PULTENEY'S BALLAD OF "THE HONEST JURY."
On the application for a new trial, in the case of The King against William Davies Shipley, Dean of St. Asaph (1784), wherein was raised the important and interesting question, whether in libel cases the jury were judges of the law as well as the fact, Lord Mansfield, in giving judgment, remarked in reference to trials for libel, before Lord Raymond:
"I by accident (from memory only I speak now) recollect one where the Craftsman was acquitted; and I recollect it from a famous, witty, and ingenious ballad that was made at the time by Mr. Pulteney; and though it is a ballad, I will cite the stanza I remember from it, because it will show you the idea of the able men in opposition, and the leaders of the popular party in those days. They had not an idea of assuming that the jury put it upon another and much better ground. The stanza I allude to is this:—
"'For Sir Philip well knows,
That his innuendos
Will serve him no longer,
In verse or in prose;
For twelve honest men have decided the cause,
Who are judges of fact, though not judges of laws.'
"It was the admission of the whole of that party; they put it right; they put it upon the meaning of the innuendos; upon that the jury acquitted the defendant; and they never put up a pretence of any other power, except when talking to the jury themselves."