“One of the greatest blessings we enjoy, one of the greatest blessings a people, my Lords, can enjoy, is liberty; but every good in this life has its alloy of evil; licentiousness is the alloy of liberty; it is an ebullition, an excrescence—it is a speck upon the eye of the political body: but which I can never touch but with a gentle, with a trembling hand, lest I destroy the body, lest I injure the eye upon which it is apt to appear.
“There is such a connection between licentiousness and liberty, that it is not easy to correct the one, without dangerously wounding the other: it is extremely hard to distinguish the true limit between them: like a changeable silk, we can easily see there are two different colours, but we cannot easily discover where the one ends, or where the other begins.”
Mr. Gurney.—You should state, in fairness and candour, that that was an argument against licensing.
Mr. Cooper.—I know it was. The argument contends for the difficulty, next to impossibility, of distinguishing where that which is allowable ends, and that which is licentious begins. A licenser could not tell where to allow, and where to object, yet a licenser, gentlemen, would have had just the same means of judging that you possess; and if he could not tell with distinctness and certainty what to let pass and what to stop, how, with no greater power, and means of judgment, can you? With what justice, then, can it be objected to me, that I have shown any want of candour in not stating the precise question on which the argument was delivered, when in the principle there is not a shadow of difference? My application of the passage is therefore perfectly just.
Gentlemen, I have only one more quotation to trouble you with before I conclude. That is the opinion of Lord Loughborough, afterwards Chancellor of England. I do not know in what case, or on what occasion it was delivered, but I believe in a judgment on a case of libel. “Every man (says that judge) may publish at his discretion, his opinions concerning forms and systems of government. If they be weak and absurd, they will be laughed at and forgotten; and, if they be bonâ fide, they cannot be criminal, however erroneous.”
This is the opinion of a great judge upon political publications, sitting under the authority of the king himself to administer the laws; and to apply this authority to the paper before you, what reason on earth have you to suppose, that the writer from the beginning to the end was not bonâ fide in his opinions; and then, however erroneous they may be, I say, under the sanction of Lord Loughborough himself, they are not criminal.
Having, gentlemen, submitted these observations to you, I declare most unfeignedly that I have uttered them with the most conscientious belief, that they are founded in reason, justice, and truth. I have not advanced a proposition nor uttered a sentiment as an advocate, which I am not prepared to avow and maintain as a man. If I am wrong in my judgment, you will correct me. You will, however, consider my reasonings, and the passages which I have cited to you in support of them, and judge if I have not maintained the propositions, which I have submitted to you.
No argument can be drawn from any of the observations, which I have addressed to you for impunity to libelers and defamers of private character. No, they are justly called assassins; for they who destroy that without which life is worthless are as guilty as those who destroy life itself, and let them feel the heaviest vengeance of the law. Private persons may be attacked and have no power to defend themselves. They may not only be unable themselves to answer published calumnies against their character; but also unable to employ those who can. But such can never be the case with those who administer the affairs of the nation. All the wealth and power of the country is in their hands. They may hire a thousand writers to support their measures, and vindicate their characters, and they
will not want volunteers; they can command the press; and, for their protection, it is sufficient, that the press should be opposed to the press. Private individuals cannot command the press; and, therefore, let slanderers of private character suffer the utmost punishment that the law can inflict.
And now, gentlemen, I ask you to give me your verdict for the defendant. I make no attempt to move your compassion. I will not urge you to consider that the defendant is a woman, and unable, from the tenderness of her sex, to sustain hardship; nor call upon you to remember, that which you cannot but know, that she has already been convicted upon one prosecution, for which she will, without doubt, be the subject of severe punishment. I ask it on the higher ground of justice; though, I confess, that I hope and wish it with more anxiety, because I trust it will send these embodied prosecutors, this Constitutional Association, as (by the figure, I suppose, of lucus a non lucendo) they entitle themselves, into that obscurity to which they properly belong, or at least if they will obtrude further upon the impatience of the public, let them carry with them the ill omen of a failure in their first attempt to insinuate, either that the English Constitution is deficient in its establishment of responsible law officers of the crown, or that those officers are incapable of fulfilling the duties of their station. It is said, and I hope truly, that the country is gradually recovering from the distress, under which it has so long suffered, and that plenty and prosperity have again begun to flow in upon us. May it be so! but we shall never derive enjoyment from any improvement in our physical condition; unless it is accompanied with domestic tranquillity. To be happy we must be at peace amongst ourselves; and nothing will
have the effect of allaying the heart-burnings of political animosity and uniting us, as it were, in bands of harmonious brotherhood, so much as a discouragement of these party prosecutions, which, while they kindle feelings of indignation, and hostility, and hatred in large numbers of the people, are of no general benefit to the state. Fling back this prosecution, then, in the faces of those who have instituted it; and, instead of sending this unfortunate woman to a prison, send her back by your verdict of acquittal to the children of her brother, who, deprived (in the manner you know) both of their father and mother, are as much orphans as they would be by their death; and who, sordid and neglected in her absence, are requiring her care. And, what is more, you will, by your verdict of Not Guilty, give security to the free expression of public opinion, compose our dissensions, and protect both yourselves and posterity; since in calling on you to acquit the defendant, I call on you to protect the freedom of the press, and with it the freedom of the country; for unless the press is preserved, and preserved inviolate, the political liberties of Englishmen are lost.