Here are the facts. Mr. Miller was the publisher of a newspaper called the _London Evening Post_, and therein, on December 19, 1769, he reprinted Junius's celebrated Letter to the King. For this act, an information _ex officio_ was laid against him, wherein he was charged with publishing a false, wicked, seditious, and malicious libel. A suit had already been brought against Woodfall, the publisher of the _Public Advertiser_, in which the letter originally appeared, but the prosecution had not turned out to the satisfaction of the government, nor had the great question been definitely settled. So this action was brought against Mr. Miller, who reprinted the original letter the day of its first appearance.[128] [Footnote 128: 20 St. Tr. 803, 895, 869; Woodfall's Junius (Bohn, 1850), Preface, p. 94, Appendix, p. 471; 2 Campbell, Justices, 363; 5 Mahon.] Solicitor-General Thurlow,--whom you have met before, Gentlemen,--opened the case for the Crown, and said:-- "I have not of myself been able to imagine ... that there is a serious man of the profession in the kingdom who has the smallest doubt whether this ought to be deemed a libel or not;" "for I neither do, nor ever will, attempt to lay before a jury, a cause, in which I was under the necessity of stating a single principle that went to intrench, in the smallest degree, upon the avowed and acknowledged liberty of the subjects of this country, even with regard to the press. The complaint I have to lay before you is that that liberty has been so abused, so turned to licentiousness, ... that under the notion of arrogating liberty to one man, that is the writer, printer, and publisher of this paper, they do ... annihilate and destroy the liberty of all men, more or less. Undoubtedly the man that has indulged the _liberty of robbing upon the highway_, has a very considerable portion of it allotted to him." The defendant "has published a paper, in which, concerning the King, concerning the House of Commons, and concerning the great officers of State, concerning the public affairs of the realm, there are uttered things of such tendency and application as ought to be punished." "When we are come to that situation, when it shall be lawful for any men in this country to speak of the sovereign [George III.] in terms attempting to fix upon him such contempt, abhorrence, and hatred, there is an end of all government whatsoever, and then liberty is indeed to shift for itself." He quotes from the paper: "'He [the king] has taken a decisive personal part against the subjects of America, and those subjects know how to distinguish the sovereign and a venal Parliament, upon one side, from the real sentiments of the English nation upon the other.' For God's sake is that no libel? To _talk of the king as taking