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incitement and many people would be in prison for committing such offences who should not be.’”
17. Further, we note that in R v Most[1], a Crown Case reserved for the opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeal, the court held that the publication and circulation of a newspaper article could be an encouragement, or endeavor to persuade to murder (the words used in the relevant statute) although it was not addressed to any person in particular, and that it was correct for the jury to be directed that if they thought by the publication of the article, the defendant did intend to, and did encourage or endeavor to persuade any person to murder any other person, as well as if they found that such encouragement and endeavoring to persuade was the natural and reasonable effect of the article, then they could convict the defendant as charged.
18. In that case, the defendant faced 2 counts of seditious libel and 10 counts of incitement to murder. The subject matter of all the counts was the same, that is, an article written in German in a newspaper published weekly in London, and enjoying an average circulation of 1,200 copies. The article contained, inter alia, the following,
“What one might in any case complain of that is only the rarity of so-called tyrannicide. If only a single crowned wretch were disposed of every month, in a short time it should afford no one gratification henceforward still to play the monarch. . . . Meanwhile, be this as it may, the throw was good; and we hope that it was not the last. May the bold deed, which, we repeat it, has our full sympathy, inspire revolutionists far and wide with fresh courage.”
- ↑ (1881) 7 QBD 244.
