of supposition, or by way of fable; but, there is no one that has dared to say what it thinks, though its thoughts are those of fourteen millions of people; and, what is more, there will not be one of these prints that will dare to ascribe the calamities and disgrace, which will inevitably follow the contempt of this national prayer, to the right cause; but, every one will again have recourse to hints and allusions and fables, or, not being bold enough for that, will hold its peace.Reader, is not this the real state of the press?I hold to my opinion, that nothing ought to be deemed libellous which is not false as well as malicious. If a man be a coward or a fool, he ought to be known for such. If he be an adulterer or a rogue, why should he not be called an adulterer, or a rogue? Why should not men be known for what they are? If the person described be an obscure individual, why, the exposure of him will reach but a small distance; and, if he be in a public capacity, the exposure ought to reach far and wide. Only make the publisher prove the truth of all his censorious words, and, I'll warrant that he takes care what he states. But, while truth as well as falsehood may be punished as a libel, writers will naturally endeavour, by insinuations, to obtain vengeance for the restrictions, under which they labour, and which are a continual thorn in their side. "I refrained from speaking even good "words, though it was pain and grief to "me." We all wish to speak our minds It is the great mark of distinction between slaves and freemen, that the latter dare utter their sentiments, when the former dare not.

SPANISH REVOLUTION.- -We have, I perceive, got on our side ALI MAHOMET, who, to show that he knows all," calls the French dogs, encourages the Spaniards to cut their throats, and to make them squeak like pigs under the hands of the butcher. What rare company we are got into at last! Well may it be said, that misery brings a man acquainted with strange bed fellows. We are fighting for liberty aided by the pious prayers of Ali Mahomet. I have often said, that Sir-Baalam, in order to keep off Buonaparté, would, if hard pushed, make a league with the devil; and, really, there seems to be but one more step to take. The Courier calls ALI's a very

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spirited proclamation!" What a shame, to confer words of approbation upon any thing so bloody and impious!- -I am greatly afraid, that this unreflecting rage against Napoleon is deceiving us all this while

The news from Spain continues to be good. There is a fan prospect of a good long contest, such as the vermin cannot survive. 1

shall have no hope from a short contest. In that case, the Bourbons would merely triumph over the Buonapartés, which would be of no service whatever to us, or to any part of the world. Joseph Buonaparte and the Grandees have, it seems, gotten to Madrid without the least interruption, and, I must say, that I look upon that as an unfavourable symptom; for, in the first place, he would not have gone without a considerable army, if the country had been in a state of general insurrection; and, in the next place, it was of vast importance to the patriots to intercept his march. If you look at the map, you will perceive, that, with a mere military escort, he has gone from the frontiers to the centre of Spain. This could not have been, if the accounts we sometime ago received had been true. If there had been, as was stated, 100,000 men in arms in Arragon, is it probable, that the new king, under an escort, would have quietly passed along the skirts of that province? No; and his reception upon the road as well as at Madrid, clearly shows, I think, that, besides the rascally nobility, he has a very powerful party in the king dom, and which party, if the contest te between him and the old rotten despotism, will, in my opinion, daily increase. Botley, August 5, 1808.

LETTER FROM SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS. RELATIVE TO THE CAUSE, CARR versu HOOD.

Sir;-The licentiousness of the tongue at the Bar, is so justly appreciated by the sen sible part of the public, that it ought not to excite any other emotion than contempt in him who at any time is the object of it. If a consequence of a signal instance of that licentiousness during a late Trial, I am in duced to take up my pen, I am actuated solely by a respect for your numerous intelligent readers, to whom you have favoured me with the honour of an introduction.

of

You must be too well acquainted with the artifices practised by anonymous writers, to be surprized at learning, that the report the late Trial between Carr and Hood, copied from a Newspaper into your last Register, was written by the very person whose pamphlet had been the object of that Trial! Hence you may readily account for the in consistencies of which the Plaintiff and bis Witnesses are by this reporter made guilty!

The words of every idle question of the Attorney General, are in this report gravely ascribed to me as the words of my Answers, and I am thus absurdly made to condemn all anonymous publication; * vaunt my own

The absurdity of this statement is ap

virtues; praise the purity of my own Books; and say other childish things which I neither said nor thought, and which in justice I beg leave to refer back to their real author! Indeed, the learning of the Bar on this occasion, shone RESPLENDENTLY, and we had perpetual references made to high sounding works which never existed, such as Milton's answer to Sir Robert Filmer, Aristotle's an swer to the works of Socrates, and Sir Isaac Newton's Controversy with Descartes !

Besides making the preceding general ex planation, I have to remark on one point of your own observations. You have obviously confounded two very different works, when you characterize as FALSE and SCANDALOUS a Publication of mine (many years out of print) entitled "Anecdotes of the Founders

of the French Republic." This book was published in 1797, and consisted of a grave, chronological account of the persons concerned in the then recent events in France. Its alledged faults, were that of praising many persons, who, it since appears, were unworthy of praise, and of omitting to abase others who were then obnoxious in this country. You, with others, have obviously confounded this work with one of very different character on the same subject, published within these two or three years by other booksellers, written by Stewarton, a French emigrant, and called the Revolutionary Plutarch. This work was unquestionably a disgrace to the press and character of the country, and it deserves the epithets with which you have inadvertently branded mine.

I am not disposed to enter the lists with you as a controversialist, but with respect to THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, I am persuaded we shall not ultimately disagree. I am a friend to criticism, and to the unrestrained publi cation of it, but I do not annex the same degree of authority to the writings of every man who sels up for a Critic. He who avows his criticisms, and who is consequently known to be, in other respects, a man of integrity and learning, obtains with me a very different degree of credit from an anonymous trader in criticism who writes in a Periodical Review, at a given price by the sheet! Still, I do not object to the free publication even of such criticisms, manu

parent; every bookseller is constantly in the practice of publishing unexceptionable anonymous works; but there is a wide difference between anonymous invective, or abuse directed against an author or his writings which CALLS FOR RESPONSIBILITY, and an anonymous statement of scientific or historical facts, or an anonymous discussion of abstract principles.

factured as they generally are under the direction of some interested Publisher; but I must be allowed not to surrender my judgment of literary productions to cris, who come before nie in so questionable a shape. He would truly be the greatest fool that ever trod the earth," who should submit his opinions to such influence. * Availing themselves of their concealment, it is well known to those who have been behind the scenes during the getting up of an anonymous review, that books are commonly reviewed by authors themselves-by rival authors in the same branch of literature-by the personal enemy of an author-or by the most corrupt and ignorant scribblers. t.

Attaching therefore no credit to such writings, is it to be wondered, that I do not waste my time in reading reviews?

And convinced as I am, that the abuse of, the critical art, arising out of the conceal ment of the critics, has discouraged and blighted the genius of the country, baffled the cause of truth and obstructed the progress of science, is it to be wondered that when questioned on this subject, I entered

These words and the alternative, that I had slipped in my testimony," were extravagantly applied to me by the Attorney General, for declaring that I did not read, and did not respect the opinions of an anoinfluenced in my negociations with an aunymous reviewer, and consequently was not thor, by the character of his works given in the reviews. I have no doubt that publishers in general entertain an equal cortempt of anonymous opinions of books, and I conceive there exists little difference of

opinion on the subject, among the intelligent part of the public-Every man of letters, and every person acquainted with the details of literature, will thank me for thus exposing a craft, the practices of which are as disgraceful and as pernicious as those of advertising money lenders. The craft may furiously assail me in return, but the cause I advocate, is THE CAUSE OF TRUTH, SCIENCE, AND LITERATURE!

This is not a personal question, and therefore it is of no consequence to its merits that I was myself concerned for about fourteen months, as a proprietor of the Oxford Review. Nothing however is conceded by the admission, because the Oxford Review was EXPRESSLY and AVOWEDLY in terms set up as AN EXPERIMENT, to try whether a review on totally opposite principles to those then in existence would succeed; and it filed, owing to its want of that severity of persenal attack which it appears is a principal recommendation of anonymous criticism.

my protest against so mischievous an usurpation, in matters of taste and literature?

In justice to the respectable character and honourable views of SIR JOHN CARR, I feel it incumbent on me to explain, that he did not found his late action on the pretended criticisms in the pamphlet of which he complained, but SOLELY and EXCLUSIVELY on the caricatures which had been introduced into it, and which it must be universally allowed are NOVEL and NOT VERY LEGITIMATE AUXILIARIES of GENUINE CRITICISM. I am, Sir, yours, &c.

R. PHILLIPS. Bridge Street, Aug. 4, 1808.

LIBEL LAWS.

SIR, In reading your remarks upon the late trial of the action of sir John Carr against Hood and Sharpe, booksellers in the Poultry, for publishing a book under the title of My Pocket-book," which is charged to be a libel upon the plaintiff'sir John Carr, by which his pecuniary interest, as a writer and seller of books to booksellers, is injured, and he is therefore intitled to a compensation from the defendants for the damage he has thereby sustained, you appear to me not to have been apprized of the dis tinction made in our courts of justice between those civil actions for libels in which the plaintiff seeks for a compensation for the injury or damage he has received from the libel, and the criminal proceedings in the cou t of King's Bench, or some other court of criminal judicature, carried on in the king's name either by an indictment of a grand jury, or by an information in the court of King's-Bench by the attorney-general, or by the master of the crown-office, (who is alsocalled the clerk of the crown in the King'sBench,) after a permission given him by the judges of the court to file, or enter, such information against the supposed libeller. In the proceeding by civil action the defendant is allowed to bring proof of the facts stated against the plaintiff in the libel; and, if he proves to the satisfaction of the jury that those facts are true, the jury ought to give their verdict for the defendant: and it is only in the criminal mode of proceeding that the defendant is not allowed to bring proof of the facts contained in the supposed libel, and that lord Mansfield declared, or is reported to have declared, " that the greater the truth of the libel, the greater "is the libel." And the ground of this opinion of his lordship was not "that the mental uneasiness felt by an innocent man upon reading a false charge made against him in a libel was greater than the uneasiness

felt by a guilty man upon reading a true charge made against him in a libel, or, ra ther, in a printed paper," but "that it was more likely to produce a breach of the peace;" the tendency to which mischievous consequence, is the whole and only foun dation of the jurisdiction of the court of King's-Bench to take cognizance of any published writing, whether true or false; it being the constant and indispensable conclusion of every indictment and information in the court of King's- Bench and in all other criminal courts, that the action charged to be done by the accused party is against the peace of our sovereign lord the king, his crown and dignity. And lord Mansfield thought that an innocent man was more likely to revenge, by a duel or some other act of violence, a false charge made against him in a published paper than a man who was conscious that the charge was true, and would therefore become only more known to the public, and consequently more detrimental to his interest and reputation, by any attempts he should make to reset the publication of it. However, I believe you are warranted in asserting that even in in. dictments and informations for libels it was formerly the practice to alledge that the libels were false, as well as scandalous and malicious and I have been informed that the first attorney-general who ventured to leave out the word false in an information for a libel was the late sir Fletcher Norton, about the year 1764. But, whether his successors in that office have followed his example and omitted the word false in the informations for libels which they have thought fit to bring, or not, I do not know: but it may, perhaps, be worth while to inquire. I must own that I wish they may not have followed his example, but may have again inserted the word false in their informations, and even that it may be de claved, either by a solemn decision of the court of King's-bench, or by an act of par liament, to be necessary so to do, to make the information, or indictment valid. For I agree with you in thinking" that false hood formerly was, and still ought to be, sentint as the groundwork of the charge."

I will further observe that, when the word false was inserted in these informa tions, it was the usual practice of judges to refuse to permit the defendents to bring evidence to prove the truth of the facts alledged in the supposed libels, be cause they said the published paper night be a libel, or punishable publication, even if the facts contained in it should be true, But this reasoning of the judges does not ap❤