who were defended by Brougham and Denman, admitted that the imputation was un true, but defended upon the ground that it •was founded upon rumors generally believed, which the defendants did not know to be false, and was made in respectful language, without malicious intention, on a matter of great public concern. But Lord Chief Jus tice Abbott charged the jury that to write and publish falsely of any person that he is
tion tending to disturb the minds of living individuals and to bring them into contempt and disgrace by reflecting upon persons who were dead, was unlawful. Although ably de fended by Scarlett, Hunt was convicted and fined one hundred pounds (2 St. Tr. N. S.. 69.) In the domain of libel, we have illustra tions of the Chartist movement in the cases of Carlile and Cobbett, in 1831, and of HOW-
RICHARD CARl.ILE.
insane is a crime, and that, in his opinion, the article was a criminal libel. In 1822 John Hunt was prosecuted for publishing Byron's "Vision of Judgment," which was held to be a seditious libel on the late king, George III., and calculated to de fame him, to disturb and disquiet his de scendants, and to bring them into public scandal, disgrace and contempt. Lord Chief Justice Abbott charged that a publica-
cll, Collins, Stephens and others, in 1839, Richard Carlile was prosecuted for an ad dress to the insurgent agricultural laborers, in which he denied that they were incendi aries, and asserted that even if they were guilty of burning farm produce they had more just cause for it than any king ever had for levying war. After reflecting upon the unsatisfactory condition of the laboring classes and the government's inaction in the
