suggest that Mr. Long is injuriously deprived of the privilege of proving the contents of the publication to be true, the question must be asked, could he under any state of circumstances, have adduced such proof. And as regards the question, how far it was for the public benefit, I shall emphatically, and I hope distinctly, state that you may take the whole matter into your consideration as to the real motive of Mr. Long, in publishing and circulating this Native drama. I think it right to make this observation, that, in my opinion, Mr. Long has difficulties to contend with in a criminal prosecution, which would not have been the case in a civil action.
His Lordship then proceeded to read seriatim the various passages referred to, commenting on them as bearing on the question of the absence of any other motive than the bona fide desire to enlighten and influence the public on a controversy in which he honestly believed the statements put forward. Adverting to that part of the pamphlet in which in the course of a dialogue in the drama, one of the parties is represented as saying of the wife of an Indigo planter, "She has no shame," &c, and to a passage in which the Magistrate of the district is suggested to be under the influence of the planter's wife in the decisions given by him in his Court. His Lordship said he approached the subject, as every man must, with sorrow and disgust. For although the defendant may not be criminally responsible for the publication of the book, the insinuation contained in this passage was one that ought not to be have been published by a clergyman. After reading and commenting on the passage, he said it was for the Jury to say whether it could bear any other interpretation than that suggested by Mr. Peterson, that the wives of the Indigo planters, of which the type was propounded in the drama, were persons who were in the habit of debasing themselves in the manner suggested for the purpose of forwarding the worldly interests of their husbands. It was urged that it only related to some exceptional instance, but the Jury would consider from the whole tenor of the pamphlet whether such were the case. Reading some of the passages in this book and the following passage in the author's preface: "I present the Indigo Planting Mirror to the Indigo planters' hands; now let every one of them having observed his face, erase the freckle of the stain of selfishness from his forehead." It was impossible
154
