THE GREAT LIBEL CASE IN LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8508, 7 March 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GREAT LIBEL CASE IN LONDON.

The moral of the great city libel case of Marks v. ButterfielcT, which has terminated after six days', trial, in a verdict for the defendant, is that a man is a fool to venture on aggressive journalism unless his own hands are perfectly clean. All London knows .Harry Marks. In his capacity of editor of the Financial News he has blown more bubble companies into fragments and won more libel cases in the courts than any man living, save, perhaps, the invincible "Lab by." • Unfortunately, unlike the worldly wise conductor of Truth, Mr. Marks' principles were nob quite so strong | as his convictions, and in an evil moment he allowed his own paper to stray into the evil paths he so condemned in others. It was, however, no light matter for his many enemies to bowl Mr. Marks out. He had money and influence galore behind his back latterly, and again and again those who tried to throw found instead they were badly thrown themselves. At length, however, the evil day has come. Not that the evidence against Marks was at all conclusive. On the contrary, the Recorder summed up dead in the plaintiffs favour and declared the verdict against the weight of testimony. But that—as Mr. Gill, the clever young counsel who beat Sir C. Russell and Mr. Chas. Matthews singlehanded, said—doesn't matter. The jury had heard enough.to convince them that Marks was not straight, and, as the foreman remarked, that their verdict would be for the public benefit. Marks will have to pay over £10,000 in costs, and the prestige of the paper is of course sadly damaged. The story, which is a most interesting one, runs thus according to a neat summary of the lengthy proceedings by a hand not unfriendly to Marks :—

THE I.IBEL. Mr. Butterfield was prosecuted at the Central Criminal Court for having published "a false, scandalous, and defamatory. libel" concerning Mr. Harry H. Marks, the editor and proprietor of the Financial News, a member of the London County Council, "person of fortune, and.of at least such consideration as fortune brings. The jury have found that Mr. Butterfield, is not guilty, that the alleged libel is true, that it was justified, and that the publication of it was for the public benefit. Mr. Butterfield the court without a penalty, and save for the observation of the Recorder, without a suggestion of blame. The situation and the feelings, of Mr. Marks may bo more easily imagined than described. The quarrel between the parties is one of longstanding. Mr. Marks had pulverised a promising scheme of .Mr. Butterfield by comments in the Financial News, Mr. Butterfield had thereupon sued Mr. Marks | for libel and had lost the day. Ho then entered on the guerilla warfare of the pamphlet, and he issued a publication broadcast, in which he accused Mr. Marks of having first seduced and then robbed, in-used, and deserted a widow in New York. This was the chief foundation of the prosecution for libel instituted by Mr. Marks. Mr. Butterfield's plea of justification further alleged that Mr. Marks had been guilty "of extremely questionable practices in connection with certain companies ; and the general purport of his statements was that Mr. Marks was a person altogether devoid of honour in almost every important filiation of life. The allegations in reference to the woman were of the most definite character. On her husband's death she became proprietor of a paper in New York, to which Mr. Marks was a contributor. Mr. Marks, it was suggested, had seduced her, and had used the influence thus acquired to make her sign away her property to him. Having thus ruined her $like in honour and in interest, he had made haste to abandon both her and her child, of which he was the father, and on her reproaching him for his baseness he had caused her to be arrested on a charge of insanity. He had then returned to England to make his fortune by the promotion of commercial morality in the Financial News. It was not denied that he had made his fortune it was only said that he had sometimes forgotten to promote commercial morality. He had bought a gold plot of questionable value in that land of auriferous realities and

illusions, the Transvaal, and had foisted it on a confiding British public by practices perfectly well known to the trade. Among theso practices was included the offer of disinterested advice to investors in favour of the mine in the columns of the Financial News. In order not to create confusion in the minds of his readers he had found a

bogus vendor to act in his name, and with a ring largely composed of his relatives or friends he had made a very good thing by the speculation. When the affair had finally found its natural level of ruin, Mr. Marks, touched by the conditio!) of the shareholders, had offered to buy back the property at. its depreciated value on conditions which secured his release from all the unpleasant consequences of the operation.

MARKS'CAREER. Such were the charges, and of course Mr. Marks denied every one of them that was material to the issue. He had, indeed, wronged the widow in one way alleged, but in no other way. Nor had he even, as | .-he affirmed, deserted her and left her ! without means. On this last point, it must be confessed, all the weight of evidence seemed to be on ono side. Bundles of acknowledgments were produced of sums received from Mr. Marks, and Mrs. Koppel could only plead that she had no idea of what she was doing when she put her name to them. A widow, and especially a widow of New York, should almost disdain to usa a plea of that kind. There were moments when the case seemed to be drifting into an inquiry as to abuses of the power of hypnotic suggestion. In regard to the affair of the Mae mine Mr. Marks declared that on the, transaction as a whole he was a loser by some thousands of' pounds; that ho had every reason to believe the mine a sound property ; and that in disposing of it to the public through a nominal vendor he had only followed a practice all but universal in affairs of that sort. The chief interest of the trial lay in his cross-examination. A narrative founded on his answers would read like a page of Balzac. This man, whose powers in the journalism of finance bear a certain re- j semblance in degree to those of Marat in the journalism of politic.?, began life as an usher at a school in Islington. Then, as a boy of 15, he emigrated to America, and went into a wholesale drug house at New Orleans. Ho had no money, ho had only his energy and his wits. He worked in the laboratory, or lent a hand in the French and German correspondence, a3 occasion required. From. New Orleans he went to Texas, as "a canvasser for sewing machines, and. driver of a mule team." The next move was almost inevitable in an American

career. He became editor of a daily paper —at seventeen. He had found his vocation ; and, in one engagement or other, he acquired a knowledge of almost every department of American newspaper work. He had even found it, after a fashion,

before the mule driving and the sewing machines, for at fourteen he had written letters to the papers, and the letters had found their way into print. He was still a young man when he met the widow—a young man with a voice, and it was insinuated that he had, in a manner, sung her into signing a bill of sale. When he lefr. heron his first return visit to England he was still in a poor way. He did not, he said, desert hor, bub he took his passage as a Mr. Henry, and not Mr. Marks, because he did not want her to come down to the docks and make a scene. He soon lost sight of the child, and to this day has no personal knowledge of what became of it. He was told that it had been left in the street in front of his house, but he cannot vouch for the fact. When Mrs. Koppel's paper died he started the Beer Glass and then the Postal Card. Then, in due time, came London and the Financial News.

He had no money, he had only the idea, but that was enough ; the money was soon found. At length he had struck gold, for in due time the Financial News was to pay 50 per cent, on the ordinary; and 6 per cent, on the preference shares. Ono part of the business of this paper was to give advice by letter " in regard to all classes of securities," at a charge of 5s per Jotter. Three yearn after the starting of the Financial News came the affair of the Rao mine; one year after the Rao—or, as ho preferred to pub ib, four yours after the starting of the paper—Mr. Marks became a country gentleman by uho purchase of Lovvdon Hull. He may retain that enviable position for a - long Btene, for he is still but in his 35bh year.

THE REStTLT. What are we to say of such a career and of such a trial ? flb is far easier to say something of the latter. Mr. Marks is the hero of 23 successful actions, bub assuredly he has blundered at last. A civil process would have suited his purpose better, for ib would have given him an opportunity of renewing the proceedings, if he . had felt dissatisfied with the result. Dissatisfied he has every reason to be, for, to a man in his peculiar position, the verdict is & very serious blow. The judge, as we have seen, shares his dissatisfaction ; bub there, confronting both of them, the verdict is. Ib might not have taken its present form if Mr. Marks had sought a less vindictive method of redress. The jury evidently felb that they had to choose between sending Mr. Butterfield—and perhaps, ultimately, Mrs. Koppel—to gaol, and sending Mr. Marks out of court with a damaged reputation ; and they preferred the last. They might have come to a somewhat different decision if the alternative had taken a milder form. Mr. Marks' treatment of Mrs. Koppel remains, after all, very much his secret and hers. His treatment of the shareholders of the Rae mine is more a matter of evidence before the whole world. It is not disputed that, while he had a large interest in the concern, he took measures to conceal

the fact from the multitudes to whom he was recommending the venture in his paper as a profitable speculation. If this is right, then hardly anything done in the city is wrong. The defendant's counsel pub it in a peculiarly telling way when he suggested that Mr. Marks had positively charged for the letters in which he had given delusive advice. The Financial News was supposed to be a paper with nothing to conceal. But the dummy vendor has very much to conceal, and it is impossible to say that Mr. Marks dealt fairly with his subscribers and his clients in concealing him. He had become a sort of private inquiry agent in finance, for the benefit of the public ; he was well paid for his exertions ; and both policy and honour should have urged him to observe all the obligations of his, part.