reason I did embrace, and do now with joy, this method of giving quiet to the courts, jurisdiction to juries, liberty to the press, and satisfaction to the people. I thank my friends for what they have done; I hope the public will one day reap the benefit of their pious and judicious endeavours. They have now sown the seed; I hope they will live to see the flourishing harvest. Their bill is sown in weakness; it will, I trust, be reaped in power. And then, however, we shall have reason to apply to them what my Lord Coke says was an aphorism continually in the mouth of a great sage of the law," Blessed be not the complaining tongue, but blessed be the amending hand."

LETTER

ON MR. DOWDESWELL'S BILL FOR EXPLAINING THE POWERS OF JURIES IN PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS.1

AN improper and injurious account of the bill brought into the House of Commons by Mr. Dowdeswell has lately appeared in one of the public papers. I am not at all surprised at it, as I am not a stranger to the views and politics of those who have caused it to be inserted.

Mr. Dowdeswell did not bring in an enacting bill to give to juries, as the account expresses it, a power to try law and fact in matter of libel. Mr. Dowdeswell brought in a bill to put an end to those doubts and controversies upon that subject which have unhappily distracted our courts, to the great detriment of the public, and to the great dishonour of the national justice.

That it is the province of the jury, in informations and indictments for libels, to try nothing more than the fact of the composing, and of the publishing, averments and innuendos, is a doctrine held at present by all the judges of the King's Bench, probably by most of the judges of the kingdom. The same doctrine has been held pretty uniformly since the Revolution; and it prevails more or less with the

1 The manuscript from which this letter is taken is in Mr. Burke's own hand-writing, but it does not appear to whom it was addressed; nor is there any date affixed to it. It has been thought proper to insert it here as being connected with the subject of the foregoing speech.

jury according to the degree of respect with which they are disposed to receive the opinions of the bench.

This doctrine, which, when it prevails, tends to annihilate the benefit of trial by jury, and when it is rejected by juries tends to weaken and disgrace the authority of the judge, is not a doctrine proper for an English judicature. For the sake both of judge and jury the controversy ought to be quieted, and the law ought to be settled in a manner clear, definitive, and constitutional, by the only authority competent to it, the authority of the legislature.

Mr. Dowdeswell's bill was brought in for that purpose. It gives to the jury no new powers; but, after reciting the doubts and controversies, (which nobody denies actually to subsist,) and after stating that if juries are not reputed competent to try the whole matter the benefit of trial by jury will be of none, or imperfect, effect, it enacts, not that the jury shall have the power, but that they shall be held and reputed in law and right competent to try the whole matter laid in the information. The bill is directing to the judges concerning the opinion in law which they are known to hold upon this subject; and does not in the least imply that the jury were to derive a new right and power from that bill, if it should have passed into an Act of Parliament. The implication is directly the contrary; and is as strongly conveyed as it is possible for those to do who state a doubt and controversy, without charging with criminality those persons who so doubted, and so controverted.

Such a style is frequent in acts of this nature; and is that only which is suited to the occasion. An insidious use has been made of the words enact and declare, as if they were formal and operative words of force to distinguish different species of laws producing different effects. Nothing is more groundless; and I am persuaded no lawyer will stand to such an assertion. The gentlemen who say that a bill ought to have been brought in upon the principle, and in the style, of the petition of right, and declaration of right, ought to consider how far the circumstances are the same in the two cases; and how far they are prepared to go the whole lengths of the reason of those remarkable laws. Mr. Dowdeswell and his friends are of opinion that the circumstances are not the same, and that therefore the bill ought to be the same.

It has been always disagreeable to the persons who com pose that connexion to engage wantonly in a paper war, especially with gentlemen for whom they have an esteem, and who seem to agree with them in the great grounds of their public conduct: but they can never consent to purchase any assistance from any persons by the forfeiture of their own reputation. They respect public opinion; and, therefore, whenever they shall be called upon, they are ready to meet their adversaries, as soon as they please, before the tribunal of the public, and there to justify the constitutional nature and tendency, the propriety, the prudence, and the policy of their bill. They are equally ready to explain and to justify all their proceedings in the conduct of it; equally ready to defend their resolution, to make it one object (if ever they should have the power) in a plan of public reformation.

Your correspondent ought to have been satisfied with the assistance which his friends have lent to administration in defeating that bill. He ought not to make a feeble endeavour (I dare say, much to the displeasure of those friends) to disgrace the gentleman who brought it in. A measure, proposed by Mr. Dowdeswell, seconded by Sir George Saville, and supported by their friends, will stand fair with the public, even though it should have been opposed by that list of names (respectable names I admit) which have been printed with so much parade and ostentation in your papers.

It is not true that Mr. Burke spoke in praise of Lord Mansfield. If he had found anything in Lord Mansfield praiseworthy, I fancy he is not disposed to make an apology to anybody for doing justice. Your correspondent's reason for asserting it is visible enough; and it is altogether in the strain of other misrepresentations. That gentleman spoke decently of the judges, and he did no more; most of the gentlemen who debated on both sides held the same language; and nobody will think their zeal the less warm, or the less effectual, because it is not attended with scurrility and virulence.

LIBEL BILL.

WHEREAS doubts and controversies have arisen at various times concerning the right of jurors to try the whole matter laid in indictments and informations for seditious and other libels: And whereas trial by juries would be of none or imperfect effect if the jurors were not held to be competent to try the whole matter aforesaid; For settling and clearing such doubts and controversies, and for securing to the subject the effectual and complete benefit of trial by juries in such indictments and informations; BE it enacted, &c., That jurors duly empannelled and sworn to try the issue between the king and defendant upon any indictment or information for a seditious libel, or a libel under any other denomination or description, shall be held and reputed competent to all intents and purposes, in law and in right, to try every part of the matter laid or charged in said indictment or information, comprehending the criminal intention of the defendant, and the evil tendency of the libel charged, as well as the mere fact of the publication thereof, and the application by innuendo of blanks, initial letters, pictures, and other devices; any opinion, question, ambiguity, or doubt to the contrary notwithstanding.

SPEECH

ON THE SECOND READING OF A BILL FOR THE REPEAL OF THE MARRIAGE ACT.1

THIS act [the Marriage Act] stands upon two principles; one, that the power of marrying without consent of parents should not take place till twenty-one years of age; the other, that all marriages should be public.

The proposition of the honourable mover goes to the first; and undoubtedly his motives are fair and honourable; and even in that measure, by which he would take away paternal power, he is influenced to it by filial piety, and he is led into

This bill was brought into the House of Commons by Mr. Fox, Junc 1 1781; and rejected, on the second reading, without a division.

ít by a natural, and to him inevitable, but real, mistake, that the ordinary race of mankind advance as fast towards maturity of judgment and understanding as he does.

The question is not now whether the law ought to acknowledge and protect such a state of life as minority; nor whether the continuance which is fixed for that state be not improperly prolonged in the law of England. Neither of these in general are questioned. The only question is, whether matrimony is to be taken out of the general rule, and whether the minors of both sexes, without the consent of their parents, ought to have a capacity of contracting the matrimonial, whilst they have not the capacity of contracting any other, engagement. Now it appears to me very clear that they ought not. It is a great mistake to think that mere animal propagation is the sole end of matrimony, Matrimony is instituted not only for the propagation of men, but for their nutrition, their education, their establishment; and for the answering of all the purposes of a rational and moral being; and it is not the duty of the community to consider alone of how many, but how useful, citizens it shall be composed.

It is most certain that men are well qualified for propaga tion long before they are sufficiently qualified even by bodily strength, much less by mental prudence, and by acquired skill in trades and professions, for the maintenance of a family. Therefore, to enable and authorize any man to introduce citizens into the commonwealth before a rational security can be given that he may provide for them, and educate them as citizens ought to be provided for and educated, is totally incongruous with the whole order of society. Nay, it is fundamentally unjust; for a man that breeds a family without competent means of maintenance encumbers other men with his children, and disables them so far from maintaining their own. The improvident marriage of one man becomes a tax upon the orderly and regular marriage of all the rest. Therefore, those laws are wisely constituted that give a man the use of all his faculties at one time; that they may be mutually subservient, aiding and assisting to each other: that the time of his completing his bodily strength, the time of mental discretion, the time of his having learned his trade, and the time at which he