[100] When Beckford received an account of the magnificent seat he had built at Fonthill being burnt down, he only wrote to his steward, “Let it be rebuilt!” Lord Holland’s youngest son being ill, and Beckford inquiring after him, Lord Holland said he had sent him to Richmond for the air; Beckford cried out, “Oh! Richmond is the worst air in the world; I lost twelve natural children there last year!” [101] Lord Mansfield’s words were,--“I have always understood, and take it to be clearly settled, that evidence of a public sale, or public exposing to sale in the shop by the servant, or anybody in the house or shop, though there was no privity or concurrence in the master, is sufficient evidence to convict him, unless he proves the contrary, or that there was some trick or collusion.”--(“Trial of John Almon,” 8vo., London, 1770.)--The motion for the new trial was made on the 27th of June following, on the ground that the master was not liable for the acts of his servant in _a criminal case_, where his privity was not proved. The motion was refused. The Court then expressed an unanimous opinion that the pamphlet being bought in the shop of a common known bookseller, purporting on its title-page to be printed for him, is a sufficient _primâ facie_ evidence of its being published by him, _not indeed conclusive, because he might have contradicted it, if the facts would have borne it, by contrary evidence_.--(Burrows’s Reports, vol. v. p. 2686.) This is not less liberal than the present proof of publication recognised by the courts of law; and it is generally understood that nothing short of proof of interference, if not of absolute _prohibition_ by the bookseller would now be received. Abominable as the law of libel might be, it seems to have been correctly laid down by Lord Mansfield. Fifty years earlier Almon would have been pilloried, and probably whipped. In 1759, Mr. Beardmore, the Under Sheriff, was fined fifty shillings, and imprisoned two months, for pillorying Dr. Shebbeare moderately. (Burrows’s Reports, vol. ii. p. 752.) Almon and the Doctor seem to have been much upon a par in point of respectability.--E. [102] All that Lord Mansfield did, was to receive the verdict of the jury at his own house. There was not the slightest impropriety in this. It is still a common practice on the circuit for the verdict to be returned at the judge’s lodgings; and the old writers say, that if a jury will not agree, the judge may carry them round the circuit in a cart.--(Some account of this trial is given in the notes to Woodfall’s Junius, vol. i. p. 354.)--E.