But the imprisoned editor saw no reason for apprehension. Fortunately for him his case had to be decided not by a military dictator, nor yet by a single judge or magistrate, but by the sound common sense and fair play of a jury. Mr. Shippard,[[62]] the acting attorney general, went heart and soul into the prosecution.
In a labored and somewhat silly harangue he recounted with much unction the obsolete and barbarous customs of the old Roman emperors in dealing with those whom they deemed guilty of seditious libel. As he gathered courage during the delivery of his diatribe, he overcame the natural hesitancy of his speech and became even eloquent. It is true that the act which had been attributed to the major was one which, as it had been contended for the defence in a previous case, did not amount to a morally criminal charge, and should not be proved or provable by a mere loosely kept note-book, or punished by imprisonment without option of a fine; in fact not that the major was guilty, but that the other man was morally if not legally innocent; further, it was urged that the whole matter amounted at the most to a mere technical omission of a purely formal character, which might inadvertently be committed by any usually law-abiding citizen.
But the engineer did not like to “be hoist with his own petard,” and the attorney general, with “Gallio-like” unconcern for anything but his “Dryasdust” antiquities, snorted forth his anathemas against the offending editor. He introduced into his remarks a plentiful sprinkling of Roman archæology and referred with ludicrous solemnity to the old world restrictions upon the freedom of public criticism. He spoke with grave gusto of the good old times of the Emperor Zeno, when slanderous accusations against the “purple” were punishable with death. He must have forgotten that in Zeno’s time offices of state were openly bought and sold, and life and death had their price.
Did the honorable attorney general wish to apply the whole theory and practice of the old Roman criminal law to the affairs of our days of steam power, telegraphs and independent press? It is difficult to say how far some men will ride their hobbies.
After he had done with Zeno’s time, however, he was compelled to admit that capital punishment for the offense under consideration had been “mercifully commuted to a public flogging,” and seemed to imply that some punishment of that nature would not be inapplicable to the case of the editor who had spoken so severely of his patron. In this style he poured forth the vials of his wrath until the amazed crowd of listening diggers were agape with astonishment at the righteous (and loudly expressed) indignation of the prosecuting barrister. The audience might not unreasonably have expected that the next authority to be quoted by the excited counsel would be the customs and maxims of that “beauteous, implacable tyrant,” the lamented Nero.
An amusing incident occurred when the court rose for luncheon. The editor was of course a prisoner, the responsibility of his sureties while he was out on bail having ceased upon his appearing and pleading to the indictment, but the judge, who, it is only fair to state, treated him with marked courtesy throughout the trial, permitted him to leave the court en parole, as it were, for luncheon.
With the jury it was quite different. The acting attorney general did not want to let them mix with the outside crowd who had already expressed their opinion of the proceedings pretty plainly, and accordingly at his instigation, or at least with his concurrence, the hapless jurors were locked up sans ceremonie until after luncheon. Notwithstanding all the perverse ingenuity of the prosecuting counsel, he could not persuade the jury to convict the prisoner. After a short deliberation the jury returned a verdict of “not guilty” which was received with loud acclamations both inside and outside the court, the delighted diggers carrying off the liberated editor on their shoulders to celebrate the victory in the “flowing bowl,” while the major, accompanied by his sympathizers, made a hurried exit from the back of the court and went home a “sadder and a wiser man.”
The administrator, however, brought a civil action against the proprietors of the newspaper for libel, laying his damages at £10,000; but after considerable skirmishing an apology was accepted, and so ended a most disagreeable affair to all parties concerned. Many squibs and cartoons were published at the time, the one which drew the greatest attention being the accompanying (page [298]), where Mr. Shippard and an editor well known in South Africa, formerly a member of the Cape house of assembly[[63]], Mr. R. W. Murray, are represented holding a skipping rope over which the major tumbles.
Note.—Sir Wm. Owen Lanyon, R. C. M. G., who had been suffering for some time from cancer in the throat, died at the Windsor Hotel, New York, on April 6th, 1887.