A.D. 1887.]
DEFAMATION AND LIBEL.
[No. 1.
537
a payment of money into Court by way of amends, and every such defence so filed without such payment into Court shall be deemed a nullity and may be treated as such by the plaintiff in the action.
5. Every person who publishes or threatens to publish any libel upon any other person, or directly or indirectly threatens to print or publish, or directly or indirectly proposes to abstain from printing or publishing, any matter or thing touching any other person, with intent to extort any money, or security for money, or valuable thing from such or any other person, or with intent to induce any person to confer or procure for any person any appointment or office of profit or trust, shall, on being convicted thereof, be liable to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for any term not exceeding three years: Provided that nothing herein contained shall in any manner alter or affect any law or Ordinance now in force in respect of the sending or delivery of threatening letters or writings.
Defamatory Libel.
6 & 7 Vict. c. 96 s. 3.
6. Every person who maliciously publishes any defamatory libel, knowing the same to be false, shall, on being convicted thereof, be liable to imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years, and to pay such fine as the Court may award.
7. Every person who maliciously publishes any defamatory libel shall, on being convicted thereof, be liable to imprisonment, or fine, or both, as the Court may award: Provided that such imprisonment shall not exceed the term of one year.
8.—(1.) On the trial of any information for a defamatory libel, the defendant having pleaded such plea as is hereinafter mentioned, the truth of the matters charged may be inquired into, but shall not amount to a defence, unless it was for the public benefit that the matters charged should be published.
(2.) To entitle the defendant to give evidence of the truth of the matters charged as a defence to the information, it shall be necessary for him, in pleading to the information, to allege the truth of the matters charged in the manner now required in alleging a justification to an action of defamation, and further to allege that it was for the public benefit that the matters charged should be published, and the particular fact or facts by reason whereof it was for the public benefit that the matters charged should be published, to which plea the prosecutor shall be at liberty to reply generally denying the whole thereof.
(3.) If after such plea the defendant is convicted on the information, it shall be competent to the Court, in pronouncing sentence, to consider whether the guilt of the defendant is aggravated or mitigated by the ...