of returning a general verdict of not guilty in a case of libel. Owen was charged with a libel on the House of Commons. He had published the statement that the commit ment of Alexander Macdonald by the House for his behavior at the Westminster election was unjust and oppressive. His counsel— Camden among them—urged the jury to acquit on the ground that the publication had not been proved either malicious or false; but Lord Chief Justice Lee directed the jury in the usual way. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Thereupon, on motion of the attorney general, the jury were asked whether they thought the evidence of Owen's publication of the book by selling it was not sufficient to convince them that he did sell it. "At which," says the report, "the foreman appeared a good deal fluttered, and could only answer, 'Not guilty.'" The most conspicuous single figure in the judicial history of individual liberty is John Wilkes. This is not the place to dwell upon the contradictory elements of this great agitator's character. It is creditable to Wilkes that he broke away from the prof ligacy and beastly humors of his early asso ciates, Sandwich, Dashwood, Potter and their fellow rakes of the Medmenham Abbey, and turned to politics. The government journals, the Briton and the Auditor, had al ready raised up a critic in John Entick's Monitor; but the establishment of the North Briton by Wilkes marks a new era in jour nalism. Wilkes met the heavy handed violence of the Briton with a virulence and ferocity that ultimately overpowered Lord Rute and drove him from office. When it became apparent from the Icing's speech at the opening of Parliament in 1763 that the new administration pro posed to carry out Bute's obnoxious policy, Wilkes published the famous Number forty-five of the North Briton, in which he stigmatized the king's address as "the most abandoned instance of ministerial effrontery
ever attempted to be imposed upon man kind." The article was not conspicuously intemperate, and it was certainly not unjust, but it goaded the king and his ministers to frenzy. The law officers of the crown pronounced the article to be a seditious libel, and by a strained exercise of prerogative a general warrant was promptly issued for the arrest of the authors, printers and publish ers of the North Briton. Forty-nine persons, including Wilkes, were arrested on suspicion under this general warrant. It was soon dis covered that Wilkes was the author of the obnoxious article, and an information for criminal libel was at once filed in the King's Bench (19 St. Tr. 982 et seq.). Released from prison upon a writ of habeas corpus, on the ground of privilege as a member of Par liament, Wilkes brought an action against Wood, the under-Secretary of State and obtained a verdict of £1000 damages (19 St. Tr. 1154). A few days later Leach, one of the printers who had been arrested on sus picion recovered a verdict of £400 for false imprisonment (19 St. Tr. 1002). The case went off without a judicial determination of the chief points raised. The attorney gen eral avoided a decision on the legality of general warrants by conceding mat the war rant had not been pursued. But enough was said by the court to make it plain that the judges would in a proper case hold that gen eral warrants to seize the person were illegal. Next, John Entick, the suspected author of the Monitor, brought an action against the messengers who had seized all his books and papers under a general search warrant (19 St. Tr. 1030). Lord Camden held, in an able and vigorous opinion, that such warrants, which had originated in the practice of the Star Chamber, and had been unjustifiably continued since the expiration of the Licens ing Act of Charles IL, were absolutely il legal. Meanwhile the government pursued Wilkes through his private papers. Among
