1820. Octr. 12 Spanish liberticide measures. 15 §. 2. I. Press violation

Reasons against libel laws

4. If such things were allowed, no honest no honourable no honest man no man who

had any regard for his honour for his reputation, would be found to take upon

himself any such situation: and the consequence is that all such situations

would fall into the hands of men who had neither honour nor honesty, and thus

the country would be involved in certain and compleat destruction. So says the

argument

But of all this the contrary has been shewn already. Honest or dishonest,

honourable or dishonourable, every man will be ready to take upon himself any

/and to continue to occupy and to maintain himself a/ situation the evil of

which is outweighed by the good. In England to a vast extent so prodigious is

this preponderance, that to obtain these situations there is nothing so

dishonourable that to obtain them men of all ranks from the highest to the

lowest are not ready and eager to do, and do accordingly and are not the less

stiled not only honest but honourable. Falshood solemn and deliberate falshood

has been shewn to be a necessary step, perjury – perjury acknowledged by

themselves to be such a commonly employed step /among the most frequent steps/

to the most richly endowed, the most powerful and most highly dignified

situations in the Ecclesiastical and self-stiled religious establishment. In

England no situation is in want of candidates: numerous and eager candidates: of

whom in the instance of each such situation one /in each vacancy/ is succesful

and when thus admitted ask any one of them, whether with a few accidental

exceptions, of which his case does not form one, they are not, all of them

honest and honourable. But in England though no such things as the things in

question have ever been allowed allowed by law, yet such in that part of the law

is the happy and useful weakness, so happily applied in that instance is the

anarchy or the mixture of anarchy and tyranny of which so large a portion of the

whole mass of law in that country is composed that the reputations of men in

office are little less exposed to the sort of impuations of the sort in question

than if they were allowed: and accordingly, and in the highest and most richly

endowed and most powerful situations men may be seen wallowing and triumphing in

profligacy, […?] in infamy, and yet as fondly attached to and as firmly fixt in

their respective situations as if virtue in them were consummate.

Commanders of torture spectators of torture encouragers and promoters of torture

by refusing to hear and preventing the disclosure of it

Commanders of the murder of the innocent rewarders of the murder of the innocent,

commanders of torture, spectators of torture, forgers /fabricators/ of rules of

pretended law to justify the murder of the innocent