Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/418

 field himself, and during its progress persistent attempts were made to intimidate him by threatening letters. He is said to have been constitutionally timid, and some colour is given to the charge by the solicitude which his judgment evinced to vindicate himself from all suspicion of being influenced by any considerations but those of abstract justice. The question was intricate and obscure, and after careful argument and much scrutiny of precedents, Mansfield decided against Wilkes on all the points raised by his counsel. He then proceeded to reverse the outlawry on a technical flaw discovered by himself, and substituted a sentence of fine and imprisonment (8 June 1768).

Mansfield acted as speaker of the House of Lords in the interval between the death of Charles Yorke [q. v.] (20 Jan. 1770) and the creation of Lord-chancellor Bathurst. He defeated Lord Chatham's attempt to involve the lords in the struggle between Wilkes and the House of Commons (May 1770), and carried a measure (10 Geo. Ill, c. 50) rendering the servants of members of either house of parliament liable to civil process during prorogation. By the committal of Bingley, the printer of Nos. 50 and 51 of the 'North Briton,' to the Marshalsea for refusing to answer interrogatories (7 Nov. 1768), and by his directions to the jury in three cases of seditious libel arising out of the publication and sale of Junius's 'Letter to the King,' he aggravated the ill-odour in which he already stood. The cases were tried in the summer of 1770, and Mansfield in each instance directed the jury that if they were satisfied of the fact of publication or sale they ought to find for the crown, as the question of libel or no libel was a matter of law for the court to decide. He thus secured a verdict in one case ; in one of the other two the jury acquitted the defendant : in the third, that of Rex v. Woodfall, they found a special verdict of 'guilty of printing and publishing only.' This verdict being ambiguous, a motion was made on the part of the crown to enter it 'according to its legal import,' i.e. omitting the word 'only,' upon which Mansfield, after consultation with his colleagues, reaffirmed, with their unanimous concurrence, his original ruling, and directed a venire de novo (, State Trials, xvii. 671). This decision elicited from Junius a letter (No. 41) of unusual acerbity, charging Mansfield with a design to subvert the constitution by form of law, and was made the occasion of an animated debate in the House of Commons (6 Dec.) In answer to some animadversions on the subject in the House of Lords, Mansfield laid a copy of the judgment in Rex v. Woodfall on the table of the house, but evaded Lord Camden's challenge for a formal discussion of the matter.

In July 1777 Mansfield presided at the trial of John Home, afterwards Horne-Tooke [q. v.], for seditious libel. His statement of the law did not materially vary from that which he had previously given, and was accepted by the jury. In the case of the Dean of St. Asaph [see ], which came before him on motion for a new trial in Michaelmas term 1784, Mansfield reaffirmed his doctrine of the respective functions of judge and jury in cases of libel. That the doctrine itself was strictly in accordance with precedent admits of no doubt [cf. ]; but the feeling of the country was strongly against it (cf. England's Alarm, London, 1785), and a few years later (1792) it was swept away by Fox's Libel Act.

While thus, according to his enemies, forging fetters for his countrymen, Mansfield struck a blow for the emancipation of the slave. In December 1771 James Somersett, a negro confined in irons on board a ship in the Thames, was produced before him on habeas corpus in the court of king's bench. The return was that he had been purchased in Virginia, brought to England, had run away, and, having been retaken, had been shipped for export to Jamaica. The case raised the broad question whether slaves could lawfully be kept in England, on which there was no direct authority, though Francis Hargrave [q. v.] based a learned argument on the extinction of villenage. In the end, Mansfield decided the case on the simple ground that slavery was 'so odious' that nothing could 'be suffered to support it but positive law,' and released the negro. In the following year he was attacked by Junius, for his supposed partiality to the Scots, with even more bitterness and brilliance than before (Letter lxviii.), and in 1773 by Andrew Stuart for the part he had taken in deciding the great Douglas cause (see, supra, and Letters to the Right Hon. Lord Mansfield from Andrew Stuart, Esg.) In 17745 Mansfield decided two cases of great constitutional importance. The first, that of Campbell v. Hall, decided 28 Nov. 1774, is the Magna Charta of countries annexed by conquest to the British crown. The action was by a landowner of Grenada against a customs officer to recover the amount of a duty levied under royal letters patent, issued after the cession of the island by France (1763), and