Page:Nil Durpan.djvu/141

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hold up or demonstrate any particular state of society by way of caricature. Where would our great satirists be unless this liberty were recognized; and what sensible man would object? None. Now for the author's preface. He would wish the Court to follow him and correct, if it considered necessary, any comments he might make. He called on the Jury who had no interest whatever on the production of indigo, to consider well the evidence which would be disclosed and in accordance with the oaths which they had taken to render strict and impartial justice. He would direct their attention specially with reference to the first count in the indictment to the following portion of the preface to this pamphlet:—

"The editors of two daily newspapers are filling their columns with your praises; and whatever other people may think, you never enjoy pleasure from it, since you know fully the reason of their so doing. What a surprising power of attraction silver has! The detestable Judas gave the great Preacher of the Christian religion, Jesus, into the hands of odious Pilate for the sake of thirty rupees; what wonder then, if the proprietors of two newspapers, becoming enslaved by the hope of gaining one thousand rupees, throw the poor helpless people of this land into the terrible grasp of your mouths."

Having in view the publisher and his calling, could there be anything more offensive from a teacher of Christianity to a Christian mind than the comparison with Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of our Saviour? And leaving the Christian element out of view, could anything be more offensive to all honourable feeling than the comparison of the sale of political freedom with the sale by the traitor for those thirty pieces of silver? Could anything be, to men of high feeling and sensitive honor, more likely to lead to parties taking the law into their own hands, when they were thus maligned as selling for so paltry a bribe, the cause of the weak, and singing the praises of those Indigo Planters, who, if this preface were anything but a libel, had cast an everlasting stain on the English name. But he must pass to the recital from the pamphlet, of the more prominent passages in which his clients were libelled by wholesale under the second count. Although he would occupy their time no longer than was necessary with the repulsive details of the charges brought directly, or insinuated, against the whole body of Indigo Planters,

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