This writer must be an enemy of the Duke, under the mask of friendship; for is it possible to form an idea of any thing more low, more mean, more shabby, more scurvy, more dirty, more base, than going to a ministry, and asking them to obtain the publication or the suppression of paragraphs, respecting him, in prints, which he must regard as being edited by the most venal of mankind? As if he had said to himself: No; the law will not do; the law cannot find any hold in the publications against me, and beside, I do not like the publicity of law; I will, therefore, have recourse to corruption; I will, by the means of influence purchased with the public money, get a good word from those whom I despise. This is what this writer imputes to the Duke of York, and this he does under the mask of friendly compassion. This he does under the pretence of defending the royal chieftain against the attacks of his calumniators. I do not believe that any act more base was ever before imputed to any human being. What, go sneaking to the ministry to beg of them to speak a good word for him to the editors of the newspapers! Foh! it is so rank, it so stinks of meanness, that one’s bowels are disordered at the thought, especially when imputed to a modern “Coriolanus.” I am not for appeals to the law, respecting matters of this sort; but, something should certainly be done by the real friends of the Duke of York, to convince the world, that this part, at least, of the pamphleteer’s statements is false. I, for my part, shall anxiously wait for the contradiction, and shall hasten to give it to the world. What! (I cannot get it out of my mind) go to the ministry to supplicate their interference with the public papers! It is such an abominable story; such atrocious slander, that surely it will be speedily contradicted.
Such is the passage, and such were my remarks upon it at the time. To this the writer added, in a very positive and peremptory tone, that the ministry and opposition must, when parliament met, both DISAVOW the attacks of the press upon the Duke. How far this positive prediction, not to call it a threat, has been fulfilled, I leave the people to judge, when they have again carefully looked over the debate upon Mr. Wardle’s Charges, bearing in mind, at the same time, the disavowal of Mr. W. Smith, in the name of his party, the anger of Mr. Whitbread, at being suspected to have given encouragement to Mr. Wardle, and the declaration of Mr. Sheridan, relative to a foul “conspiracy.”
Here, then, People of England, you have seen the origin of all these complaints against the press; I mean the first formal published complaint. Since that publication, Major Hogan’s Pamphlet, edited by the able pen of Mr. Finnerty, has appeared. In consequence of that pamphlet, many prosecutions by the Attorney-General have been commenced. Major Hogan’s pamphlet boldly speaks of petticoat promotions; it states, that the Major, who is proved, by letters from most respectable superiors, to be a man of long and very meritorious services, told the Duke, that his long-sought promotion might have been obtained, at a reduced price, if he had, like others, chosen to disgrace himself by applying to petticoat influence; that the Major was ready to produce to the Duke proof that promotions were thus disposed of; that the Duke made no answer to him; and that he (Major Hogan) has never been called on for his proof. There could be no harm at all in the Major’s saying, that he stated this to the Duke; the harm consisted in his stating, that the Duke made him no answer, and never called for his proofs; and, if this statement was false, it was very wicked and richly deserving of punishment; because the direct and inevitable tendency of it was to cause it to be believed, that such villanous influence, influence so manifestly disgraceful and injurious to both the army and the public, was used with the knowledge and connivance of the Duke, than which a heavier charge could not have been preferred against mortal existing.
It must be confessed, that this pamphlet had a wonderfully great effect all over the country. I recommended it to the attention of my readers; because I foresaw, that, whether true or false, it must finally bring to an open discussion, that question, which had, for several years, been agitated in private, and of the importance of which question I from my correspondence, was better able to judge than the public in general.
Prosecutions were now resorted to, in which prosecutions Mr. Finnerty, and the printer and venders of Major Hogan’s pamphlet, are involved, and, of course, were so involved at the date of Mr. Wardle’s bringing forward his charges. But, in the meanwhile, many people appear to have been busy in their inquiries; and, at last, Mr. Wardle, who had been successful in his inquiries, comes before the parliament, and, without applying to any party for support, or assistance, boldly makes the complaint, and prefers the charges, in the name of a burdened, an injured, and insulted people.
Now, then, we come to the reception which those Charges met with upon their first appearance. They were stated with a degree of frankness unparalleled. The accuser not only explicitly stated the nature of the several cases; he gave the details; and he even named his witnesses; leaving to the accused every possible advantage, especially if we consider of what description those witnesses were, what was their situation in life, and what was their manifest interest as connected with the cases whereon they were to be called, it being almost impossible that scarcely any one of them should support the charges, without, in the same breath, proclaiming their own infamy, or, at best, their meanness.
This procedure, so frank, so honest, so manifestly free from all desire to take advantage, was met with observations on the “heavy responsibility” to which the accuser had exposed himself; with charges against unnamed “Jacobin conspirators,” who had formed a settled scheme for writing and talking down the Duke of York, the army, and all the establishments in the country; with the severest censure upon the press, the recent “licentiousness” of which was represented as surpassing that of all former times, and the benefits of the freedom of which were, in the opinions of very good men, overbalanced by the evils of its licentiousness; with representations of the difficulty of producing convictions for obvious libels. Nor must we fail to keep fresh in our minds, that, just before the parliament met, and while so many persons were under government prosecution for alleged libels upon the Duke of York, we saw daily advertised in all the newspapers, “thoughts on libels, on juries, and on the difficulties of producing conviction in the case of libel,” which Thoughts were “dedicated to the Duke of York and Albany,” and published by Egerton, the Horse-Guards bookseller. At the same time, just upon the eve of the meeting of parliament, a person of the name of Wharton, said to be the same who is Chairman of the Committee of the House of Commons, published a pamphlet, entitled, “Remarks on the Jacobinical tendency of the Edinburgh Review, in a letter to the Earl of Lonsdale;” in which stupid Letter the author talks of libels, and of settled schemes, on the part of the press, to overthrow the establishments of the country.
Whereunto these publications tended was evident enough. Their natural tendency, supposing them to have answered the purpose for which they were written, was, first to create in the public mind, an alarm for the internal peace and safety of the country; to cause it to be believed, that, somewhere or other, there was a conspiracy brooding against the government; that this conspiracy was aided, in its diabolical views, by the press; that, of course, it was the duty of juries to get over the difficulties which had heretofore been experienced in the producing of conviction in cases of libel; and if all this should fail, to prepare the minds of the public for new, and still more severe laws, with respect to the press, providing a complete security for every great offender in future.
That such was the tendency of these publications is quite clear, and, I think, there can be very little doubt of its having been their principal, if not their sole, object. This object has, by Mr. Wardle’s exertions, been, for the present, at least, defeated. The Lord Chancellor has declared, in his place, in the House of Lords, that the laws in existence, relative to the press, are a sufficient check upon it. And, well might he make the declaration! For, what further checks can be devised, what greater dangers a writer or publisher can be exposed to, without establishing, at once, an imprimatur, and the power of transportation without trial, such as they have at Calcutta, I am at a loss to