edition of this work: "The consequence of publishing in the papers calumnies uttered at some political or parish meeting may be most injurious to the person calumniated. The original slander may not be actionable per se, or the communication may be privileged, so that no action lies against the speaker; moreover, the meeting may have been thinly attended, and the audience may have known that the speaker was not worthy of credit. But it would be a terrible thing for the person defamed if such words could therefore be printed and published to all the world and remain in a permanent form recorded against him, without any remedy being permitted him for the injury caused by their extended circulation." (Kelly v. O'Malley and others, (1889) 6 Times L. R. at p. 64; and see ante, pp. 312, 351.)

This being the state of the law, public attention was forcibly called to the matter by the case of Purcell v. Sowler, which was decided in the Court of Appeal in February, 1877. There the defendant was the proprietor of the Manchester Courier, and he had published a report, which was admitted to be accurate, of the proceedings at a meeting of the board of guardians for the Altrincham Poor Law Union. At that meeting serious charges were made against the plaintiff, who was the medical officer of the union workhouse at Knutsford, of neglecting his duties, and refusing to attend pauper patients who needed his services. These charges proved to be utterly unfounded, and they were made in the absence of the plaintiff, and without any notice having been given him. Mr. Sowler's defence was that the matter was one of public interest, and that it was his duty to report what had actually occurred at that meeting for the information of the ratepayers. The jury, however, found a verdict for the plaintiff for forty shillings, which carried costs. Mr. Sowler appealed to the Divisional Court, but they upheld the verdict on the ground that the matter was not one of public interest at all. (See (1876) 1 C. P. D. 781.) Mr. Sowler appealed to the Court of Appeal, which differed from the Divisional Court on this point, and held that the administration of the poor law and the treatment of the paupers, in each union district, was clearly a matter of public interest in that locality. But the Court of Appeal held that, as the plaintiff was absent, and had had no notice of the charges made against him, the board of guardians ought not to have discussed the matter at that meeting, or at all events not while reporters were present in the room; and that, though reporters had been permitted to remain during the discussion, still the editor when reading over the report ought to have

exercised his discretion, and struck this portion out of the report; for it was obviously unfair to the plaintiff that such ex parte statements should be published in the local papers; and so the verdict was again upheld. ((1877) 2 C. P. D. 215.)

This case created considerable consternation in the newspaper world; and to it we mainly owe the Newspaper Libel Act of 1881. Here was a report, which was admitted to be accurate, of a discussion that had taken place on a matter of public interest at a meeting of a public body, and yet the proprietor of the newspaper must pay damages, because the editor had not cut out certain passages which in the opinion of the Court should not have been published. Proprietors of newspapers always contend, as Mr. Sowler did in this very case, that in the hurry of setting up the type for a daily paper it is practically impossible for the editor to read through the copy and weigh each word it contains; that he cannot be expected to edit the report of a public meeting and cut out passages which relate to matters of public interest, so as to make the report incomplete; that so long as the meeting is one that ought to be reported, and the report printed is fairly accurate, nothing more can be required. But this is a view which the legislature and the law courts have, so far, steadily refused to adopt; and the editor of a paper must edit the whole paper or his employers must take the consequences.

The public had their grievance too. There were formerly in force many statutes which facilitated the proof of the publication of any libel contained in a newspaper, and enabled the person libelled readily to discover the name and address of the person liable to him therefor. Such were the 10 Anne, c. 19; the 38 Geo. III. cc. 71 and 78; the 6 & 7 Will. IV., c. 76, &c. But these were all repealed: the last of them in 1870 by the 33 & 34 Vict. c. 99. And an instance occurred in which a father and two sons owned a paper in turns, and whichever one was sued was always able to prove that he had ceased to be owner and had transferred the paper to one of the others just before the libel in question had appeared; so that he was not liable. There was no objection on the part of the Press as a body to a simple method of registration such as the public required, to prevent such a subterfuge.

Accordingly, in 1879, Mr. Hutchinson moved for the appointment of a Select Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the law of newspaper libel. The Committee was appointed, but had not time to report before the close of the session. It

consisted of the then Attorney-General (Sir John Holker), Sir Henry James, Mr. Courtney, Mr. Staveley Hill, Mr. Alexander Sullivan, Baron Henry de Worms, Mr. Edward Leatham, Mr. Gregory, Mr. Blennerhassett, Mr. Floyer, Dr. Cameron, Mr. Richard Paget, Mr. Errington, Mr. Master, and Mr. Hutchinson. They were reappointed in 1880, and reported as follows on July 14, 1880:—

"Your Committee have not thought it necessary to call witnesses upon the matters referred to them. They have had the advantage of the evidence taken by the Select Committee of 1879, who, owing to the short time at their disposal, were unable to report, and your Committee are of opinion that, through the labours of the former Committee, sufficient information has been accumulated for the purposes of their inquiry.

"Your Committee have confined themselves to an examination of the state of the law affecting civil actions and criminal prosecutions for newspaper libel, and to the changes which, in their judgment, should be made therein.

"It appears to your Committee that one of the most important points of the subject referred to them is the question of extension of privilege to newspaper reports of the proceedings of public meetings.

Your Committee, after careful consideration, have come to the conclusion that the balance of convenience requires that further protection should be given to such reports.

"Your Committee accordingly recommend that any report published in any newspaper of the proceedings of a public meeting should be privileged, if such meeting was lawfully convened for a lawful purpose, and was open to the public, and if such report was fair and accurate, and published without malice, and if the publication of the matter complained of was for the public benefit. But your Committee are of opinion that such protection should not be available as a defence in any proceeding if the plaintiff or prosecutor can show that the defendant has refused to insert a reasonable letter, or statement of explanation or contradiction by or on behalf of such plaintiff or prosecutor.

"Your Committee recommend that no criminal prosecution shall be commenced against the proprietor, publisher, editor, or anyone responsible for the publication of a newspaper, for any libel published therein, without the fiat of the Attorney-General being first obtained.

"Your Committee are also of opinion that the name of every proprietor of a newspaper, or in the case of several persons engaged as partners in such proprietorship, the names of all such persons should be registered at the office of the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies, with full particulars of the addresses and occupation of all such persons, or of any change therein."

In the following year (1881) a Bill was accordingly introduced embodying the recommendations contained in the above report: it passed hurriedly through both Houses, without any adequate discussion in either; it received the Royal Assent on August 27th, 1881, and so became the Newspaper Libel and Registration Act, 1881, which is printed in full in the next Appendix, pp. 782-789. Baron Pollock has described this Act as "a sort of settlement

between the public on the one hand and newspaper proprietors on the other. On the one hand, proprietors of newspapers are to be registered; and on the other hand, they are protected by the Act from what the Legislature deemed to be not necessarily trivial, but improper or unnecessary prosecutions for libel." (Ex parte Hubert, Hurter & Son, (1883) 47 J. P. 724; 15 Cox, C. C. 166.) I think, however, the public got the best of the bargain. The public obtained a very valuable system of registration by which anyone can find out for a shilling who is responsible to him for any libel that has been printed in a paper. There are two defects, however, in the system at present. One is that, when a newspaper changes hands, there is no provision compelling the transferee to register himself as proprietor till the following July; the other, that where a newspaper is published by a limited company the Act does not apply, and there is no entry at Somerset House to assist the person libelled. (See note to sections 11 and 18, post, pp. 787, 789.) On the other hand, the newspaper proprietors procured some valuable amendments of the criminal law in their favour, and overruled the case of R. v. Sir Robert Carden, (1879) 5 Q. B. D. 1; but they signally failed to attain their chief object. The law relating to reports of public meetings remained practically unaltered. It is true that by sect. 2 of the Act such reports were declared privileged; but this privilege was very cautiously guarded by all manner of limitations. Still, it was something to have secured an admission of the principle that such reports under proper restrictions are privileged; it has proved to be "the thin end of the wedge," and some restrictions have already been removed. The section ran as follows: "Any report published in any newspaper of the proceedings of a public meeting shall be privileged, if such meeting was lawfully convened for a lawful purpose and open to the public, and if such report was fair and accurate, and published without malice, and if the publication of the matter complained of was for the public benefit; provided always that the protection intended to be afforded by this section shall not be available as a defence in any proceeding, if the plaintiff or prosecutor can show that the defendant had refused to insert, in the newspaper in which the report containing the matter complained of appeared, a reasonable letter or statement of explanation or contradiction by or on behalf of such plaintiff or prosecutor."

Hence, in order to bring himself within the protection afforded by this enactment, the defendant had to prove

(i.) That the meeting was a public meeting,

(ii.) Lawfully convened

(iii.) For a lawful purpose,

(iv.) And open to the public;

(v.) That the report was fair and accurate

(vi.) And published without malice,

(vii.) And that the publication of the matter complained of was for the public benefit;

(viii.) And, after proving all these facts, the defendant lost his privilege, if the plaintiff or prosecutor could show that the defendant had refused, when asked, to insert a reasonable letter of explanation or contradiction.

It was the seventh proviso, that the publication of the matter complained of must be for the public benefit, which rendered this provision practically nugatory. It was not enough for the defendant to prove that the meeting was of such a kind that its proceedings ought to be reported; the defendant had to satisfy the jury that it was for the public benefit that the libellous words complained of should have appeared in that report. If the jury thought that the report would have been as beneficial to the public without the libellous words as with them, all privilege was lost. The Manchester Courier was again to the fore. It reported a speech made at a public election meeting held at Manchester in October, 1885, in the course of which a speaker made a most serious charge against a Manchester gentleman who was then a candidate, not for any division of Manchester, but for a constituency 200 miles away. The editor, in spite of the decision in Purcell v. Sowler, allowed a full report of this speech to appear the next morning, though the gentleman libelled was not present at the meeting, and had had no notice of the attack that was going to be made against him. The Court held, on December 11th, 1886, that the defendant could claim no privilege, unless the jury found as a fact that it was for the public benefit that the actual libel complained of should be published broadcast. (Pankhurst v. Sowler, (1886) 3 Times L. R. 193.)

This decision gave great dissatisfaction to the Press; for it again asserted the principle that it was absolutely necessary for the editor to edit a report of a public meeting just as he would a letter from a private correspondent. It made it clear that the editor must not rely on the known accuracy of his reporter; he must read through the report and exercise his discretion as before. For it clearly is not for the public benefit that every word uttered at every public meeting should be printed and widely disseminated. For instance,