SCANDAL AND LIBEL.

Dunstan Times, Issue 410, 25 February 1870, Page 3 (Supplement)

SCANDAL AND LIBEL.

At the risk of advertising a most disreputable enterprise, we (Newcastle Journal) can scarcely forbear taking notice of an attempt to introduce what is happily as yet a novelty in English journalism. Most people know something of the Queen's Messenger. Within the last few days, there has been circulated copies of a prospectus of a new paper to be entitled the Plain Speaker, which is to be conducted by the same editor and contributors as the Queen's Messenger, Tho circumstances which justify the publication of the Plain Speaker are, aocording to tho prospectus, frightful enough. "We have, it says, "a Bham monarchy," "a sham Constitution," "sham cabinets and changes of cabinets." "We have sham peers of the realm who form nominally a high oourt of appeals, a real company of convicted forgers, midnight way-layers, fraudulent bankrupts, black legs, carpet officers, collegians, schoolboys, and children in arms." " All real power in every department of Church and State has passed to Biminists, official trade unionists, hired dilators, and professional jobbers." "It has been proved to demonstration that our principal publio departments are nests of thieves." "The great trusts and offices of the kingdom are sold." "Our very wars are jobbed." With pages more of this sort of stuff, the purpose of the projected journal is announced. It is to be a " fearless, incorruptible exponent of legal and official abuses." The "incorruptible" Plain Speaker, it will be readily surmised by any who have read thus far, must be counting upon immunity from the libel laws. "By reason of the extreme dangjr of publishing the Queen's Messenger against this crafty combination of adverse interests—it will be printed simultaneously by a private press in three different places." "All manuscripts sent to the editor will be copied and destroyed," &o. &o. In short, as will be seen, this-is an attempt to do something very torrifio in the way of slander and sensation—a stupid as well as a disreputable attempt. Like the ordinary run of Holywoll-street literature, the " incorruptible " Plain Speaker will utter itr slanders and tell its lies, to bring in, if possible, a little money to its needy projectors. Does the incorraptiblo individual who proposes to scarify all official creation for a moderate subscription, paid in advance, not perceive that his effusions will only take rank with anonymous letters, and other contemptible shreds of literary offal ? Libels uttered in the dark are attacks on the defenceless, and can only bo regarded as the ooinage of cowards. We apprehend, therefore, that the projeotod Plain Speaker will meet precisely with the welcome it deserves.