SENTENCE ON THE REV. DR. LANG FOR LIBEL.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 535, 31 May 1851, Page 3

SENTENCE ON THE REV. DR. LANG FOR LIBEL.

Supremb Court, Sydney, April 25. The Chief Justici: said,— John Dunmore Lang. You are now to receive the •f ntence of the Court, for the offence of which a Special Jury of the country have found you guilty. The nature of that offence, and the circumstances accompanying it, have bren fully detailed in the report made by me to my brethren, and which you have heard read. The court has subsequently heard all that you have thought nerenary to address to vi, in mitigation of punishment ; and we have considered the various topic*, urged by you, in reference to that question— which ha» to be determined on a calm review of all the facts before us, as they affect not merely tbt injured party, the prosecutor,'but the interest! of the community. For this, it mum be borne in mind, is a criminul prosecution ; the offence hai been committed, in the language of the indictment, against the peace of the fcueen •, and punishment is to be awarded, in this, at in every other caie of misdemeanour, in order to protect not alone a partifi^lar, individual Ibut society at target which is injured through thf individual. The making of the Hpology to Mr. Icely, therefore, upon which yon io much relied in extenuation, though a circumstance not to be disregarded, it not a matter of io much weight, at it would have been in an action (pr damige» brought by him. Ths distinction was obvious y in the mind of the Legislature, when it passed' the late enactments on the subject of libel : for an apology, under thoie enactments, can be givrn in evidence in actions only, and not in criminal proceedings. We have, however, taken the fact of an apology having been offered into our consideration; and it appears to us, most clc rly, than we can give very little effect to it. The libel here charged the prosecutor, at a Member of Council, with unconirientiousneu ; with voting in tb»t station and character, and on a question, too, involving the reputation and honor of another member, in utter disregard of the just decision to the question, motives only of subserviency to the Government, to whow the persecution of that Member was agreeable. No ingenuity can persuade any man of common understanding, in whom the moral *ense and perceptions have not been blunted or destroyed, that •uch a charge is not one of the most serious nature. A legislator capable of such conduct, would be most unworthy of hit position ; and, if |U«Hy of it, could only be characterised, justly, as dishonorable. Now, in respect of this grave charge, you have offered no apology. Fur from this, you have repeated the accusation and adhered to it, equally in your observations at the Police Office, as reported by yourself, and in the very apology to which you refer us So that, for thii portion of the libel, at any rate, there is no offered reparation whatever ; but the reverse. l Then, as to the other portion of your charges. You accuse* on your own responsibility, one of your fellowiubjecjt of a gross and scandalous fraud ; of oppre*. sionand cvei reaching ; and of having, by that conduct, broken his victim's heart* You denouuee him to MVtriendiV hi* family, and the world, as a thief and a swindler,— and this, in terms wot to be mistaken. You expressly declare him to be on a level, in ill justice and equity, with the transported ftlon ; and represent him as confessing, in conscious guilt, that he ought to have been sent to the colony in irons. And whea, happily for him, it turns out that the docu. men<s have not been destroyed or Tost, on which the proof of his innocence depended, and he has instituted a prosecution against you, and shown inconteit'bly the falsehood of your accusation, you publish a cold expression of regret for your conduct— and suppose ihat this is* at once, to cancel the deep injury which you have done him t to undo the mischief of such charges, circuited in eveiy quarter where you may possess influence, ami to arrest and paralyse the arm of that justice, which, in hit own defence, he has invoked against you ! I say, a cold expression of regret. Sincere and deep regret, you call it, for "an unintentional wrong." That is all ; and even this, accompanied by expressions, which show how little the desire existed, to heal the wound* inflicted by you. Your opinion of Mr; Icely'i vote b reiterated ; the utter falsehood of your cbgrges respecting the Midas, though implied, is no where distinctly acknowledged; you even excuse yourself, by asserting that you had heard them from persons considered worthy of creditj, while in the »arne sheet, and almost in the same column, his protection is ridiculed as a»' purely Government concern," and the calumnies you had propogated are spoken of, as merely a " too free use oi his name." There may be persons in this community, (it appears from what I witnessed and heard, at and immediately after your trial, that there are such persons,) who think lightly of such things; who conceive that to sta& character, and wound the feelings, in the tenderesl and most vital point, it but a small offemce $ that to be convicted of a malicious and outrageous libel, falie in every part of it, is a triumph and an honor. But, to those who have character and prize it, who respect the laws, and have little sympathy with those who violate" them, far other views of your conduct, your duties, and your position, will present themseWes. You ask credit for having intended no evil, when without trial, wihout evidence, without inquiry, you pronounced the prosecutor in this case a villain ; and, by publishing that he was so, inflicted at once upon him an injury, which, we all know from experience, is often irremediable. And yet you scrupled not to deny the same credit to him, when you accused him of nnconscientiousness, in pronouncing • verdict against you, in the discharge of a duty imposed upon him ai a

Ifgiklator, on a charge which certainly he did not prei fer, and on which, according to your own admission, you were as certainly previously heard. Surely, there it in this as little justice, ts there is charity. And yet you deem it hard, that a few words of expressed regret,"after proceedings commenced against you for the accumulated slander, tuch an 1 have described, should not exempt you from penal consequences. Mr. Icely, you urged to the Jury, because he wai unconscientious, did not come into Court with clean liandv That is to say, he should have borne your itnpntationi, and was entitled to no protection from the laws, because, knowing of no ground on which to convict you of fraud, be nevertheless did to. This, assuredly, is a singular mode of defence. It is to excuse or extenuate one slander, by persisting it) and relying on another. For, if it be not permitted to you infallibly lo judge of motive?, or accuse tnd condemn without testimony, it will be impossible for you to establish that Mr. Icely, whether right or wrong in the vote he gave, did not set uprightly in giving it ; and, if be did so, you are tben only a double slanderer—the lesi excusable, as for this at least you adduce no rumour, and offer to this hour no retractation. Let us consider, however, what degree of excuse the rumours you sought to establish, with respect to the Midas, t* ill afford you. Simply none. You proved the existence of no rumour, nor the semblance of one, to the effect of your own calumy. The utmost which the worst rumour amounted to, if Mr. Robert Cooper's rcemory was correct, was this ; that Mr. Icely bad procured the sale to himself, by harshly pressing the vendor for money which he knew he could not pay, and l hen by seizing the vessel. And this would have been bad enough. But you,- by yonr libel, imputed to Mr. Icely, not as a rumour, but as a matter of fact, that there was no sale at all; that he cruelly pressed Mr. Underwood, no doubt ; but that his machination! terminated in a mere assignment for the payment of creditors ; a trust, which you say he shamelessly vio-lated-—thereby committing a crime, worthy of transportation and irons. And all this turns out, rumour and invention alike, (we do not say that yon inven'ed anything, but only that you are as much responsible, under such circutnstance*. as if you hid,) all of this, I say, now turns out to be utterly false, and without foundation. Had it been true, and tupposiug the publication of such matter to be beneficial to the community, you might have p'eaded and shown that it was so. You were allowed to go into evidence, even, of rumours as to the matter. But you failed. And, supposing that you had succeeded, in what degree could we have said thot you had thereby mitigated your offence ? Unless we conld think that he commits a very little crime, who rakes up the athei of some foul calumny, long since consigned to the tomb, and forgotten, and gives again to it substance, and shape, end life, and vigour — and then, with the added wingn afforded by the PreES, sends the revived scandal forth, to scatter its venom, in plares and among persom which the original never reached, and where otherwise no one would have heard of its existence. But he who propagates a calumny, which he does not know and has not ascertained to be true, commits under any circumstances an offence justly punishable, whether we regard the mischief done to the slandered individual only, or to the society at large in which he lives. And, if the calumny be wholly false, ashere, and pub" luhed without due investigation, and an honest effort previously to ascertain tbe truth, tbe offender must look well to it, that he do not incur a heavier condemnation, than any which can be adjudged' against him by a human tribunal, What other matter of excuse ie offered ? That you believed these foul accusations to be true ; that you believed them, from the time you first heard them, (that is as you nay six and twenty years ago,) and have never since heard them contradicted— as if he, who perhaps never knew of them, could contradict without the opportunity being afforded him. And, 'before that opportunity is given, the slandered iudividual, in so far as his reputation depended on you, is ruined, or injured beyond retiieraL Now, it is impossible to read your own articles, wi'bout discovering the motive* which have induced these charges. We attribute to you nothing of ourselves : we judge by avowals of your own. In your paper of the 15th Jan., you state your determination to eive the rascals who voted against you no quarter. In the following number, of 22nd Jan , you accordingly commence; and you tell tbe public that theie gentlemen are forthwith to be exhibited, for the public amusement, in what you most appropriately term your literary pillory. On the sth Feb., the prosecutor comes in for his turn ; his place on your instrument of torture. And, that there might be no mistake, as to the cause of Urn punishment, inflicted on one whom you thus condemn, alike without warrant and without inquiry, and punish without trial and without a hearing, you gav«j the cause in the version of your own address, «s delivered at the Police Office. You say, that the intelligence was obtained twenty-six years ago, from persons of character in Syd« ney ; and that you had no reason, till then to doubt the veracity of your infomiant. But, you add, you had never previously been brought into collision with Mr. Icely ; and, " as a matter of course," tbe transaction wai no business of yours— it was not your province to vindicate public morals 1 But, wheu you had become branded with a charge of fraud, (that i» by Mr, Icely, and the other M<mbers with whom he had voted,) you thought it necessary io refresh your memory ! So that, by your own admission, your motive was, to say the least, personal merely ;— not to ezpoae delinquency,— not to vindicate public naora's,— »but purely because you thought you could serve yourself, by blackening the characters of those who had opposed jou. This, then, is your offence ; and these are the circumstauces under which it was committed, and these the sup* posed extenuations, and matters in mitigation, which attend it. You have erected, for the public amusement, (let me hope, for that only of the unthinking and the vulgar,) an instrument of torture, named by you after one, which, for its cruelty, the Parliament of Great Eritian has abolished even ior, peijury, but on, which you exhibit, at your own will aud pleasure, to be gazed at and reviled by the crowds, all and sundry whom it suits your purpose, for so' you distinctly avow, there to punish for offences against you. Aad those, whom the pain and suffering of these men have amused, may render you, if they will, their homage in return. But the law, nevertheless, which you bave outraged, will be vindicated ; and, notwithstanding the demonstrations which I have witnessed, throughout the proceedings in your case, and which assuredly will not awa any one of us, in the discharge of his duty, this Court has the power, and the determination, to vindicate it effectually. Tbe sentence ef the Court upon you John Dunmore Lang is, that you be imprisoned in Her Majesty's G*ol in Parramßtta for »he term of Four Calendar Months— and that you pay to Her Majesty the sum of one hundred pounds ; and be further imprisoned until that sum shall have been paid. This sentence will be entered, on the first Count of the Information ; and on the second Count we direct thnt you be 'imprisoned in the same Gaol for the same period ; to commence and expire, with the former terra of imprisonment.

Wings of Wire.-—The mysteiy, the secret of the electric telegraph, is pimply tins. Two handle* served to brcrik and to re-unite the current of the electiic spirit; ench breakage causes a needle, swinging above the handles, to move. Another similar needle, miles away, move* at the swine instant in the same way. Diffeicnt amounts of motion of this needle are understood to indicate certain letters; and thus ihe telegiaph people talk to one another, by spelling what they have lo nay, letter bvjj eiter. Theirs is a new calling and a curious one two. They bear thestrangcßt and earliest of news. With hands upon the two bandies of the instrument and a sharp eye upon the dial, the work goes on : it would be in lileoce but for the noise made by the instrument. *' Jerk ! jerk !" k<> to the handles, " Chop ! chop ! chipchop !" are the sounds heard in respome, as a little cylinder moves, and metal meets metal, to break and re-complete the circuit. At all the chief railwayitationt on nil the chief lines, wilh one or two exceptions, there are telegraph clerki day and night on duty, ready to indicate theapproach or departure of trains, the safe arrival of packets in poit, or the sailing of ships on their voyage ; to forward newspaper despatches nnd trade arlvises; to lend up the prices of corn, and to send down the quotations of consoli and railway stock ; to give orders for stopping fhieves, or stopi>in^ runaway young ladies ; to call doctors to the sick, and relatives to dying bedi; to tell how much may be bid for a hou<e ut an auction ; to let anxious papas know that their families have been increaied, and that mamma and the new arrival are " as well as can be expected ;" and to tell anxioui wives that voyaging husbands "had a bad passage: too tired to come up to-night."— Household Words. Junky Lind, Barnum and suit, arrived at Havana on Ihe 4th of January, and were received with the utmost enthusiasm. Carringes of several of the nobili* ty were in attendance on her landing to convey her, nnd the splendid country palace of Count Santa Venia was placed entirely at her disposal; all winch offers were declined by ihe "Nightingale." Her own carriage was in waiti"?, and a snug house outside the walls bad been previously engaged for her.

Substitute for Flogging in the American Navy, &c—Washington, Jan. 10, 1851.—The rrpoit of the Naval Board of Inquiry on discipline, was presented to the Senate to day, and referred to the Naval Committee. The board recommended drum head court martial, and punishment by confinement, and suspension of pay, and reward for good conduct of sailors.