Breach of faith, which the Craftsman had laid to the charge of the ministry, is the most virulent aspersion that a libeller can utter against any government, is therefore punishable, and declares his opinion, that spreading false news is no part of the freedom of the press.
He thinks no honest cause wants the assistance of falshood, so no man should lay claim to liberty who adheres not to truth; therefore the Craftsman ought not to complain of severity from the government, unless he will evince the truth of his assertion.
Men think that prosecutions and confinement are very hard, not considering the provocations that urg’d them; and that the worst imputations are charg’d on the councils of the crown, without the least colour of truth. The punishment inflicted on a libelling printer, bears no proportion with the wrongs thus offer’d to a great people.
Distinguishes between opinions offr’d upon national affairs, and misrepresentations of those affairs. The first is not criminal, the other may. Says, these men may be punished on the Statute, as spreaders of false news.
The Craftsman can defend himself no other way then by refuting the charge of falshood.
The Craftsman had suggested that the Government abetted the very practices for which he is under prosecution; and instanced in the pamphlet Sedition and Defamation display’d, which represents the conduct and characters of two persons who have laboured these five years to make this ministry odious, for which reasons the opposite writers spare no invectives to point out these gentlemen Weekly, as Traitors and Villains. The Free Briton here justifies the characters complain’d of.
Free Briton, Jan. 28. No. 61.
He takes notice that the Craftsman in his reply to the pamphlet called Sedition and Defamation display’d, has not once attempted to show that the characters of two gentlemen there given are in the least unlike or injurious, and maintains that whatever is said of them in that pamphlet is indisputably true; yet observes, that the author admitted, that he who had wronged his friendship, and betrayed his confidence, came into the world with all the advantages that recommend men to the esteem, favour, and approbation of mankind.
The Craftsman on the contrary divests the minister whose character he draws of all those talents and abilities, without which, power is not easily acquir’d, or long maintain’d. See p. 4.