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JAMES THOMPSON CALLENDER. 825

The second section of the sedition law made falsehood as
well as scandal and malice an essential part of every libel,
and by the last sentence the party aceused is allowed to
show in his justification the truth of the matter charged
to be libellous.

He would not pretend to say decidedly what ought to be
the construction of that law, but the opinion whieh he had
been able to form after a very short consideration of the
subject, was, that the object of the law was to punish a
man, not for abuse nor for erroneous deduetions or opin-
ions, but for ‘‘faet falsely and maliciously esserted.”* If
this idea was correct, it became a matter of consequence to
do what had never been done perhaps before, to draw a line
of diserimination between fact and opinion; because if the
indictment contained against the traverser charges of be-
ing guilty of error in opinion as well as falsehood in fact,
it was so far defective, and ought not to be regarded in
preparing for a defense, or noticed by the jury in assessing
the fine.

Junos Cuasz. You are mistaken in supposing that the
jory has 4 right to assess the fine. It may be conformable
to your local State laws, but it is a wild rotion as applied
to the Federal Court. It is not the law.

Mr. Hay said that he was somewhat perplexed. He could
sometimes answer arguments, but not authority; however,
if he was permitted to proceed, he would state his ideas
about fact and opinion, and then leave the subject to the
eourt. The observations which he was about to make, were
hazarded without that deliberation to which he could wish
to have recourse, He was not, however, urging an argu-
ment, but praying for time to prepare one. It seemed to
him, clearly, that the assertion of a fact was the assertion
of that which, from its nature, waa susceptible of direct
and positive evidence; everything else was opinion, For
instance, if one man should say of another that he stole a
horse, the assertion, if true, could be demonstrated to be
true by proving that he did steal a horse; or if one man

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