"What!—shall a person appeal from that Court, who are the only judges of things belonging to them, the House of Commons I mean. An appeal! To whom? To a mob? Must Justice be appealed from? To whom? To injustice? Appeal to 'the good people of England,' 'particularly the inhabitants of Westminster'! The House of Commons are the good people of England, being the representatives of the people. The rest are—what? Nothing—unless it be a mob. But the clear meaning of this libel was an appeal to violence, in fact, and to stigmatize the House." "Then he charges the House with sinking material evidence; which in fact is accusing the House of injustice. This is a charge the most shocking; the most severe, and the most unjust and virulent, against the good, the tender House of Commons; that safeguard of our liberty, and guardian of our welfare."
"This libel ... will be found the most powerful invective that the skill of man could invent. I will not say the skill, but the wit, art, and false contrivance of man, instigated by Satan;" "to say that this is not a libel, is to say that there is no justice, equity, or right in the world."
The Solicitor-General told the Jury that they were only to inquire if Mr. Owen published the pamphlet, "the rest follows of course;" "you are upon your oaths; you judge of the facts ... and only them." Chief Justice Lee summed up the evidence "and delivered it as his opinion, that the Jury ought to find the defendant guilty; for he thought the fact of publication was fully proved; and if so they could not avoid bringing in the defendant guilty."
The jury returned, "Not guilty;" but Ryder, the Attorney-General, put this question, Do you think the evidence is not sufficient to convince you that Owen did sell the book? The foreman stuck to his general verdict, "Not guilty," "Not guilty;" and several of the jurymen said, "that is our verdict, my lord, and we abide by it." "Upon which the court broke up, and there was a prodigious shout in the hall." Then "the Jury judged as to facts, law, and justice of the whole, and therefore did not answer the leading question which was so artfully put to them."[127] Of course the insolent Attorney-General was soon made "Lord Chief Justice," and rode the bench after the antiquated routine.
This was the third great case in which the Jury had vindicated the right of speech.
6. Here is another case very famous in its day, and of great value as helping to establish the rights of juries, and so to protect the natural right of the citizens—the Trial of John Miller for reprinting Junius's Letter to the King, in 1770.
Here are the facts. Mr. Miller was the publisher of a newspaper called the London Evening Post, and therein, on December 19, 1769, he reprinted Junius's celebrated Letter to the King. For this act, an information ex officio was laid against him, wherein he was charged with publishing a false, wicked, seditious, and malicious libel. A suit had already been brought against Woodfall, the publisher of the Public Advertiser, in which the letter originally appeared, but the prosecution had not turned out to the satisfaction of the government, nor had the great question been definitely settled. So this action was brought against Mr. Miller, who reprinted the original letter the day of its first appearance.[128]
Solicitor-General Thurlow,—whom you have met before, Gentlemen,—opened the case for the Crown, and said:—
"I have not of myself been able to imagine ... that there is a serious man of the profession in the kingdom who has the smallest doubt whether this ought to be deemed a libel or not;" "for I neither do, nor ever will, attempt to lay before a jury, a cause, in which I was under the necessity of stating a single principle that went to intrench, in the smallest degree, upon the avowed and acknowledged liberty of the subjects of this country, even with regard to the press. The complaint I have to lay before you is that that liberty has been so abused, so turned to licentiousness, ... that under the notion of arrogating liberty to one man, that is the writer, printer, and publisher of this paper, they do ... annihilate and destroy the liberty of all men, more or less. Undoubtedly the man that has indulged the liberty of robbing upon the highway, has a very considerable portion of it allotted to him." The defendant "has published a paper, in which, concerning the King, concerning the House of Commons, and concerning the great officers of State, concerning the public affairs of the realm, there are uttered things of such tendency and application as ought to be punished." "When we are come to that situation, when it shall be lawful for any men in this country to speak of the sovereign [George III.] in terms attempting to fix upon him such contempt, abhorrence, and hatred, there is an end of all government whatsoever, and then liberty is indeed to shift for itself." He quotes from the paper: "'He [the king] has taken a decisive personal part against the subjects of America, and those subjects know how to distinguish the sovereign and a venal Parliament, upon one side, from the real sentiments of the English nation upon the other.' For God's sake is that no libel? To talk of the king as taking a part of an hostile sort against one branch of his subjects, and at the same time to connect him ... with the parliament which he calls a venal parliament; is that no libel?"
Lord Mansfield,—the bitterest enemy of the citizens' right of speech and of the trial by jury,—charged upon the jury, "The question for you to try ... is, whether the defendant did print, or publish, or both, a paper of the tenor, and of the meaning, so charged by the information." "If it is of the tenor and meaning set out in the information, the next consideration is, whether he did print and publish it." "If you ... find the defendant not guilty, the fact established by that verdict is, he did not publish a paper of that meaning;" "the fact finally established by your verdict, if you find him guilty, is, that he printed and published a paper, of the tenor and of the meaning set forth in the information;" "but you do not give an opinion ... whether it is or not lawful to print a paper ... of the tenor and meaning in the information;" "if in point of fact it is innocent, it would be an innocent thing."