copies were sent in secret to the Bengal Secretariat. The mode of publication alone was sufficient to destroy the strongest conviction of the existence of an honest or rightful intention on the part of the writer. The very engine by which the libel was propagated, itself prevented the possibility of entertaining for a moment the thought that an honest intention could have existed in the mind of its promulgator. No, there was some hidden and invisible agent at work to libel the Christian population of this country, (and it was not to enlist the sympathies of the jury that he said so, for he saw among them a gentleman of another creed) and it was to vindicate their character that his clients had brought this matter into Court. He would prove the secret manner of the publication, and that the intention was worse than malicious. That invisible agent had caused a respectable community to be attacked in a manner that gave them no other opportunity of protecting their character from the imputations cast upon it by a gross and calumnious slander. He did not care if that invisible agent was in Court, nor if he was listening. He must know if that drama was propagated in England in the quarters where it was wished to be distributed, before it was known here, and if so, he must know if the Indigo planters were informed of the existence of such a production before notice was received from Lahore in the shape of an envelope enclosing a copy of this production. Whether such copy was sent by a Government servant or not, he would not now enquire; that formed the subject for another trial which he hoped would be instituted. If such secrecy had been maintained, he must assert that the intention of the writer of that drama could not have been to bring to light the truth, but must have been to calumniate a community without giving them an opportunity of vindication, or in other words, "to stab in the dark." He did not address the jury on behalf of his clients only, but on behalf of the whole Christian community. It was for the whole Christian population of British India that he stood there to accuse the defendant of being the writer and publisher of a gross and calumnious slander. Perhaps, too, he felt that he was one of that population and so might seem to sink the counsel in the client. From what could they find that the intention of the writer was a praiseworthy one? Did anything that could be gathered from the
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