unquestioned. Whether this was ill usage or not, we do not know. He was certainly entitled to form an opinion on the subject; and having formed an opinion that he had been ill used, he thought of applying to Parliament for redress. Lord Archibald Hamilton was at this time living at Hamilton Palace. He never saw Turner before; but Turner wrote to his Lordship, requesting him to present his petition. Lord Archibald Hamilton sent a verbal message, that he wished to see him on the subject. While Lord Archibald Hamilton was in Glasgow, and about to go to London, Turner called and saw him. Lord Archibald heard his story, and said, if it was a petition couched in language respectful to the House, it was his duty, as a member of Parliament, to present it to the House of Commons, and he accordingly agreed to present his petition. Now, you will observe, he had previously received only one letter from Turner, simply asking him to present that petition. When Lord Archibald Hamilton saw Turner, he found his story deserved attention. I believe another member of Parliament had been previously spoken to (Mr Maxwell), and that honourable member did not see any thing improper in the petition, or any thing improbable in the story; and he had also agreed to present the petition. But the fact to which we beg you will particularly attend, is, that Lord Archibald Hamilton had, at this time, received no letter from Turner, excepting the one asking him to present the petition; and this he agreed to do, only after he saw him in Glasgow. Some time after this, when the pursuer was in London, he received a letter from Turner, inclosing his petition, with a request that he would present it; and he received one other letter from Turner, asking him to delay presenting the petition; and the reason assigned for the delay was, that Mr Maxwell and some other members, to whom Turner had written, were not in town, but were to be there soon, when they would have an opportunity of supporting the petition. Lord Archibald thereupon saw Mr Maxwell, and agreed to the delay. The only letter Lord Archibald Hamilton ever wrote to Turner, was the following: Chapel Street, March 17. 1821. SIR,-In consequence of your letter of the 9th, I shall postpone presenting your petition till Mr Maxwell returns to London. You will therefore take care to see him, and give him all the information requisite upon your case. Your most obedient, &c. A. HAMILTON. That is all the correspondence the pursuer ever had with Turner. He wrote him one letter, agreeing to delay presenting his petition for a fortnight, and he received two letters from him. A delay of a fortnight accordingly took place; and it is material to observe what the pursuer did during this time. He held a petition, complaining of certain proceedings of the Magistrates of Glasgow,-perhaps of the Lord Advocate. The pursuer waited on the Lord Advocate, who was then in London. He said, Here is a petition which I think you ought to see before I present it. What time will you take for inquiring into the circumstances? His Lordship asked a fortnight. Lord Archibald then left the petition with the Lord Advocate. His Lordship himself gave it back to the pursuer at the end of a fortnight. The petition was presented to the House, when the Lord Advocate was in his place, and he heard all that was said upon it. These are the facts of the case. Now, keeping these facts in view, observe what the commentary made in this newspaper is: "We observe from the report of the proceedings on Wednesday, (that is the Parliamentary proceedings), that Lord Archibald Hamilton, in the dearth of subjects of political interest, has procured (from a person of the name of Turner) a petition, complaining of the arbitrary conduct of the Lord Advocate. It seems that this man was apprehended and imprisoned for a week, as a suspected person, last year, during the disturbances in the west country; and he now applies for compensation on account of the injury which his character has sustained. The means by which he has been induced to do this, are no doubt quite worthy of the noble correspondent of the Crail radicals and Strathaven traitors." We shall offer no commentary upon words which it is quite impossible for any commentary to aggravate. For writing one letter to Walker, and two to Wilson, and one to Turner, of the nature that will be proved to you, Lord Archibald Hamilton is here called," the correspondent of the Crail radicals and Strathaven traitors ;" and then he is accused of "procuring" a petition complaining of the arbitrary conduct of the Lord Advocate, by improper means. They go on thus: "And here Lord Archibald Hamilton has chosen his ground singularly ill; and, in doing so, has shewn, either the most lamentable ignorance of the public opinion, or the most extraordinary contempt of it. He ought to know that the conduct of the Lord Advocate at the time he alludes to, was such as has insured him the lasting gratitude of the country, and that it has never been called in question, except by the patrons or associates of crimes, which could not have been speedily subdued, except by the most remarkable union of firmness and lenity." We have no objection to your exercising your ingenuity, and stretching your charity, if that could possibly be applied here, to the defender; but what interpretation you can put upon these words, but that Lord Archibald Hamilton is here held forth as the patron and associate of crimes, which the Lord Advocate had put down, we cannot conceive. Then they go on to use words which make this passage less equivocal. The articles sets out thus: "The Lord Advocate and Lord Archibald Hamilton. We have not, for a long time, observed any thing more malicious and stupid than the petition presented by Lord Archibald Hamilton to the House of Commons in the name of James Turner, who was confined for a few days during last spring upon a charge of high treason. Every one knows how those petitions are got up. We shall not, therefore, insult our readers, by an attempt to prove, what all of them must know well enough, that this is in truth the complaint of Lord Archibald Hamilton himself. This noble person is already well known as one of the drudges of the Whig faction,-as the patron of burgh reform, and, in that character, the honoured correspondent of David Walker of the royal burgh of Crail, of whose powers of spelling and composition we lately gave a striking example.. But we could not have supposed the Noble Lord capable of going this length, or of so far degrading himself as to become the patron also of suspected patriots." tition, are calling in question the con- Then they sum up the whole in these terms: "He has been unceasing in his endeavours to bring himself into notice, and certainly not at all scrupulous as to the means of doing so." Those are the words upon which this action has been brought; and we have only to observe to you, that the defender has aggravated the guilt of publishing those words by every aggravation the case admits of. In the first place, he was challenged in due time for the using of that language; and, if he had then come forward with any apology or explanation, this action would, in all probability, never have been brought. But he refused an apology; and, on the contrary, did every thing in his power to aggravate the injury. If he ever tendered any apology, let him prove it; we cannot prove a negative; we state that he offered none. In the next place, when the action came into Court, his defence, as we shall show you, consists in broadly stating that the whole of those assertions are true. He says, in direct terms," he reserves his right to prove the truth of one and all of those statements, should that be necessary;" and he affects to be burning with a desire of having an opportunity of proving them. And, lastly, when he was asked, in the belief that he was the mere editor and publisher of the newspaper, who was the author of these libels, he has uniformly refused to tell. We do not know the author at this moment; and that, I state, is the last aggravation of which a printer, in any case, can be guilty. Lord Archibald Hamilton is a nobleman, a member of Parliament, a chairman of a committee appointed by the House of Commons; and the defender has called him almost directly a traitor. He has called him the patron of traitors, the associate of crimes, which the Lord Advocate put down a few years ago, in a season of great alarm. He has called him the procurer of a petition to Parliament, in a mean and disgraceful way, from those who did not petition. He is accused of inflaming the mind of the lower orders of the people; and all this it is alleged, he is, and has done for the sake merely of procuring popularity. Those words and statements, which were pointed out to you as having been applied to Lord Archibald Hamilton, are false, malicious and injurious. And, on the subject of the injury done to the pursuer, the defender will probably ask you this ingenious question, Has Lord Archibald Hamilton sustained a loss of L. 5, or even 5s. from those publications? Show us a profit and loss account, and then we will see how the balance stands. If any man had had the insolence to apply such language to any of you, you could not suffer any loss; for the more honest a man is, he will suffer the less from unfounded aspersions. One might call the bravest man in existence a liar, a scoundrel, a coward,— he would not suffer from such imputations; but if he did so, he would soon be put down. And yet, to say, that, because there is no suffering of pecuniary loss, there shall be no reparation for what is hurtful to the feelings, and destructive to the usefulness of a man's character, is absurd. Therefore, this is a case in which we TRIALS FOR LIBEL. ask damages, not for an actual loss, which we can state in pounds, shillings, and pence, but as a measure of retribution, which will show to the public at large that you have no sympathy or We deforgiveness for such writings. We demand damages, great and substantial, as due to the outraged feelings, and injured character, of Lord Archibald Hamilton. What you may be disposed to give we cannot tell; but no Jury will sit and hear such language, and be satisfied with a quibbling apology. We want no verdict here on political considerations. We appeal, with the greatest confidence, in a question of this kind, to such of you as may be of different political sentiments from those of his Lordship; for we never found any man who did not dislike this style of personal abuse, exactly in proportion as he combined a firm adherence to his Majesty's government with the character and feelings of a gentleman. The principles and characters of such men are insulted by saying," such are the writings that support your party." We therefore leave the case with you, and you will pause ere, by a verdict of light damages, you leave it to the country to conjecture what style of writings you approve of, as the free and fair discussion of the public conduct of public men. David Walker, Mrs Wilson, widow of the late James Wilson, Thomas Somerville, who had lived under the same roof, and been intimately acquainted with Wilson, and James Turner, were then examined, and severally deponed to the facts as narrated by Mr Cockburn. No witnesses being called for the defender, Mr Macneill rose and addressed the Jury in his behalf. He observed, that the defender never had any intention to cast imputations on the individual character of the noble pursuer; but as a public and political character, as the patron of burgh re form, he maintained that the pursuer The Lord Chief Commissioner then summed up the case, giving it as his opinion that the several issues were on the whole well founded, and that the remarks complained of were of a libellous description, particularly those relating to the case of Wilson and Turner; in which view, he was supported by his learned brothers on the bench; but stating, that as his Lordship had brought the action for the purpose of vindicating his character from the aspersions that had been thrown upon it, and had no vindictive feeling, he conceived they would regard the question of damages as one of very little consequence. His Lordship having concluded, the Jury retired for about half an hour, and, on their return, gave in their verdict by the mouth of Sir Robert Keith Dick, their Chancellor, unanimously finding for the pursuer on all the issues. -Damages, One shilling. N. B. As a verdict of one shilling in name of damages does not necessarily carry costs, this question came afterwards to be argued, when the Court, after hearing counsel on both sides, unanimously found the pursuer entitled to his full expenses. PROFESSOR JOHN LESLIE AGAINST WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, FOR A LIBEL IN "BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE." Jury Court, Edinburgh, July 22. This day came on the cause of John Leslie, Esq. Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, against Mr William Blackwood, bookseller in Edinburgh, for certain defamatory and libellous articles, which had appeared in different numbers of a certain periodical work called " Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine." This cause was founded upon the following issues: It being admitted that the pursuer is Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and that the defender is proprietor and publisher of a certain periodical work, called "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine;" and it being admitted, that the 35th number of the said work,'published by the defender at Edinburgh, on or about the month of February 1820, contains the following words and figures, viz. "LESLIE versus HEBREW, Dublin, Jan. 20. 1820. Mr Editor,—In a trifling composition 1 sent you some time ago, it was asserted that Professor Leslie had thought proper to pass a heavy censure on the Hebrew language, in his Philosophy of Arithmetic, though, as I added, it could be proved from his own writings, nay, from the very passage that contained the charge, that he is ignorant even of the alphabet of the language on which he thus presumed to offer an animadversion. The professional dictum alluded to is this: The Oriental nations appear generally to have represented the numbers as far as one thousand, by dividing their alphabet into three distinct classes; but the Hebrew, the rudest and poorest of all written languages, having only twenty-two letters, could advance no farther than 400; and to exhibit 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900, it had recourse to the clumsy expedient of addition, by joining 400 and 100, and 400 and 200, 400 and 300, 400 and 400, and 400 with 400 and 100."-Philosophy of Arithmetic, p. 218. The rudest and poorest of all written languages! By my troth, Mr John Leslie, these be bitter words; but the latter part of the sentence, by displaying the utter ignorance of the Professor, happily renders the railing of the former perfectly innocent. Indeed, so much ignorance and impertinence combined, will hardly be found in so short |