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Untitled Article
his hands of it .. What a disclosure has just taken place in the affair of the * Brightbn Guardian P The participation of Government , in that most censurable prosecution , by a pre * i 6 us engagement to pay its expenses , ( a fact studiously withheld from the public when the affair was undergoing discussion in Parliament , ) was blurted out by Mr . Sergeant Doyley , at a meeting of the Sussex magistrates , on some day m the week ending July 19 th ; for , on Sunday , the 20 th , the < Exarriiuer' founded upon the sergeant ' s statement , the following just and forcible remarks : —
* In the course of the discussion , a fact transpired , most disgraceful to the Government .... Who can be safe , if the public purse may be secretly applied to attempts to crush him ? The prosecutors in this case ( their expenses being guaranteed ) have nothing to lose ; while the prosecuted party , supposing him to escape a verdict under the unjust libel law , may be ruined by the costs . We look upon this transaction as a conspiracy between certain gentlemen and the Home Office , for the
ruin of Mr . Cohen . " If you will stand forward and prosecute , we will pay , " was the disgraceful bargain of the Government . But the Minister for the Home Department did not choose , in his gentle mercies , to overwhelm the defendant by employing the Attorney-general . The employment of the Attorney-general is apt to recoil , and not always to overwhelm the party whose destruction is aimed at . Governments have suffered as much by Attornies-general as defendants ; and , doubtless , Lord Melbourne remembered that the Grey Ministry , at its onset , had not overwhelmed Mr . Cobbett . There are more reasons than reasons
of naercy for the forbearance of Government from prosecutions for libel ; but it is for thft interest of the public , that whatever Government does in prosecutions , it should do openly , and by responsible functionaries . There should be no underhand maintenance of prosecutions , —no secret subsidy fora war against the Press , —no encouragement of the vindictive feelings of individuals , by the promise to pay privately the price of their gratification . Such practices are most malignant and most dangerous ; and it is the duty of the public to take care that the powers of its purse shall not Lave so vicious an application . Willing as we have been to think well * of Lord Melbourne , it is with no common regret that we find so foul a blot in hia administration of the Home Office . ' The public money was thus prostituted to support a proceeding ,
by which , as some newspaper has forcibly remarked , Mr . Cohen was tried for a libel on the magistrates , before a bench of magistrates , and a jury of magistrates . And it has since transp ired from $ letter published by Sir Charles Blount , ( who has retired frcftri the magistracy , disgusted with this transaction , ) that ' the magistrates were all of opinion that no opportunity should be lost to suppress the " Guardian " newspaper /* £ fc » w here ia an act of Government , of so much importance at
• Sir bftafr l ** Blount add * , with honott indignation , — ' I will not trust myself to rrtoke fcftf < e 0 nim « U upbnthiii hitherto hidden object . It at once diapel * the clotid U » atrh # f , reMd # r « 4 U *§ epurae i * ir # t *« d by the committed * o indistinct and so unusual ; it «* c ? yiiiftAM fht , j wje ^ km of Mr . C ^ h « i ) Voffered atonement , and well accord * witb that part of the apnteucg wnich imnrUoned the defendant in a jail of u distant county , and tar removed tttm + M oftke tff hit' tkfcer / '
Untitled Article
660 Notes on the Newspaper * .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 660, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/56/
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