WHEN the late Lord Chief Justice Mansfield promulgated his doctrine “_that truth was a libel_,” he went upon this principle,—that no man could be justified in publishing any thing respecting the character or conduct of another, which should appear, whether true or false, to be of so abusive and defamatory a nature as to provoke him to commit a breach of the peace;—that if the person so defamed had committed any offence against the law, he should be dealt with according to law; and that no unauthorized individual had a right to become his judge. But Lord Mansfield little thought at that time, that about thirty or forty years afterwards, a case would occur, wherein, although the “offence was rank and smelt to heaven,” the arm of the law was powerless; and wherein an appeal to public opinion became indispensible towards arresting the havoc which the most destructive of all vices that can exist in society was making upon the public morals. We have now before us a case precisely of this nature. Here is a man of the most infamous character—a man notoriously addicted to the most horrible of all vices—a man who has been in the constant habit of corrupting youth, by the instrumentality and under the mask of religion—this man is exercising all the functions of a Christian minister of the Gospel—such as reading prayers, preaching sermons, baptizing, and administering the holy sacrament;—a man at the very idea of whose guilt, every body, except his deluded or _sympathetic_ auditors, shrinks back with feelings of disgust and agony;—and yet there exists no power either ecclesiastical or civil to arrest his career of blasphemy and guilt! Under such afflicting circumstances, is the press to continue silent, because the law tells me that I am not to speak reproachfully of another, although I should speak the truth? If I see my neighbour’s house on fire, am I to look on with cold-blooded indifference, without trying to save the whole street from being involved in flames, because a law may have declared it a crime for any man to stir, until the beat of a drum or the ringing of a bell shall have called the people together? If I see that sort of moral contagion that has been the ruin of Empires, spreading around me while all the engines that were intended for its suppression, remain motionless, am I to refrain from raising my feeble voice against it, because I run a risk of offending against the _letter_ of the law? The law in this case is, in some manner at a stand, as will appear from the report I give of the recent proceedings before the Surry magistrates. It is supposed be unable to act here, because it was not called into action when the crime, that has been sworn to, was perpetrated. Yet the enormity of the crime not only remains undiminished and unatoned for, but the criminal is going forward in the same career, and is in possession of the same influence, that gave scope to his criminality: and what is still worse, the Christian religion