The libel concluded thus : " Yes, you are an incontrovertible proof that priests may fall and. friars break their vows. You are your own witness, but while you need not go out of yourself for your argument, neither are you able. With you the argument be gins, with you too it ends. The beginning and the ending, you are both. When you have shown yourself you have done your worst and your all : You leave your sting in the wound; you cannot lay the golden eggs, for you are already dead." When Dr. Newman's lecture was published, Dr. Achilli obtained leave from the Court of Queen's Bench to file a criminal information against the publishers Messrs. Burns & Lam bert. Newman at once admitted, however, that he was the author of the libel, and his name was, by leave of the Court, substituted for that of the original defendants. Prior to the statute 6 &. 7 Vict. c. 96 s. 6 there ex isted a strange anomaly in the English law of libel. If the party libelled proceeded by action it was competent to the defendant to plead that the alleged libel was true; and if this plea was established, it constituted a complete justification. On the other hand, if the party libelled chose to proceed erim inally by indictment or information, the plea ofjustification was inadmissible. The ground for such proceeding was that the publication of a libel tended to produce a breach of the peace, and it was obvious that this result was not less likely to follow where the libel was true than where it was false. This gave rise to the common saying, "The greater the truth, the greater the libel." In 1843, how ever, at the instance of Lord Campbell, who himself presided at the trial of Dr. Newman, an act was passed (6 & 7 Vict. c. 96) enab ling the defendant in a criminal prosecution for libel to plead justification, i. e. that the libel was true in substance and in fact, and that its promulgation was for the public benefit. Newman availed himself of this privilege, set up a plea of justification, containing twenty-three distinct charges against the
prosecutor, gave ample particulars and un dertook to prove them. The case came on for trial before Lord Campbell and a special jury on June 21, 1852. The AttorneyGeneral (Sir Frederick Thesiger), the Soli citor-General, and Mr. T. F. Ellis, joint author of the famous Ellis and Blackburn Reports, appeared for the Crown, Sir. A. E. Cockburn, Mr. Serjeant Wilkins, Mr. (after ward Lord) Bramwall, Mr. Addison and Mr. Badeley for the defendant. The AttorneyGeneral opened the case for the prosecutor in a short and colorless address, in which he pledged himself to call Dr. Achilli as a witness after the evidence for the defendant had been given. Cockburn then opened the case for the defendant in his best style. His address is a masterpiece of persuasive exposition and deserves the careful perusal of every student of law. An imposing body of evidence was then produced. Some of the defendant's charges were left entirely unsupported. Others were not proved. But several of the gravest of them were backed up by witnesses whose testimony appears to us to have remained quite unshaken by cross-examination. Eleana Giustini, nee Valente, swore that Achilli had seduced her in the Dominican Convent at Viterbo. It was, however, elicited from her in cross-ex amination (a) that for twenty years she had concealed this alleged fact from every one but her confessor, and (b), that her curate had earnestly advised her to come to Eng land " for the glory of God and the honor of Holy Mother Church." Sophia Maria Balisano, nee Principe, and her mother Gaetana Principe, had a similar story to tell. Neither of these witnesses was broken down in cross-examination, and it was clear that complaints against Achilli had been made by them at the time. Then there was a good deal of evidence as to a suspicious meeting in the dark between Dr. Achilli and the wife of a tailor at Corfu. But it fell short of proof, in spite of some unfortu nate contradictions in the stories about it
