C. I apprehend that however obsolete it is still more rare in these days that the question of Libel or no Libel should be decided by a Judge or by a Jury.
Instead, I have arrived, in which that form is abandoned in amation. In several respects and in particular addressing myself to what has been called the sting of the Libel, there is not a word which could convey to the mind of anyone a notion that any portion of the £2,000 alleged to have found its way to Lisbon had reached the hands of Senhor Ameral as a bribe or money gift to him. The tenor of the whole is indeed that his gratitude towards, his zeal for, his constituents, not any money bribe, had incited him, and that that money was used, not to stimulate his zeal, but to further and aid his efforts as well. Money is used, it may be lawfully, it may be illegally, to carry elections or political measures or railway or canal undertakings in England.
Again, at the end of the alleged Libel, in what is called the second count, occurs this innuendo ("meaning as before alleged of and concerning the Bull. and Leake 2 edit. of 1862 is not still false malicious and defamatory libel firstly hereinbefore set forth"), words which import all the innuendoes or it may be only the last. Mr. Bayllar, for the Defendant, ridiculed the dissection of his plea by Mr. Pollard and submitted that taken as a whole it was a full answer to the information, which he contended consisted in form and in substance of one count only.
But he was less careful to sustain his own plea than to attack the information, which he insisted was bad, for that, taken by themselves, the two articles were simply fair comment on the public conduct of public men in reference to matters of the greatest public interest, and still more by reason that the meaning put on the libel by the innuendoes was such as the language would not and could not bear, and consequently that I must decide against it.
I must say, I strongly incline to think that both counts of the information (if indeed they are so framed as to be two counts, as to which I give no opinion) are bad, and the Attorney General is bound by the meaning he puts on the alleged libel by the innuendoes now; to use the words of the Chief Justice Tindal, it is a clear rule of law that an innuendo cannot introduce a meaning broader than that which the words naturally bear, unless connected with proper introductory averments.
The well-known case of Rex v. Haurkey, 8 East 427, is the best illustration of this rule. Alexander v. Angle in Error 1, Crompton & Jervis 143 and see 5 East 467-469. I incline to think that the innuendocs here do throughout introduce meanings broader than the words bear.
It is unnecessary for me to consider whether any averments could have cured this defect.
It seems to me that the parties have been perplexed by rules of pleading, the Acting Attorney General in reference to his innuendoes and the Defendant as to the particularity of his plea, and especially by Bremridge v. Latimer and days have been wasted in argument when any common sense procedure could and would have easily defined—nobody doubted the real issue between the parties with certainty and precision.
The English pleading procedure has been abandoned everywhere under British Rule in Asia except in this Colony. In India, another system prevails, and for the Consular Courts of China and Japan, the Foreign Office has wisely prescribed a system of admirable rules as to procedure which simplifies the preliminary process.
It seems to me that the words of the alleged libel are incapable of the meaning ascribed to them in the innuendoes in the information.