Prosecution for libel under the existing law; in a letter addressed to His Excellency Sir H. F. Bouverie

Abstract

Sir, Believing that a governor of a colony is always accessible to the requests and attentive to the statements of the humblest individual, provided such request and statements be made in a respectful manner, I had the honour of addressing to Your Excellency a letter which had reference to my private affairs in connexion with the prosecution about to take place, at the instance of Dr. Emmanuele Caruana, late joint crown advocate, against me, for publishing what he, together with the collective wisdom of the crown advocate’s office, is pleased to call a libel on his private character. The request of that letter your Excellency negatived upon grounds which were not altogether unreasonable, but rather satisfactory than otherwise. I now address Your Excellency publicly and solely in connexion with my journal, in order that the public of Malta, and the Mediterranean, may judge between us, “who has the greater reason”.

As the law now stands, the sole responsibility of prosecution for libel rests upon the ’ipse dixit’ of the advocate of the Crown – the verdict of the justice or injustice of such prosecution on the mere opinion of a Criminal Court, consisting of a president, and two other of Her Majesty’s judges – the loss always upon the party prosecuted, whether found guilty or not of libel – and the gain is always on the side of the prosecutor, be his complaint just or malicious, reasonable or vexatious. [Excerpt]