Part 5 (1/2)

Mr. Justice North: What are you going to refer to it for?

Mr. Foote: I am going to refer to one page of it, my lord.

Mr. Justice North: What for?

Mr. Foote: To show that identical views to those expressed in the cheap paper before the court are expressed in expensive volumes.

Mr. Justice North: I shall not hear anything of that sort. I am not trying the question, nor are the jury, whether the views expressed by other persons are sound or right. The question is whether you are guilty of a blasphemous libel. I shall direct them that it will be for them to say whether the facts are proved in this case.

Mr. Foote: I will call your attention, my lord, to the remarks of Lord Justice c.o.c.kburn in a similar case.

Mr. Justice North: I will hear anything relevant to the subject.

My reason for asking you was to find out whether you were going to quote a law book.

Mr. Foote: I will quote a verbatim report.

Mr. Justice North: I can hear that.

Mr. Foote: It is the case against Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant.

Mr. Justice North: By whom is your report published?

Mr. Foote: It is a verbatim report published by the Freethought Publis.h.i.+ng Company--the shorthand notes of the full proceedings, with the cross-examination and the judgment of the court.

Mr. Justice North: There is no evidence of that. Did you hear it?

Mr. Foote: I did not personally hear it, but my co-defendants did.

Mr. Justice North: I will hear you state anything you suggest as being said by Lord Chief Justice c.o.c.kburn.

Mr. Foote: Mrs. Besant was about to read a pa.s.sage from 'Tristram Shandy'----

Mr. Justice North: You have not proved the publication.

Mr. Foote: Quite so, my lord; but although this is not formal evidence, and only the report of a case, I thought your lords.h.i.+p would not object to hear it.

[Mr. Foote here handed in a copy of the report to the judge, and pointed out that the Lord Chief Justice had said he could not prevent Mrs. Besant from committing a pa.s.sage to memory, or from reading books as if reciting from memory].

Mr. Justice North: I will allow you to go on, either quoting from memory or reading from the book; but I cannot go into the question of whether this is right or not.

Mr. Foote: I am not proposing that. I am only going to show that opinions like those expressed here extensively prevail.

Mr. Justice North: That is not the question at all. If they extensively prevail, so much the worse. What somebody else has said, whoever that person may be, cannot affect the question in this case.

Mr. Foote: But, my lord, might it not affect the question of whether a jury might not themselves, by an adverse verdict, be far more contributing to a breach of the peace than the publication on which they are asked to adjudicate?

Mr. Justice North: I think not, and it shall not do so if I can help it. It is a mere waste of time to attempt to justify anything that has been said in the alleged libel by showing that someone else has said the same thing.

Mr. Foote: In all trials the same process has been allowed.

Mr. Justice North: It will not be allowed on this occasion.