, is a sufficient primâ facie evidence of its being published by him, not indeed conclusive, because he might have contradicted it, if the facts would have borne it, by contrary evidence.—(Burrows’s Reports, vol. v. p. 2686.) This is not less liberal than the present proof of publication recognised by the courts of law; and it is generally understood that nothing short of proof of interference, if not of absolute prohibition by the bookseller would now be received. Abominable as the law of libel might be, it seems to have been correctly laid down by Lord Mansfield. Fifty years earlier Almon would have been pilloried, and probably whipped. In 1759, Mr. Beardmore, the Under Sheriff, was fined fifty shillings, and imprisoned two months, for pillorying Dr. Shebbeare moderately. (Burrows’s Reports, vol. ii. p. 752.) Almon and the Doctor seem to have been much upon a par in point of respectability.—E.
[102] All that Lord Mansfield did, was to receive the verdict of the jury at his own house. There was not the slightest impropriety in this. It is still a common practice on the circuit for the verdict to be returned at the judge’s lodgings; and the old writers say, that if a jury will not agree, the judge may carry them round the circuit in a cart.—(Some account of this trial is given in the notes to Woodfall’s Junius, vol. i. p. 354.)—E.
[103] The Comte de Guines had been for some years Ambassador at Berlin—a post he procured through the intervention of Madame Montesson, preparatory to her marriage to the Duc d’Orleans. He belonged to the school of Choiseul, Richelieu, Soubize, and Lauzun. His embassy to London involved him in a very unpleasant suit with his secretary, La Forte, who, having lost large sums in stock-jobbing speculations during the excitement caused by the expected war with Spain on account of the Falkland Islands, declared himself bankrupt, and endeavoured to prove that he had been the agent of M. de Guines in these speculations. The action was eventually decided in the Ambassador’s favour, but only after long litigation, in the course of which it was difficult to avert strong suspicions of the truth of the charge.—(Flassan’s Diplomatie Française, vol. v. p. 54.)—M. de Guines emigrated during the Revolution, and died in 1806, aged seventy-one.—(See more of him in Thiebault’s Frederic the Second, and the Mémoires de Madame de Genlis, vol. i. p. 252, seqq. and vol. ii. p. 40.)—E.
[104] More of this trial may be seen in Woodfall’s Junius, note, vol. ii. p. 153, and the Annual Register for 1770, p. 100–108, &c. A most disgraceful affair it was to all parties concerned, except the King.—E.
[105] This letter being too long for a note is inserted in the Appendix.—(See the reference to it in the Table of Contents.)—E.
[106] The spirit and talent which he showed in these altercations with the Livery, contributed to raise him to the Bench. He died Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in 1799, in his sixty-fifth year. His decisions are still cited with respect. The trial of Horne Tooke is the only instance where he seems, by common consent, to have made a poor figure.—E.
[107] On the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland.
[108] No lines were ever more apposite than the following of Dr. Young to Lord Granby:—
“Of boasting more than of a bomb afraid,
A soldier should be modest as a maid.”