Untitled

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 253, 29 January 1889, Page 3

The Wellington Evening Press thus comments on the recent libel action:—The libel was a comparatively innocent one. Yet the jury gave the heaviest damages, if we mistake not, ever given for libel in New Zealand. Why did they do so 7 There can be but cne explanation. They gave Mr Larnach £5OO out of Messieurs Wilsons’ and Horton’s pocket because they liked Mr Larnach and sympathised with him under unmerited blame in delicate circumstances, while they knew nothing and oared nothing about Messieurs Wilsons and Horton. They cannot for a moment have thought about the question of real justice, or redacted on the effect of their verdict, from the point of view of the public interests. The effect of their verdict is to hold respectable newspapers in terror, not of publishing libels, for they have always been in terror of that, but of publishing any criticism of public men who are powerful enough to bring an action and make a strong appeal to the sympathies of a special jury. The law of libel ie itself a tremendous deterrent; but newspapers can, nevertheless, fulfil their function under it courageously and ably, so long as it is administered impartially and reasonably, because they know what the law is, and they feel that, if they happen to contravene it without ill motive, they will not be punished crushingly. The law of libel administered partially and unreasonably, however, is quite a different affair. Under that, respectable newspapers, conducted by men of substance, stand in peril every day; and the liberty of public criticism is left only to disreputable prints in the hands of men who are not worth powder and shot.