provided they are free from defamation. Wrongs cannot be remedied, and rights cannot be preserved without the liberty of the Press.
Well, now, if Nil Durpan which is nothing more than a true exponent of native thoughts and feelings, were pronounced libellous, and its publisher condemned for a false charge, were not then, the Indigo Editors, who unjustly attacked the Government, the Missionaries, the Natives and in short, every supporter of a good cause, entitled to transportation, and even to still higher penalties?
The Harkaru who really acted like an impertinent Harkaru was surely deserving of great censure. A conference was held by the Missionaries of Calcutta, respecting Mr. Long. The Harkaru for the information of the British Public circulated the following misrepresentations:—
"It is said that at the Conference, there was great difference of opinion, some of the members having proposed to expel Mr. Long from their Association altogether; but the Rev. Chairman (Dr. Duff) with characteristic vehemence declaimed that if they did not pass the resolution, he would go home and preach the Martyrdom of St. Long in every village and hamlet in England and Scotland."
A letter from the Secretary of that Conference to the Editor of the Bengal Harkaru fully disproved the misstatements.
The public ought to consider whether Nil Durpan, or the Blue Journals, were libellous. We say libel in its strictest sense, not libel in the Supreme Court form of interpretation.
Factious zeal did so much prejudice the Judge during the Trial, that he was at a great difficulty to distinguish right from wrong, even to construe the proper meaning of the word libel. According to Sir M. Wells' interpretation of the word libel, any exposition of social, moral, and political evils, was a libel ; the practice of these evils was to be indulged without any check, and any man attempting to check them must be brought to the trial of a Court of Justice.
When Sir Mordaunt Lawson Wells first sat on the Judicial Bench of the Supreme Court, Sir M. Wells expressed a strong antipathy towards the natives, whom he declaimed as a nation of forgers and perjurers. For trivial offences he inflicted on them the severest punishments.
For instance, we cite the trial of the well known Mutty Baboo of Santipore. That he was really guilty, everybody knows, but not so much as to deserve the severe punishment
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