materials in the way of arranging and simplifying the law. When the recently incorporated Institute of Journalists has acquired strength and experience enough, it will, we trust, take steps to ensure at any rate the passing of a consistent and comprehensive Libel and Registration Act. For some such attempt the present writers have made a modest endeavour to clear the way. Their handbook will, they hope, be found comprehensible, not merely by lawyers, but by journalists, for they are inclined to agree with Sir Frederick Pollock in the belief that "it is possible to put within every man's reach, not indeed a full knowledge, but a knowledge, clear, sound, and exact, as far as it goes, of the laws he lives under and has to do with in his own daily business." If the authors have, in their own department, succeeded in approaching even within a measurable distance of that goal, they will have attained their object. LAW OF THE PRESS. PART I. CHAPTER I. REGISTRATION. In order that a newspaper may be rendered directly amenable, civilly and criminally, for any violation of the law, it is requisite first of all to provide a ready method of ascertaining and proving who is responsible for its publication. Various Acts have been passed from time to time with the object of fixing responsibility by means of registration, imprints, and so forth, and as any infringement of these enactments renders the proprietors, publishers, or printers, as the case may be, liable to heavy penalties, it is necessary to be thoroughly acquainted with their provisions. Vict. c. 60. REGISTRATION.-The law with regard to registration now depends on the Newspaper Libel and Registration 44 & 45 Act of 1881. For twelve years absolute anarchy had prevailed in this matter, the old Registration Act of 38 Geo. 3, 1798 having been repealed by the Act of 1869, and no substitute provided. In consequence of the state of affairs Vict. c. 24. disclosed before the Select Committee on the Law of Libel which sat in 1879, charged, among other things, B c. 78. 32 & 33 Sect. 19. Sect. 1. "to inquire into the means of rendering proprietors and publishers of newspapers and journals responsible civilly and criminally for libels contained therein," the Act of 1881 was passed. This Act extends to Ireland, but not to Scotland, and it does not, so far as registration is concerned, apply to newspapers owned by joint stock companies. DEFINITION OF "NEWSPAPER."-For the -For the purposes of the Act a newspaper is defined as " any paper containing public news, intelligence, or occurrences, or any remarks or observations therein printed for sale, and published in England or Ireland periodically, or in parts or numbers at intervals not exceeding twenty-six days." And further, "any paper printed in order to be dispersed and made public weekly or oftener, or at intervals not exceeding twenty-six days, containing only or principally advertisements." Two things are to be carefully noted about these two definitions. In the first place, a large number of magazines, story-papers, papers composed of scraps of miscellaneous reading, and the like, are not "newspapers under the Libel and Registration Act, 1881, or the Law of Libel Amendment Act, 1888, no matter at what intervals they appear, and are therefore under no obligation to register under the Act, nor can they claim the protection afforded by the Act; and in the second place, many purely business publications, such as a tradesman's, stockbroker's, or publisher's circular, or a theatrical programme, or bill of the play, containing "only or principally advertisements," might be held to be " newspapers," and subject to registration and to all the penalties for omission or evasion of that duty, if they are "printed in order to be dispersed at intervals not exceeding twentysix days." MODE OF REGISTRATION.-The registration of newspapers is placed by the Act under the direction of the Board of Trade, the "registrar" being defined as, in Sect. 1. England, "the registrar for the time being of joint stock companies,” and in Ireland, " the assistant-registrar for the time being of joint stock companies," or such other person in either country as the Board of Trade may for the time being appoint. At present the place of registration for England is Somerset House, in London (Room 7), and for Ireland the Dublin Custom House. To put the requirements of the Act into something like order, it is necessary to turn first to sect. 9, which is as follows: It shall be the duty of the printers and publishers for Sect. 9. the time being of every newspaper to make or cause to be made to the Registry Office, on or before the thirty-first of July, 1881, and thereafter annually in the month of July in every year, a return of the following particulars-that is to say; (a) The title of a newspaper; (b) The names of all the proprietors of such newspaper, together with their respective occupations, places of business (if any), and places of residence. The most serious defect in this very clumsily-worded section is that no provision is made in it for the immediate registration of a newspaper whose first number appears in any other month than July. A newspaper started in August or September may be regularly published for nearly a year before any necessity for registration arises under the Act. This is an especially serious omission in the case of newspapers published in Ireland, since the imprint and similar Acts do not extend Sect. 11. to that country. So far from being remedied by other provisions of the Act, this defect is only aggravated— indeed, the 11th section seems specially designed for the purpose of enabling newspaper proprietors to avoid the Act. That section runs as follows: Any party to a transfer or transmission or dealing with any share of or interest in any newspaper, whereby any person ceases to be a proprietor, or any new proprietor is inSee Appen- troduced, may at any time make or cause to be made at the Registry Office a return according to schedule B, hereunto annexed. dix. It will be observed that, under this enactment, in the event of a change in the ownership of a newspaper, the registration of the transaction is not compulsory on either the old proprietor or the new one. The effect of this is to a large extent to render the whole system of registration useless. Though in ordinary cases a regard for their own interests will doubtlessly induce both old and new proprietor to see that the transfer is duly registered, yet in some cases ulterior considerations may lead them to neglect to do so. In this case the register is misleading. The victim of a libel may, after he has brought his action or proceeded with his indictment, and incurred heavy expense, find himself defeated by the registered proprietor proving that before the date of the libel he had ceased to be proprietor. This contingency may be partially guarded against in a civil action by means of interrogatories, but in criminal proceedings there is no such protection.* * As will be seen, the French law of 1881, which was discussed almost pari passu with the English Act, provides for this difficulty in a couple of lines. "Toute mutation dans les conditions ci-dessus énumérées sera déclarée dans les cinq jours qui suivront." Loi du 29 Juillet, 1881, sur la Liberté de la Presse. Article 7. |