LIBELLING THE DEAD

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7022, 10 January 1910, Page 6

LIBELLING THE DEAD

—■—• •■ 'I FBOM OUB SPECIAL COEEE3PONDENT. LONDON, November 26. ( The publication recently of "racy" reminiscences and recollections of the sort compiled by Lady Cardigan has called attention to the state of the law a-s it concerns libels on the dead. These volumes are, as a rule, put together in a very haphazard sort of way, and seldom is any care taken to verify the statements contained in such by-gone gossip. Mere assertions made upon second, third, or even tenth-hand information and cruel slanders perpetrated on the strength of vague recollections of dinner-table or club-<room gossip of twenty, thirty, or fifty years ago. In the case of living people great care is usually taken by reminiscence writers, for the living have an unpleasant habit of issuing writs for libel. In dealing with the dead, however, experience shows that the retailers of gossip allow themselves much greater license, the reason being, of course.. that the - dead, cannot, recover damages for defamation' of character. Dangers in a libel action are a' solatium for wounded feelings, and the dead have no feelings. But what of the living ? It goes without saying' that a person may sufier .acutely, mentally, through an attack on ; the character of one near and dear to him who is no longer alive. Imagine the feelings of a man or woman holding their, heads up proudly in society, finding.even their grandfather pictured by some loose-tongued old gos-. sip as an atrocious libertine, or their grandmother of revered memory held up to the world's scorn as a lady prone to disregard her marriage vows I ■ ■ In a recently published volume of reminiscences, dead people are pilloried, .who have even nearer relations than this still in the land of the living, but they have no civil remedy against the author. The utmost the law may do is to punish the.libeller on the ground- that he lias done something calculated to move someone else to commit a breach of the peace. But even this is at least doubtful, for the late Justice Stephens held that to libel the dead "is not an offence known to English law. Other authorities, how'ever, hold different .views, and it is quite time that the law should be altered so'as to free-it from ambiguity. No one desired to interfere with the discretion of the historian in his dealings with, those personages . who have played a prominent part in the world's history. What-is wanted is some efficient .means of preventing the defamation of the dead. and. through them. in- | jury to the living, by "irresponsible" gossips with the triok of the pen. That such people are allowed to retail their unsavoury and generally utterly unreliable "recollections" at profit to themselves and pain to others is a scandal and a reproach to our current literature. And the scandal is not lessened by the fact that the age or sex, or both, of the authors of these works is a sure protection against any rough, and ready I form of punishment.