perjury. Our law of libel is the most absurdly severe that ever
existed, so absurdly severe that, if it were carried into full
effect, it would be much more oppressive than a censorship. And
yet, with this severe law of libel, we have a press which
practically is as free as the air. In 1819 the Ministers
complained of the alarming increase of seditious and blasphemous
publications. They proposed a bill of great rigour to stop the
growth of the evil; and they carried their bill. It was enacted,
that the publisher of a seditious libel might, on a second
conviction, be banished, and that if he should return from
banishment, he might be transported. How often was this law put
in force? Not once. Last year we repealed it: but it was
already dead, or rather it was dead born. It was obsolete before
Le Roi le veut had been pronounced over it. For any effect which
it produced it might as well have been in the Code Napoleon as in
the English Statute Book. And why did the Government, having
solicited and procured so sharp and weighty a weapon, straightway
hang it up to rust? Was there less sedition, were there fewer
libels, after the passing of the Act than before it? Sir, the
very next year was the year 1820, the year of the Bill of Pains
and Penalties against Queen Caroline, the very year when the
public mind was most excited, the very year when the public press
was most scurrilous. Why then did not the Ministers use their
new law? Because they durst not: because they could not. They
had obtained it with ease; for in obtaining it they had to deal
with a subservient Parliament. They could not execute it: for
in executing it they would have to deal with a refractory people.
These are instances of the difficulty of carrying the law into
effect when the people are inclined to thwart their rulers. The
great anomaly, or, to speak more properly, the great evil which I