THE SYDNEY HERALD VERSUS THE UMPIRE,

Wellington Independent, Volume XVIII, Issue 1889, 2 July 1863, Page 3

THE SYDNEY HERALD VERSUS THE UMPIRE,

Another cdMMe eclebre, threatening to be of nearly equal lengib, arise out of au action for libel, hi which the Rev Johu West is plaintiff, and William Hanscm and Samuel Bennett are the defendants. The teterrima causahelli was the publication of a letter in the pages of the Umpire, on the eve of the departure of the Kuglish mail, addressed, per favor of the Sydney Empire, to the editors of the London Daily News and Daily Telegraph, and of the Scotsman, Edinburgh. The letter pretends to embody a public protest against certain impudent calumnies put forth against the colony of New South Wales by the Rev John West, editor of the Sydney Morning Herald under it's new sole proprietor, Mr John Fairfax. It opens with an aggravating biography of the former gentleman, evidently written in a spirit of malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, and attributing to his early years everything that is infidel and radical. It then goas on to say that he had slandered free institutions, by attributing a discreditable scene of violence and drunkenness which occurred in the Assembly, the effects of the ballot Jand manhood suffrage, As the insania inctAnabilis seizes the writer, such sentences as a roving reverend, ex-radical, and Chartist editor, fall thicker and thicker from his pen, until the writer closes his venomous tirade by warning his correspondents " not to be influenced by the impudent misrepresentations and downright falsehoods of sertain lumccats and traitors to't'ie cause of civil and religious liberty,*', and signing himself John D inracre Lang, D.D., Minister of the Sooich Church, and one of the representatives of the city of Sydnfty, in New South Wales. The plaintiff laid damages at £2000, while the plea of the k de-

fendants is, that the article declared on was a fair and bona fide comment on the complainant's conduct as editor, aud was printed without any malicious motive or intent whatever. Mr. Darvel, Q.C., appeared for the plaintiff, and made a long and elaborate speech, full of authorities on the limits of newspaper criticism. Mr. Dalley addressed the jury for the defence, in which he commented on the fact of the publishers of the Umpire being legally responsible and not Dr Lang himself; and maintained that the smallest coin would be a sufficient verdict for the plaintiff, as lie^could sustain no injury in the colony from anything contained in the letter. On the summing up of Justice Wise, the jury retired for twenty five minutes, and then returned into Court to register a verdict of £100 damages for the plaintiff. A.n attempt at cheering followed in the crowded assembly, but was suppressed, >