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 heathen, are concerned alike that a deliberate policy of false report to secure ill-gotten gain should not succeed. What is the remedy? Sooner or later one must be provided. Recently in one of the states, an offended citizen shot and killed an editor, was tried for murder and acquitted. Lawlessness is the inevitable result of a failure of the law to correct existing evils. How can the right of a newspaper to publish the facts concerning the government and its officials and to comment on them even mistakenly be preserved, and the continuance of intentional fabrication in the guise of news be prevented? The constitution in the same section provides for freedom of speech, as well as freedom of the press. Under the English common law, when a woman habitually made outcries of scandals upon the public highways to the annoyance of the neighborhood, she was held to be a common scold and a public nuisance. Anybody may abate a public m n uisance, and she was punished by being ducked in a neighboring pond. Notwithstanding our constitutional provision concerning freedom of speech, in the case of Commonwealth vs. Mohn, 2 P. F. Smith, page 243, it was held that the law of common scolds is retained in Pennsylvania, though the punishment is by fine and imprisonment. To punish an old woman, whose scandalous outcries are confined to the precincts of one alley, and to overlook the ululations which are daily dinned into the ears of an unwilling but helpless public by such journals as have been described, is unjust to both her and them. I suggest the application of this legal principle to the habitual publication of scandalous untruths. Let the persons harmed or annoyed present a petition to the attorney general setting forth the facts and if, in his judgment, they show a case of habitual falsehood, defamation and scandal so as to constitute a public nuisance, let him file a bill in the court of common pleas having jurisdiction, asking for an abatement of the nuisance, and let the court have authority, upon sufficient proof, to make such abatement by suppression of the journal so offending, in whole or in part, as may be necessary. Since this adaptation of existing law is only to be applied to the elimination of habitual falsehood in public expression, it will probably meet with no objection from reputable newspapers. Since both the attorney general and the courts would have to concur, the rights of legitimate journalism are sufficiently protected and it is only in an extreme case that the law could be invoked. For that case, it provides a remedy. I submit herewith (marked A) a draft of an act upon these lines.

The commission to provide for the participation of the state Rh