THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 1912: IA libeller BROUGHT TO BOOK

New Zealand Tablet, 14 March 1912, Page 33

THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 1912: V ’ IA LIBELLER BROUGHT TO BOOK

are in for a .stiff fight here against vile calumny and base falsehood,’ wrote an Irish M.P. in a letter received in Dunedin some short time ago ; and-week after week has furnished evidence of the truth, Oi the prediction. One of the arguments: as insulting as it is utterly baselessthat is most frequently used against the- „ . Irish Party is the allegation that Home* tune means Rome Rule, and that the grant of selfgovernment to Ireland would usher in an era of religious: intolerance.' By dispassionate appeal to history, and by the overwhelming testimony of representative Irish I rotestants themselves, the charge has been shown to be without a shadow of foundation; but' the calumniators have not been silenced. They have continued their ignoble campaign and, in the present ridiculously imperfect condition of the law of libel, so long as they : named no names but gave their slanders a-'purely general application, it was impossible to bring them effectively to book. It generally happens, however, that sooner or later the malice of the bigots gets the better of their cunning ; they fix upon some one individual, or set of individuals, the stigma of the calumny they wish to circulate,, and then— are undone ? This is what has happened to the Dundee Courier —a Scottish paper that for months past has been particularly venomous and offensive in its opposition to the Nationalist cause. ...

a ' * In its issue of August 18, 1911, it printed an article -—winch was widely copied—under the following headings and sub-headings : Sinister Sidelights on Home By One who. has Lived in Ireland.’ . Amongst othercalumnious matter the article contained the following specific allegations : ‘ Religion makes all the difference in everything in Ireland. This incident will show what it can do and has done. Two years ago in Queenstown -: County Cork, instructions were issued by the. Roman Catholic religious authorities that all Protestant shop

assistants were to be discharged. One shopkeeper, a Roman Catholic, refused to discharge an assistant he had for a number of years. The consequence was that his shop was proclaimed, and in three months he had to close and clear out, his stock being sold for next to nothing. He and his family left for Britain, where, as he said, he could employ an Atheist if he liked.’ The Bishop of Cloyne, and his six Queenstown priests, after having in vain demanded an apology from the paper, instituted proceedings for libel against Messrs. D. C. Thomson and Co., Ltd., the proprietors of the Dundee Courier, the foregoing passage being the matter specially complained of. The plaintiffs, who were represented by the Lord Advocate of Scotland, Mr. Ure, M.P., said that at a date, approximately two years ■prior to the publication of that article, they constituted the Roman Catholic Religious Authorities of Queenstown, and that the.statements were false and slanderous. They maintained that they were charged with having conceived, out of a spirit of religious intolerance and persecution, and to have put into operation a criminal and : illegal conspiracy to secure by an underhand use of' ecclesiastical influence upon the Catholic laity, the indiscriminate dismissal of all the Protestant shop assistants—a numerous body in the employment of Roman Catholics in Queenstownsolely on account of their being Protestants, and, further, with having caused the banishment from Ireland and ruined the business of a Roman Catholic shopkeeper in Queenstown for refusing to discharge a Protestant employee when ordered to do so by the plaintiffs in the execution of their alleged scheme and abuse of ecclesiastical authority and influence. They affirmed that no such instructions were issued by, the plaintiffs as alleged. For the defence it was maintainedfirst, that the article did not refer to the plaintiffs; and, second, that it was not slanderous.

* The preliminary action, taken on January 27, was for the purpose of determining whether there was a case to go to a jury; and the Court unanimously decided that there was, and gave costs against the defendants. The Lord President held that both the points raised by the- defence must be left to a jury. As regards the first, his lordship said that a jury would or might be "entitled to hold that the article attacked the conduct of the Roman Catholic religious authorities in Queenstown, and was therefore of and concerning the plaintiffs. As regard the second, his lordship could not agree with the arguments of the defendants that there was nothing in the article except a general railing accusation, or what might be regarded as attributing, meritorious conduct to the plaintiffs from the standpoint of those professing the same form of Faith. To' falsely accuse the 'teachers of any form of Christian Doctrine of such ‘bigotry as led them to compass the temporal ruin of those professing another form-' of Christianity, appeared ■to his lordship an odious charge, reflecting upon the character, and entitling those accused to maintain an action of slander against those making or circulating the charge. His lordship, therefore, allowed the plaintiffs an issue and decided that the case must go to a jury. The other judges concurred, Lord Kinnear pointing out that the question before the court was whether i the words complained of would bear the meaning which it was. proposed to put upon them. If they would, then it was for the jury to say whether they did in fact bear that meaning, and would be understood by the persons reading the article to convey a slanderous imputation. The plaintiffs must be able to satisfy the jury that each and all of them were hit by the language before they could be granted a, verdict.

•xAt the trialwhich took place last weekthe plaintiffs evidently did so satisfy the jury, for Monday’s cables informed us that the Bishop of Cloyne was awarded £2OO damages, and the six priests £SO apiece. •The defendants would also have to pay the whole costs of both actions, so that altogether they would be anything dip to £2OOO out of pocket. The verdict is a complete vindication of the Bishop and his priests, and will

teach the Scottish exponent of muck-rake journalism—and other papers of tire like kidney— salutary lesson. The decision is particularly satisfactory, also, 4 as establishing the point that aspersions, cast on ‘ the Catholic authorities’—at a given time and of a stated . place are to be regarded as giving a definite right to the Bishop or priests then and there in charge to institute proceedings and claim redress. In this direction the British libel law might be still further widened with advantage. Under present provisions a foul-mouthed libeller may be mulcted in substantial damages for assailing the fair name of John Doe or Richard Roe. But he may serenely and with perfect impunity, and even under the aegis of the law, make and publish the most abominable calumnies against a creed or community, and may even excite public odium against them to the very verge of endangering the public peace and arousing the passions of the mob, with his harangues. In this respect they manage things better on the Continent of Europe. Communities and creeds cannot be outraged with impunity there. Only a few years ago one Sigmar Mohring, editor of the well-known comic paper tj Ik, published in Berlin, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment fdr gross insults heaped upon the Catholic Church in the course of some frothy * poetry ’ —the references being, not to specified individuals, but simply to the Church generally. A similar provision in the laws of English-speaking countries would tend to sweeten public life and to put a wholesome check on those partisan sheets which, in order to gain political ends, are willing to stir up and to perpetuate the worst forms, of sectarian rancor. WMI,MI, W‘ IWI 11 IMIH* —W—