the words been written, he would have been entitled to more. There are three elements in defamation: the form of the publication, the character of the matter published, and the motives with which it was published. An actionable test may be rationally based upon the character of the publication, perhaps upon the motive with which it was published, but not upon its form. Yet the English classification makes everything of form and neglects the substance. The classification upon the basis of form was based upon the inference that written defamation necessarily has a more extensive circulation than spoken scandal. This may or may not be so. A public denunciation by word of mouth surely has a wider circulation than an insinuation in writing in a confiden tial letter. Even in the instance of widest publicity—publication in a newspaper—the publication can be stopped, an apology can be printed; but slander cannot be thus neu tralized. If, indeed, the inference were true it would be no rational test of actionability. The degree of publicity, apart from the na ture of the charge, would only affect the extent of the injury. Written defamation, it is true, has a de facto permanence; but the causes of a prejudice are forgotten while the prejudice survives, and if a man's reputation has suffered it makes no difference to him whether the attack which injured him is pre served in the back files of a newspaper. Moreover, written defamation operates against reputation largely by becoming in its course spoken slander. Again, if we look at this inference particularly from the point of view of its effect upon reputation, it is equally untrue. It would seem to imply that the injury done to the person defamed is rather in proportion to the extent over which the defamatory matter is spread than to the gravity of the charge istelf. But the greater part of the injury clone by defamation is com prised within the narrow circle of one's ac quaintances. The defamation of an unknown person may be as void of effect as the defa mation of a fictitious person. Within the circle to which defamation extends, and in
regard to a private person, that circle is more readily reached by speech than by writ ing. One of the reasons commonly given in the books is that written defamation implies a superior degree of malice than that which inspires words spoken, perchance, in the heat of argument. Witness the reductio ad absurdum in applying this view to the familiar case of the publication by a news paper of a speech made at a public meeting. A speaker at a public meeting, speaking, it may be, with deliberate malice and with knowledge that his words are being taken down for publication, makes a false statement concerning an opponent, and yet so frames his words, that, in the absence of special damage, he does not expose himself to an action for slander. The speaker goes unpunished; but the news paper publishing a report of the meeting, de siring only to pass it on to the public for whom it was intended, so that it may judge between the speaker and his adversary—the newspaper becomes liable for the printed words which were not actionable when spoken. Then it is said that the tendency to create a breach of the peace is more direct in the case of libel than in the case of slander; hence libel alone is a crime. But if one calls you a liar to your face, are you not more likely to resent it with force than you would be under any other circumstances? And, in the present day at least, defamation published in the tangible form of writing or print is precisely the kind of defamation which is least likely to lead to a breach of the peace. Other and better remedies are open; an at tack in a pamphlet or a newspaper may be met through the sanie medium. It is whis pered scandal, which never takes tangible form and cannot therefore be contradicted, that really leads to violence. THE action of the Administration in the quick recognition of the Republic of Panama and in maintaining free transit over the Isthmus, is upheld by Professor Edwin
