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5
LIBEL
Shew us what is gross enough to be animal that we may avoid it: shew us what is not so, that we may adopt employ it upon occasion.
"In what respect then was is it not gross enough? to be animal what does it want of being so? And now we
are come to the difficulty difficulty breaks in upon us in all it's force. — a difficulty absolutely insuperable at least to me: & I think I
may conclude to others; for scarce any body, one as I see, seems to to be so much as aware
of it much less prepared enabled to conquer it. The shades of that vague kind of censure which has [hitherto] uniformly
been deemed libellous are from the lightest up to the darkest so infinite in number
and undistinguishable in quality, that if any body can find a method of drawing
line of separation between any two contiguous ones, so as to be able to say that all
on this side is legal, all on that illegal, he will accomplish what I can not: must confess
myself unable even to conceive.
I would venture put all upon this line: I would ask one by one the friends of Administration (I mean not this or that administration, but any) what degree of Liberty they think expedient should subsist: I say that degree out of all which shall be pitched upon which shall be the least is inconsistent with any rule, which can be collected from imperfectly collected . The Rays of Truth distorted in their passage through the medium of party prejudice, have imposed none but a disgusting offensive image on the optics of men in power
[Thus I think] it appears [therefore] that] No merit, [therefore] actual or possible
in the Judges affords any corrective to this wider-extending evil an all-embracing evil entailed upon us by
the improvident rigor of an Ancestor which nothing but the Hand of Legislature
can cut off. eradicate or so much as prune
[Tho' each coif had under it an Angel, still would every new single decision pursuing former determinations
[would] be threatening, & many, ruinous: departing from them, [would be] in
strictest sense and [in] the most highest consummate degree arbitrary, without reason
and without rule.]
[But to I will admitt what is impossible for the sake of argument: I suppose [from
that some more than mortal ingenuity to have continued to this subject has toward the boundary line which
marks out all through the gauge of past cases the limits of right & wrong. still to know of every new
that shall be case [] which falls within & which without it?
Scandal contained in Epithets Phrases
Censure is convey'd either in [entire] sentences or in single epithets — were it
confin'd to these alone, the number tho' not small large, is not would be indefinite. A Catalogue. Index expurgatorius Dictionaries might
be consulted, and a catalogue, a sort of Index expurgatorius, might be published
by authority, of the proscribed expressions. Distinction between censure on men libellous — measures not — verbal only & not warranted by the cases It might be done — the task would be
not even be difficult. But + + not to mention that there would be but temporary operation upon the effect of this operation could be but temporary language, & that these expressions that remained within the pale would by degrees rise in their import to the level of those without it. as infinitely much the greatest quantity is of that sort
of which it cannot be said that the offensive quality resides in any particular sense single
but is diffused throughout a whole sentence preposition a whole sentence or a whole passage
who shall form a catalogue of these? No Court of Judication so large as to hold it
had each Judge the age of Mathusalem's given him to make compose it — & who shall read
it when it is composed made?
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Identifier: | JB/070/178/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 70.
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070 |
of laws in general |
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178 |
libel |
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001 |
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text sheet |
1 |
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recto |
c5 |
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jeremy bentham |
[[watermarks::[gr motif] [britannia with crown motif]]] |
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23293 |
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