issuing from his press. They did so, acting on the principle that if you get the cub, the dam will soon be caught. They indicted the printer, and thereby obtained the admission that Mr. Long was the publisher. Had his clients been vindictive they could have pressed for the punishment of the printer, it was sufficient to say they did not do so. The learned Counsel would be the last person in the world to press for conviction in ordinary abuses of the press; such were not dangerous, for the press had its uses in which the abuses found their antidote. But there was no antidote to charges made without giving any opportunity of promulgating the truth. The only means of vindicating their character left open to his clients was to come into that Court to obtain the verdict of the Jury who would not, he hoped, become parties to the propagation of a libel. The question of justification could not arise. It was impossible for the defendant to justify himself according to law, though he acted under the belief that the libel was true, though he acted on information he had received, even though he produced parties who had seen acts of oppression committed. But the libel contained within itself the proof of malice, and if the jury did not believe the existence of the state of society therein depicted, they must admit it to be a libel; if they did not consider it a libel they must believe in the truth of the charges made, not as against any planter, but as against the general body of European Indigo Planters; they would believe them to be men placed beyond the pale of civilisation, and deserving of all they had got because guilty of the most horrid atrocities. They would believe that virtue existed among the Natives alone and some few officials. They would believe that on leaving England their countrymen forget all principles of Christianity, and that offences abhorred at home could be perpetrated with impunity here. They would believe magistrates, non-officials, the whole Christian community of British India, except a favoured few, regardless of all principles of honor and feeling. They would believe that not a European in India was more fit for the changing in Norfolk island than to govern here. They would believe that officials, acting under the fascinations of imaginary planters' wives, permitted injustice to be committed which resulted in wholesale destruction, ruin and death to the ryot!
The Jury had been carefully selected, there was no taint
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