Page:Nil Durpan.djvu/149

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of the Indigo dye among them, there was not one of them, interested in its cultivation, their sympathies would not there-fore be enlisted on the side of his clients, yet he felt confident that they could come to no other conclusion than that the defendant was the publisher and promulgator of a gross and calumnious libel, and the learned Counsel would be content to leave him to the mercy which was a well-known attribute of that Court.

He was sorry that he could go no further into the subject; he was but faintly doing his duty, he felt that no words of his could sufficiently portray the consequences of that libel if allowed to remain unheeded and uncontradicted. If that reckless slander had been promulgated among the warlike tribes of the North-West, it must have inevitably led to the extermination of the Europeans. It was just and right to attribute the disturbed state of the country to a set of slanderers, who would effect, (if allowed to remain unpunished) by a forced combination of the Natives, what the Bengalees have never been able to effect, the ejectment of the Europeans. Would natives come and offer their labour if they believed they would be compelled to take advances, ill-treated, ruined and their daughters violated? He shuddered in contemplating the consequences of that libel. If distributed in the bazars, if spread through villages, future generations would point to the rule of the English as more pregnant of evils than the sway of Mahratta horde or Moslem host. These were among the serious and dangerous consequences of that libel which had been but feebly portrayed. He would sit down in the entire confidence that the Jury would come to no other conclusion than that demanded by Truth and Justice, and necessary for the vindication of the character of his clients.

Clement Henry Manuel, examined by Mr. Cowie, stated that he was proprietor of the Calcutta Printing and Publishing Press, and printed the Nil Durpan in April or May last, under orders received from Mr. Long in person. He sent portions of manuscript from time to time. Received direction from defendant to print five hundred copies which were struck off, and sent to Mr. Long's house. That was the way he generally did business. He was not a publisher, but only a printer. The manuscripts were returned to the defendant with the proof sheets. He did not know what became of the printed copies after he sent them to the defendant. He had charged nearly Rs. 300 for printing,

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