a word which has many different meanings, but is chiefly known in this country as the name of a department of the law, which, from incidental circumstances, has come to include the naturally distinct heads, of written slander, sedition, and outrage against religion. Towards all its separate and sometimes trivial meanings, the word may be traced through history and usage from its original meaning of a little book (libellus) consisting of a set of leaves stitched together, and thus distinguished from a roll, or liber, as we distinguish a pamphlet from a volume at the present day. Certain accusatory pleadings in the courts of justice were, in Roman practice, presented in stitched leaves, which were called libelli accusatorii; and it is from this original use as a document, containing an accusation, that the word libel has wandered into all its wide and varied significations. After it had acquired its well known significance as a transgression of the law, it continued to retain its original technical meaning as a part of the form of process in the various systems of law derived from Rome. In the practice of the Vatican, Du Cange finds libellus anathematizans as the equivalent to a bull of excommunication. In English ecclesiastical practice the complainant's grounds of complaint, or accusation, are set forth in a libel systematically divided into three parts. 1. The major proposition, which shows a just cause of the petition; 2. The narration or minor proposition; 3. The conclusion, or conclusive petition, which conjoins both propositions. The accusation or indictment by which in Scotland a person is accused of a crime before a court of criminal justice, is in the same syllabic form—derived from the practice of the scholastic divines, and is called a Libel. The term is of frequent use in a like sense in the Presbyterian ecclesiastical courts of Scotland. It is there employed as a verb as well as a substantive; and when one is "libelled" in a presbytery, it is not meant that some rash or malicious charge has been levelled against him, but that he has been subjected to a formal accusation. It is this use of the word *libellus* to mean especially a document of accusation, that has made it the root of the whole law of libel. It acquired its modern meaning of a rash or malicious accusation early in the history of the Roman law, where we find the authors of *libelli famosi* visited by heavy punishments, sometimes with death. But we have few lights on the nature of the libel law of Rome, probably from the rare occurrence and limited importance of an offence which required the art of printing to give it a great social influence. The 36th title of the ninth book of the Justinian Code is devoted to *libelli famosi*, and refers to them rather as writings hidden in private places, for the purpose of creating an under-current of suspicion difficult to be refuted, than as accusations deriving their mischief from their publicity. The person who finds such a libel—called a *chartula*—and does not burn or destroy it, but, on the other hand, mentions its contents to some one, becomes as guilty as if he had been the author of the libel.

In the tenth title of the 47th book of the Pandects, *De Injuriosis et Famosis Libellis*, there are remedies for a variety of petty injuries. Among these, unjust attacks on reputation are mixed up, in a manner that would seem at the present day very incongruous, with such offences as trespasses, the unjustifiable castigation of slaves belonging to other people, assaults by slaves on each other, the interruption of public rights, sharp or oppressive practice against poor debtors, sending smoke or filth into a neighbour's house, and the like,—an incongruous and unconnected gathering of incidental matters which appear not to have found any place in the great divisions of the law. Among these injuries for which there is praetorian redress, is included the bringing disgrace or ridicule on a citizen by contumelious action, or the handing to a ruler or other influential person a *libellus* containing an attack on a citizen's good name.

These scattered morsels of law served as precedents in the countries which adopted the Roman system. The suppression of *libelles defamatoires* is a frequent object of the old French ordinances. The laws on the subject increased in number and precision in the sixteenth century, when the rapid progress of the art of printing made work for them. Indeed, it is generally observed by the French jurists, that until this period the maxims of the Roman law on defamatory libels had lain dormant. But from the days of Calvin downwards France has been the theatre of a relentless struggle, in which a press, restless and audacious—to often at the same time profiteer—has fought with a succession of repressive laws, varying according to the various powers which have from time to time held absolute rule in that country. The French jurists notice, from an early period, how the laws for the suppression of libels cannot fail to be an irksome restraint on the genius of those authors whose strength lies in sarcasm, and greatly to curtail the enjoyment of those whose chief solace it is to read witty and epigrammatic remarks on the vices or follies of their fellow men. All who are accustomed to the perusal of that vast series of works of genius coming under the general term of *memoires*, must be conscious how little would remain behind, if, even in the periods of the strongest and most suppressive governments, all that is with us called libellous matter were suppressed. The vehemence with which those who were themselves not inclined to speak gently of their opponents or rivals, sought the aid of the arbitrary laws against libel, is very instructive. Voltaire was noted for his attempts to obtain legal redress for sarcasms on himself which were but a faint imitation of those which he had launched against others. How entirely the machinery for the punishment of libels was in the hands of those who had great personal influence, is shown by a curious anecdote narrated by Marmontel in his life of himself. He was charged with libelling, in the *Mercure*, an influential courtier, who prevailed on Choiseul, the prime minister, to commit him to the Bastile. Marmontel says he proved his innocence to the complete satisfaction of Choiseul, who regretted what had occurred, but said he must keep his word to his distinguished friend, to whom he had pledged his faith that Marmontel should go to the Bastile; and Marmontel submitted to his fate as a necessity, expressing his gratitude for the comfortable accommodation and the luxurious table by which his prison life was alleviated.

The course of events through which the law of libel which we have seen to be a creature of the Roman jurisprudence, found its way into the common law of England, where every gift from that quarter was eyed with suspicion, forms a curious little episode in constitutional history. Offences against religion were tried in the ecclesiastical courts, which took their form of procedure from the civil law. As they became unnerved after the Reformation, the notorious Star Chamber took up their functions, adding to them a jurisdiction in minor political offences. The Star Chamber thus became the tribunal where both branches of the public law of libel were adjudged upon the Roman system. As its power waxed strong in the reign of Charles I., its political functions in administering the law of libel became more conspicuous, attracting at length a degree of public indignation before which this growing fabric of arbitrary judicial power finally fell. It was here that Pryne was condemned to the loss of his ears, and the pillory, for a collocation in the index of an unreadable volume, which seemed to point with scorn to the gaucheries of the queen; and that he was a second time condemned, after his ears were more closely shaven, to be pilloried with Burton and Bastwick.

On the fall of the Star Chamber this branch of jurisdiction, along with its foreign name, was, with much adroitness, appropriated by the courts of common law. To give a remedy in a court of law to a person who was slandered and maligned, and even to one who was needlessly held up to contempt or scorn, was a simple and natural process. From this point a step onward was taken by the public prosecution of those who maligned or insulted their neighbours, on the ground that the sense of injury sustained by those who suffered from their accusations, was likely to lead to excitement and turbulence. The circle of offences thus created widened indefinitely. Censorious remarks on the people who governed the country, or on the system of government itself, or the national religion, were to be punished, not as in themselves wrong, but as acts which, by the provocation which they were calculated to excite, led to a breach of the peace. The process of reasoning by which the law for the protection of private character was made a means of punishing state offences, cannot be better explained than in the words of Sir Edward Coke:—"Every label (which is called *famous libellas*, or *infamatoria scriptura*) is made either against a private man, or against a magistrate or public person. If it be against a private man, it deserves a severe punishment; for although the libel be made against one, yet it incites all those of the same family, kindred, or society to revenge, and so tends *per consequentia* to quarrels and breach of the peace, and may be the cause of shedding of blood, and of great inconvenience. If it be against a magistrate or other public person it is a greater offence, for it concerns not only the breach of the peace, but also the scandal of government; for what greater scandal of government can there be than to have corrupt or wicked magistrates to be appointed and constituted by the king to govern his subjects under him? and greater imputation to the state cannot be, than to suffer such corrupt men to sit in the sacred seat of justice, or to have any meddling in, or concerning, the administration of justice.

"Although the private man or magistrate be dead at the time of the making of the libel, yet it is punishable; for, in the one case, it stirs up others of the same family, blood,..." or society to revenge, and to break the peace; and, in the other, the libeller traduces and slanders the state and government which does not." (The case De Libellis Famosis, Rep. iii. 254.)

When these doctrines were promulgated, the growing fiction of law had not so far ripened as to be applicable to pure enunciations of opinion on politics or religion. Strong expressions of political opinions, offensive to the government, were generally punished under the laws of high treason, as in the instance of Algernon Sidney, against whom the doctrines expressed in a manuscript paper found in his repositories, was the most effective evidence; and expressions deemed offensive to religion, if they were not reached by the statutes passed for the special protection of the Church of England, might be counted blasphemy, and so punished at common law. (See Blasphemy.) In the earlier cases in which the comparatively new law of libel was applied to public offences, it always rested on the statement at least of some private person having suffered an injury; and in the case of Sir Charles Smedley, prosecuted for one of the brutal acts of public profligacy for which the courtiers of Charles II.'s reign were notorious, some commentators have been at pains to show that there was an actual assault caused by his indecent exhibition, and that it was for having given occasion to that assault—not for the vague offence of outraging public decorum—that he was punished.

It was not until the case of Curl in 1728, that the fiction of the attack being made on some person, and therefore dangerous to the state, as an incentive to a breach of the peace, appears to have been dropped as tending to hamper the law. The prosecution in that case was for the publication of an indecent book, quendam turpem iniquum et obsecenum libellum, tending to corrupt the subjects of the realm. It was not the act in itself as immoral, but its tendency "to disturb the civil order of society," that was the ultimate reason for awarding punishment, which in this instance was the pillory. But there was still a difference of opinion on the bench on the competency of the common law to reach such cases, and Justice Fortescue said—"I own this is a great offence, but I know of no law by which we can punish it. Common law is common usage, and where there is no law there can be no transgression. At common law, drunkenness and cursing or swearing were not punishable, and yet I do not find the spiritual court took notice of them. This is but a general solicitation of chastity, and not indictable." (Strange's Reports, ii. 789.)

In this manner the law of libel came to comprehend a vast range of legal remedies, from the punishment inflicted on the public offender whose acts bordered on high treason, to the damages incurred for mere personal slander. The different degrees of the offence were in some measure classified by the form of procedure. A public libel might be prosecuted on indictment presented by a grand jury, or on official information by the Attorney-General. In other cases where the private wrong was maintained to be of a public and flagitious character, the nominal concurrence of the crown with the private prosecutor was obtained in the shape of an information by the master in the crown office in the Court of King's Bench. The two classes of actions,—the one really or nominally for a public offence, the other a mere action of damages for private injury,—came to be distinguished from each other in the important feature, whether the truth of the statement was or was not a vindication. It was held that in private actions the truth of the charges made in the published document complained of, might be proved for the purpose of showing that the prosecutor had suffered no harm, and was entitled to no damages. But in proceedings by indictment or information, evidence of the truth could not be received, because it could not affect the question professedly at issue, whether the publication was calculated to create a breach of the peace? And, indeed, it was a common exercise of jurisprudential ingenuity to maintain the paradox,—that the truth of the statements could be nothing but an aggravation of the libel, since the person who could not defend his character by the general good opinion of his fellow-citizens, or by a civil action, was all the more likely to punish his assailant by violence. The effect of such doctrines was, however, so far restrained in practice, that the Court of King's Bench would not, in the general case, grant an information for a libel to a person using that form of procedure in a prosecution virtually private, unless he made affidavit that he was innocent of the charge imputed to him.

A noted peculiarity of the English law of libel is its vagueness and uncertainty. Except from the very flagrancy of the matter, no one can tell whether certain expressions are or are not libellous, whether in a political or a private sense. It has thus been an arena in which the party for the time in power has used its strength in conflict with the party in opposition, and in which, sometimes, a popular opposition has found means of striking a blow against adherents of the government. This duality is in itself certainly an evil; but the great range which the law of libel takes in this country, is owing to one of the most valuable safeguards of the liberty of the press—the absence of a censorship. In countries where this restraint exists, the institution corresponding to our law of libel may occupy very narrow limits. If a work be published without the authority of the royal licenser, the presumption is against it; if it have received an imprimator, its innocence is already pronounced. It was the total absence of even a modified restraint of this character that made De Lolme search among the English law books for those laws which secured the liberty of the press, and feel puzzled by the discovery that the whole department was a blank. The censorship existed of old in this country as well as others, and its disappearance is materially connected with the history of the law of libel; hence the evils of this law have, in a great measure, been the compensation paid by the public for a relief from the greater evils of the licensing system.

When the power of the printing press became first manifest as a political engine, the various governments and powers throughout Europe seemed to think that it was as much their own, and as little to be freely used by individual citizens, as the military force. The freedom to print such works as the established government might not object to, was deemed rather a concession than a restraint. In the eighteenth century, even the authors of the Dictionnaire de Tronson, speak of it as an important element of superiority, that the Christian states license the printing of books, while in the Mohammedan they are not licensed but prohibited. The licensing power as a prerogative in the monarch was broken up in various ways in the European states. The ecclesiastical order claimed its own share for the papal hierarchy. Licensing powers were depated to universities and other corporations; and in countries like France, and the larger German states, works on science, or otherwise disconnected with politics or divinity, thus obtained a virtual exemption from minute examination. Censorship of the press exists to a greater or less degree in nearly all the European states. Its history in the British Empire is instructive. That printing ought to be exercised under the control and by the direction of the government, seems no more to have been doubted in England in the sixteenth century than in Spain or Austria. By the Reformation, the command of the press was more strongly concentrated in the crown of England than in that of any other kingdom, because it ceased to be divided,—the portion which belonged to the popedom, vesting, as part of his ecclesiastical supremacy, in Henry VIII. The Bible and other religious books were printed under letters patent. The use of print- ing presses was limited to the Company of Stationers, who were the servants of the government, subjected to strict regulation in the Star Chamber. "These regulations," says Hallam, "not only limited the number of presses and of men who should be employed on them, but subjected new publications to the previous inspection of a licenser" (Const. Hist. ch. xiii.). Even the Historiography, for which Prymne suffered, had been licensed; and it seemed to aggravate the wrath of the authorities, that, by his pertinacity in ever increasing the bulk of the unreadable mass as he sent it up to be licensed, Laud's chaplain, whose duty it was to examine it, permitted it, in despair, to pass without perusal. During the civil war there was a luxuriant profusion of controversial pamphlets; for either side launched the artillery of its press, as it employed its other forces, against its adversary. The Long Parliament did not scruple, by stern ordinances, to suppress dissent from its authority in the press within its reach. Immediately after the Restoration, the censorship of the press was established by a memorable statute. "The act for preventing abuses in printing seditious, treasonable, and unlicensed books and pamphlets, and for regulating of printing and of printing presses," commences with the preamble, "Whereas the well government and regulating of printers and printing presses, is matter of public care and of great concernment, especially considering that by the general licentiousness of late times, many evil disposed persons have been encouraged to print and sell heretical, schismatical, blasphemous, seditious, and treasonable books, pamphlets, and papers, and still do continue such their unlawful and exorbitant practice, to the high dishonour of Almighty God, the endangering the peace of these kingdoms, and raising a disaffection to his most excellent majesty and his government; for prevention whereof no surer means can be advised than by reducing and limiting the number of printing presses, and by ordering and settling the said art or mystery of printing by act of parliament." The act, though long and intricate, gives its essence in the short clause which provides that no private person shall print a book or pamphlet unless it be entered in the Register of the Stationers' Company; and "unless the same book and pamphlet, and also, all and every the titles, epistles, prefaces, proems, preambles, introductions, tables, dedications, and other matters and things thereunto annexed, or therewith to be imprinted, shall be first lawfully licensed and authorized to be printed by such person and persons only as shall be constituted and appointed to license the same."

This is followed by a classification of literature according to the licensers. At the head come "books concerning the common laws of this realm," which are placed under the Lord Chancellor, or the other heads of the law in the order of their rank. Books of history, the affairs of the realm, or matters of state generally, are to be licensed under the authority of the Secretary of State. The next class in the order of importance contains books of heraldry, which are to be licensed by the Earl Marshall or the Kings-at-Arms. Last in order are "all other books to be imprinted or reprinted, whether of divinity, physic, philosophy, or whatsoever other science or art," to be licensed by the Primate or the Bishop of London, or by one of the universities if the printing were to be at the university press.

The chief licenser appointed under the act was Roger L'Estrange, himself a celebrated pamphleteer and libeller. At the revolution he was, of course, superseded by a supporter of the new settlement. For the protection of that settlement, however, the House of Commons, ever on the watch for the promulgators of counter-revolutionary opinions, whom it punished for breach of privilege, was a better champion than any licenser; and at length the zeal and rivalry of the House in the performance of this function drove the licenser out of the field. In the year 1693 the office was held by Edmund Bohun. He was a Tory and High Churchman, but had argued himself, or professed to have argued himself, into a thorough support of the new dynasty, on the very peculiar ground that King William and Queen Mary were entitled to the throne by right of conquest. Charles Blount, an unscrupulous author, who hated him, laid a trap to ensnare him by means of his eccentric politics, and laid before him as licenser, a work called William and Mary Conquerors. It was cleverly adjusted so as not to be too flagrant for the licenser's sympathies, and yet to be flagrant enough to excite the revolution party to fury. The wrath of the House of Commons fell on Blount, and on his office. The licensing act was a temporary measure, renewable from time to time, and when the bill came up for renewal, two years afterwards, the Commons, by a special vote, struck it out of the list of the temporary acts to be continued. In a conference with the Lords, who desired to renew the act, they gave in a paper containing the reasons for their vote. "This paper," says Mr Macaulay, "completely vindicates the resolution to which the Commons had come. But it proves, at the same time, that they knew not what they were doing—what a revolution they were making—what a power they were calling into existence. They pointed out concisely, clearly, forcibly, and sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, the absurdities and inequalities of the statute which was about to expire. But all their objections will be found to relate to matters of detail. On the great question of principle—in the question whether the liberty of unlicensed printing be, on the whole, a blessing or a curse to society—not a word is said." The only vestiges now remaining of restraints on the press are the obligation on every printer to put his name on his book, an arrangement advocated by Milton in his plea for a free press; and the obligation on the proprietors of newspapers to register themselves, and to give bond for the payment of any penalties to which they may become amenable.

At several periods, and especially during the anti-revolutionary fervour created by events in France, the liberty of the press was threatened, and temporarily affected. The general principle, however, outlined all these dangers, and it was felt that in the present reign the law of libel might be safely stripped of some of its asperities. The law was regulated in 1843, by an act professing to be passed "for the better protection of private character, and for more effectually securing the liberty of the press" (6th & 7th Vict., c. 96). It gives weight to any apology or reparation which the utterer of a libel may have offered, and particularly, when it has appeared in a newspaper, to an apology published in the same manner. Libel had been excepted from those actions in which the defendant might pay into court the damages tendered by him; but by this act, when the absence of malice, and the publication of an apology are pleaded, the defendant may tender damages. On an indictment or information, the defendant is authorized to enter a general plea of not guilty; and it will be justified if he prove the truth of his statements, and that it was for the public benefit that they should have been published. This neutralizes the old principle, which refused to admit evidence of the truth when the trial was on indictment or information. As a partial protection to the editors of newspapers, the defendant might prove that the publication was made without his consent or knowledge. The act does not extend to Scotland; it was extended to Ireland in 1845.

In Scotland, the word libel, though used, as we have seen, to express a formal accusation, in the practice of the courts of law, was not indigenous in the sense in which it has been chiefly used in England. The law equivalent to that of political libel was, until lately, in a very unsatisfactory condition. Of old, it was called leasing-making, as the crime of falsely representing the conduct of governors towards the people. After the Union, this vernacular term dropped Liberia, out of use, and the nomenclature of the civil law supplied the word sedition in its stead. In the years 1793 and 1794, the vague character of the law enabled the government to carry out, in Scotland, severities which the strict barriers protecting the freedom of the subject at once checked in England. The punishments at that time inflicted on men, some of whom were merely pursuing such a course of free criticism on the practical condition of the constitution as all parties have in later times practised and encouraged, has received a general condemnation, which renders it unnecessary to recall the particulars of the several cases. Their most offensive feature was this, that sentences of transportation to the penal colony of New South Wales were passed, avowedly in the administration of old laws, adopted when Scotland had no colonies, and when transportation was impossible, although they doubtless sanctioned banishment, or the driving of the culprit out of the country. This vague character of the law, which, in a time of terror and excitement, had shown itself so liable to abuse, was corrected by statutes which imposed fine and imprisonment as the punishments of sedition.

Fortunately, of late years, the law of political libel has dwindled almost out of existence, as a disease in the vital frame disappears before progressive health and vitality. The reverberations of the great continental revolutions of 1848 did not pass over Britain without commotion; but the safety of the country was sufficiently secured by suppressing acts of violence without too curious an inquiry into the tendency of opinions. As to the law of private libel, both in England, where it grew, and in Scotland, to which jury trial virtually transplanted it, the width and vagueness of its character are the objects of continued complaint. Perhaps a means may be some day found of correcting this defect; but in the meantime, it must be viewed as the price paid for the liberty of the press and for freedom of discussion generally. It is quite true, that no lawyer can give a definition of libel as he can of theft or forgery; that, according to the general descriptions of a libel supplied by the law-books and the cases, there are many people every day unconsciously committing the offence; and that there are multitudes of whom it may be said, that they owe it not to their keeping within the law, but to the forbearance of their fellow-citizens, and that freedom from vindictiveness so honourable to the British character, that they are not attacked with prosecutions. But the answer to all this is, that the reliance is well bestowed. Every man is in the hands of the public, and in the long run they see fair dealing.

(Lib., p.)