deciding that question; but he would rather leave it entirely to them. If those gentlemen had not belonged to the press but had been private individuals, how would the case have stood if such persons had been charged with taking bribes to vilify the character of a neighbour for £100? Would they not lay themselves open to such disgrace that they could never again hope to hold up their heads among their fellow men?
It seems to be perfectly settled that any reflection on a man's character calculated to bring him into ridicule and contempt, or to expose him to public hatred, amounts to a libel in the indictable sense of the word. Therefore, it remained for the jury to decide whether that passage did or did not reflect on Mr. Brett as managing proprietor and editor of the Englishman newspaper.
The first count might be important to Mr. Brett, but the second count concerned the interests of society at large, and his Lordship hoped the jury would anxiously realize the importance of the question involved in the second count. He hoped every one of the jury would apply his utmost intelligence to the solution of that question, and maintain an earnest and strong guard over his sympathies, for unless they kept their sympathies under control they might commit an injury on society at large. The second count was the alleged libel on that portion of the community designated as the Indigo planters of Lower Bengal. Mr. Eglinton contended that a libel would not lie against a class, and that this count was too general, and not sufficiently pointed; but His Lordship was sure the jury would defer to his opinion, and he entertained no sort of doubt that an indictment would lie, though no particular individual was referred to. This question had long been decided in Westminster Hall, that general imputations upon a body of men are indictable. Though no individual can be pointed out, it is not necessary they should reflect upon the character of any particular individual. In the case of Rex V. Osborne, 2, Barnhardiston, 138, an information was prayed against the defendant for publishing a paper containing an account of a murder committed upon a Jewish woman and her child by certain Jews lately arrived from Protugal, and it was objected that no information could be granted because it did not appear in particular who the persons reflected upon were; but the Court granted the information, because many Jews in many
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