I do, therefore, feel not only gratified in having the occasion, but bound to express my opinion upon the real law of this subject. I know that opinion is but of little weight. I have no professional rank, or station, or talents to give it importance, but it is an honest and conscientious opinion, and it is this--that in the discussion of _public subjects_, and of the administration of _public men_, _truth_ is a duty and not _a crime_. You can, at least, understand _my_ description of the liberty of the Press. That of the Attorney-General is as unintelligible as contradictory. He tells you, in a very odd and quaint phrase, that the liberty of the Press consists in there being no previous restraint upon the tongue or the pen. How any _previous_ restraint could be imposed on the tongue it is for this wisest of men to tell you, unless, indeed, he resorts to Doctor Lad’s prescription with respect to the toothache eradication. Neither can the absence of previous restraint constitute a free Press, unless, indeed, it shall be distinctly ascertained, and clearly defined, what shall be subsequently called a crime. If the crime of libel be undefined, or uncertain, or capricious, then, instead of the absence of restraint before publication being an advantage, it is an injury; instead of its being a blessing, it is a curse--it is nothing more than a pitfall and snare for the unwary. This liberty of the Press is only an opportunity and a temptation offered by the law to the commission of crime--it is a trap laid to catch men for punishment--it is not the liberty of discussing truth or discountenancing oppression, but a mode of rearing up victims for prosecution, and of seducing men into imprisonment. Yet, can any gentleman concerned for the Crown give me a definition of the crime of libel? Is it not uncertain and undefined; and, in truth, is it not, at this moment, quite subject to the caprice and whim of the judge and of the jury? Is the Attorney-General--is the Solicitor-General--disposed to say otherwise? If he do, he must contradict his own doctrine, and adopt mine.