wise dissimilar, for they all belonged to the Established Church, and that formed a bond of union between them. The case against the Directors of the East India Company was also different, for they were a corporate body, and any individual member might take to himself the libel on them all. A corporate body was entirely different from a body like the Indigo planters who had no collective existence, and if the Jury decided that a libel would lie in this case they would carry the Law further than it ever had been done before. Suppose now the policy-holders of Lower Bengal should prefer a complaint, the question would naturally arise who are they? As another illustration he would say, suppose the lawyers of Bengal were to prefer an indictment, would that term include Judges? He would be too sorry to say the Judges were no lawyers, which they were, and admirable ones. Would it include Barristers, Vakeels and Pleaders of the Small Cause Court? It would be most unsafe to sanction the preferring of a complaint by such a body. Further, he would ask why the Indigo planters of Upper Bengal had not been included as well as those of Lower Bengal. By the preferment of this indictment the Jury had been asked to do what no Jury had ever been asked to do before. Supposing the doors to be thus thrown open to litigation, why should not the ryots subscribe together and indict any editor or writer whom they might consider to have libelled them? A corporate body having a common interest had a right to come into the Court and prefer a complaint if they felt themselves aggrieved; but the learned Counsel entirely denied that right where parties were concerned who had no corporate existence.
His second ground for opposing the charge of libel was that the publication was a drama, and not a pamphlet, and by every principle of propriety, usage, and custom no other character but that of a fiction could be assigned to a drama. He could not deny that there were atrocious characters such as Wood and Rose, represented in the play, but the jury's dramatical experience would teach them that every play had its evil genius. Because a certain barrister, clergyman or merchant is a scoundrel of the deepest dye, is that a reason that all barristers, clergymen, and merchants are of the same stamp? It could not be denied that personages embodying half-a-dozen vices were introduced; but because one possesses
143
