147
or individuals libelled to
the Courts pay
of legal proceedings if resorted to
5.
The probable cost of a Criminal prosecution or action for libel in Hongkong cannot, I am told, be estimated at less than £150, and in one case which has recently occurred the taxed costs amounted to nearly £500, of which in all probability the prosecutor will
ever recover a
shilling.
6. Under the existing state of things,
then,
any
man may
be libelled to
any
extent with impunity, unless he is
content, and has the means to pay
all the Costs which may
incur in
resorting to legal proceedings. If he be deterred from having
recourse to law
by the expense and annoyance of
litigation
the
fact
that in a small
respective
community like this the characters of the libeller and the libelled
are
thoroughly understood, his forbearance is pleaded as a justification for a
wider
promulgation of the slander, and urgent
proof of guilt.
7.
The
remedy for
this is very simple.
All that is required is to assimilate
the law here to that which now exists
in England which makes ample provision for the payment of fines and damages by publishers of