SPEAKING PLAINLY.

Evening Star, Issue 2923, 2 July 1872, Page 3

SPEAKING PLAINLY.

In tbc Supreme Court of Tasmania the proprietors of the Hobart Town Mercury have been sued by a member of the Legislature (before Mr Justice Dobson) for libel. The case is reported at length in the Tasmanian papers. The declaration set forth Adolphus Frederick Rooke sued John George Davies anti Charles Ellis Davies for that the defendants falsely and maliciously published of the plaintiff in the Mercury, a certain false, scandalous, malicious, and defamatory libel, containing, amongst j other things, the following words : —“We wish the member for East Devon (meaning the plaintiff) had stopped with his attempt to deny his own words. He would have saved us the unpleasant duty of telling him what, to a person not lost to all sense of shame, must be very unpleasant truths. The member for East Devon meaning the plaintiff) forgets what is due to Parliament, if not to himself, when to gratify his petty spite against tho member for Franklin (meaning thee said John Davies) he (meaning the plaintiff) avails himself of his privilege as a member of Parliament to wilfully and deliberately misrepresent this paper. In insinuating that the Mercury (meaning the newspaper belonging to the defendants) suppresses any portion of the proceedings of Parliament, Mr Eooke not only stated what he himself knew to be untrue, but he was reckless enough to commit himself in the presence

of a body of gentlemen, every one of whom knew that the speaker was deliberately, wilfully, and without the shadow of pretext for his words, violating the truth. Adolphus Frederick Rooko (meaning the plaintiff) now stands before the Parliament and Colony of Tasmaaia as so addle-patcd and obliquevisioned, that should he ever get the credit of seeing beyond bis nose, his vision is so transparently distorted and consequently his path so circuitous, that be proves a beacon not an example. Like the bully or cowardly assassin, himself afraid to fight his own quarrels, he degraded Parliament by making an absolete rule the means, as he thought, of punishing us (meaning that the plaintiff had acted as a bully, a coward, and an assassin towards the defendants.)” •* The reporters’ gallery was cleared, the strangers’ gallery was equally emptied of its occupants, even the Speakers’ gallery had to succumbto the wrath of Adolphus Frederick, who was left to hop and jerk about triumphantly on his perch, a thing even in his momentof victory of contempt and ridicule in the House as out of it, (meaning that the plaintiff was ridiculous? and contemptible to the members of the House of Assembly, of the Parliament of Tasmania, and to the public.)” Damages were laid at £SOO, The case was beard on the 29th and 3 )th of May, and resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff,—damages, £l5O,