t:on than they received. "Where the press is free and discussion unrestrained," he said, "the mind, by the collision of intercourse, gets rid of its own aspérités; a sort of in sensible perspiration takes place in the body politic, by which those acrimonies, which would otherwise fester and inflame, are qui etly dissolved and dissipated. But now, if any aggregate assembly shall meet, they are censured; if a printer publishes their resolu tions, he is punished. ... If the people say, let us not create tumult but meet in dele gation, they cannot doit; if they are anxious to promote parliamentary reform in that way, they cannot do it; the law of the last session has for the first time declared such meetings to be a crime. What then re mains? The liberty of the press only—that sacred palladium which no influence, no power, no minister, no government, which nothing but the depravity, or folly, or cor ruption of a jury, can ever destroy. And what calamities are the people saved from by having public communication left open to them? . . . In one case, sedition speaks aloud and walks abroad; the demagogue goes forth—the public eye is upon him—he frets his busy hour upon the stage; but soon either weariness, or bribe, or punishment, or •disappointment, betirs him down or drives him off, and he appears no more. In the other case, how does the work of sedition go forward? Night after night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark and casts an other and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the hour of fatal maturity shall arrive, he will apply the torch" (22 St. Tr. 1033-) Three years later Curran was called upon to defend Peter Finnerty, the publisher of The Press for printing Deane's strictures upon the Lord Lieutenant's treatment of William Orr, and again he was unsuccessful (26 St. Tr. 901).
The conduct of the Irish authorities in connection with Robert Emmet's trial pro voked much hostile criticism on the part of English radicals. In later times such comments would be passed over in silent contempt; but the government, in its irri tation, allowed itself to be provoked into ac tive hostility against the offending Political Register and Anti-Jacobin. Cobbett had printed in his Political Register some letters from an anonymous Irish correspondent, signed "Juverna," which reflected with bit ter personalities upon the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Hardwicke and others. In these let ters the legend of the wooden horse of Troy was applied to the imputed woodenheadedntss of Lord Hardwicke, and various other imputations were made against Lord Chan cellor Redesdale and Plunkett. Early in 1804, therefore, Cobbett was prosecuted be fore Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough for libel (¿9 St. Tr. i). Cobbett's defense of good character, and his contention that the attack was political, were unavailing. Two days later Plunkett obtained a verdict of five hundred pounds damages in a civil action against Cobbett (29 St. Tr. 53). But neither the criminal nor the civil judgment against Cobbett was followed up. The government prosecuted Cobbett only for the purpose of discovering the real author of the letters. When it was finally ascertained that they had been written by Justice Johnson, of the Irish Court of Com mon Pleas, Johnson was at once called to account (29 St. Tr. 81). In a very interest ing trial before Lord Ellenborough, John son was convicted. But the notorious "Trojan Horse libel ended with a bare ver dict. Johnson was never called up for judg ment, and soon retired from the bench on a pension. The contemporaneous action of Arch bishop Troy, of Dublin, against the propri
