Page:England's alarm!.djvu/50

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[ 46 ]

Dean, and all their coadjutors, who have marked him out for vengeance in vain.

The question of libel or no libel, or indeed the criminality of any paper, taken up as the former, being assumedly in the criminal court, though justly in the Jury, let us see then how far the Dialogue between a Gentleman and a Farmer is obnoxious to censure. The mere defect of the indictment on which the Dean of St. Asaph was arraigned and tried, having entitled him to an acquittal, the question of crime or no crime, as to the dialogue set out in it, never came before the court. And very fortunately for Lord Mansfield, who, in every other case between man and man, is celebrated for dispensing the most equitable justice, that very doctrine he seems peculiarly fond of, was reserved to be destroyed, until some future occasion shall again call forth the honest exertions of Mr. Erskine, to rescue a supposed libeller from the fangs of the law's exclusive consideration on his guilt, after a Jury have found the innocent fact of printing, or publishing, on

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