The law of England, even under the Anglo-Saxon line of princes,
took severe and exemplary notice of defamation, as an offence
against the public peace, and in the time of Henry III., Bracton
adopted the language of the Institutes of Justinian, and held
slander and libellous writings to be actionable injuries. But
the first private suit for slanderous words to be met with in
the English law, was in the reign of Edward III., and for the
high offence of charging another with a crime which endangered
his life. The mischiefs of licensed abuse were felt to be so
extensive, and so incompatible with the preservation of peace,
that several acts of parliament, known as the statutes de scandalis
magnatum, were passed to suppress and punish the propagation
of false and malicious slander. They are said to have been declaratory
of the common law, and actions of slander were slowly, but gradually
multiplied, between the time of Edward III., and the reign of
Elizabeth, when they had become frequent. The remedy was applied
to a variety of cases; and in a private action of slander for
damages, and even in the action of scandalum magnatum, the defendant
was allowed to justify, by showing the truth of the fact charged,
for if the words were true, it was then a case of damnum absque
injuria, according to the just opinion of Paulus, in the civil
law. But in the case of a public prosecution for a libel, it
became the established principle of the English law, as declared
in the Court of Star Chamber, about the beginning of the reign
of James I. that the truth of the libel could not be shown by
way of justification, because, whether true or false, it was
equally dangerous to the public peace. The same doctrine remains
in England to this day unshaken; and in the case of The King
v. Burdett, it was held, that where a libel imputes to others
the commission of a triable crime, the evidence of the truth
of it was inadmissible, and that the intention was to be collected
from the paper itself, unless explained by the mode of publication,
or other circumstances, and that if the contents were likely
to produce mischief, the defendant must be presumed to intend
that which his act was likely to produce. "The liberty
of the press," as one of the judges in that case observed,
"cannot impute criminal conduct to others without violating
the right of character, and that right can only be attacked
in a court of justice, where the party attacked has a fair opportunity
of defending himself. Where vituperation begins, the liberty
of the press ends."
