HC Deb 04 March 1811 vol 19 cc177-81
Mr. Henry Martin

presented a Petition from the Printers, Booksellers, and Publishers, of the united kingdom, setting forth,

" That the petitioners constitute a numerous and respectable class of the community, and the employment in which they are engaged being intimately connected with the interests of literature, and productive of many advantages to the state, has ever been considered as entitled to the protection and encouragement of the legislature; and that the petitioners have of late felt themselves aggrieved in the exercise of their trade and business by the provisions of the act 39 Geo. 3, c. 79, intituled, 'An Act for the more effectual suppression of societies established for seditious and treasonable purposes, and for better preventing treasonable and seditious practices;' and, as they humbly apprehend that the regulations which they beg leave to submit to the consideration of the House have been productive of hardships never meant to be imposed upon the petitioners, they are encouraged to hope that the grievance of which they complain will find a remedy in the wisdom and humanity of parliament; and that the preamble to that part of the act in which the petitioners are principally concerned states, 'That whereas all persons printing and publishing any papers or writings are by law answerable for the contents thereof, but such responsibility hath of late been in a great degree eluded by the secret printing and publication of such seditious, immoral, and irreligious papers or writings as aforesaid, and it is therefore highly important to the public peace that it should in future be known by whom any such papers shall be printed;' and in section 27 it is enacted, 'That from and after the expiration of forty days after the passing of the said act, every person who shall print any paper or book whatsoever, which shall be meant or intended to be published or dispersed, whether the same shall be sold or given away, shall print upon the front of every such paper, if the same shall be printed on one side only, and upon the first and last leaves of every paper or book which shall consist of more than one leaf, in legible characters, his or her name, and the name of the city, town, parish, or place, and also the name, if any, of the square, street, lane, court, or place in which his or her dwelling house or usual place of abode shall be; and every person who shall omit so to print his name and place of abode on every such paper or book printed by him, and also every person who shall publish or disperse, or assist in publishing or dispersing, either gratis or for money, any printed paper or book which shall have been printed after the expiration of forty days from the passing of this act, and on which the name and place of abode of the person printing the same shall not be printed as aforesaid, shall for every copy of such paper so published or dispersed by him forfeit and pay the sum of 20l.;' and that the petitioners, sensible of the policy of preventing the dissemination of 'treasonable, irreligious, immoral,' or libellous publications, submit, without repining, to a variety of regulations, by which their occupation is treated as of a character so suspicious, as to stand in need of preliminary securities for anticipated misbehaviour, and is subject to jealous and irksome restraints to which no other branch of useful and honest industry is condemned; but though the petitioners have anxiously endeavoured to comply with the provisions of the law, they have found themselves exposed, by accidental mistake or trivial omission, to grievous and vexatious prosecutions, and to the danger of incurring pecuniary penalties to an enormous amount, without having been guilty of any thing offensive to morals, religion, or government; that, by the above-recited act, a penalty of 20l. is imposed for every copy of any book or paper printed without the name or place of abode of the printer being thereto affixed with the most minute precision; and the petitioners humbly represent to the House, that the accidental violation of this part of the act, in the most inconsiderable circumstance, is attended with a severity of punishment which could not have been foreseen or intended. It frequently happens that hand-bills for the discovery of stolen property, or other objects of a similar nature, must, for the public accommodation, be published within a few hours from the time the manuscript is given to the printers, and the copies may, in defiance of all ordinary precaution, issue from the press without containing the printer's name or place of abode, according to the literal direction of the act; in such a case, penalties to the amount of 100,000l. may be incurred by a publication of the most innocent nature; the number of copies of hand-bills, and other papers of that kind, usually printed, is from 250 to 5,000, and on every separate copy a penalty of 20l. attaches; the printer may thus be exposed to utter ruin by the inadvertence of his servants during his temporay absence, or by their negligence or fraud, after he has taken every precaution to satisfy the provisions of the law. In fact, printers have in various instances been harrassed by repeated prosecutions for different copies of the same publication; the omission of the word "London" in the description of a printer's place of abode, in addition to that of a well-known street in the metropolis, which precluded all sapposition of wilful disobedience of the law, has been deemed to be an offence under the statute, and has subjected the party charged to protracted prosecution and ex-pence; for transgressions of no higher malignity than this, the petitioners are liable to a severity of punishment which would be deemed adequate atonement for the most aggravated misdemeanor. In several instances, persons have been entrapped into a violation of the law by common informers, and have been prosecuted under circumstances which implied no blame whatever; the offences too, of which such may be the ruinous consequences, an withdrawn from the impartial and human" cognizance of a jury, and decided upon summary proceedings before a single justice of the peace; no appeal to the quarter sessions from the decision of the justice is allowed, the magistrate has not even the power of mitigating the penalty in the most favourable circumstances, nor will any number of convictions bar farther proceedings, while a single copy can be produced on which a penalty has not been awarded, and the common informer being exempted from the payment of costs in case of failure, is not deterred from repeating his vexatious attempts to obtain a conviction; and that, as the petitioners are amenable to the laws for any seditious, immoral, irreligious, or libellous books or papers, which they may be guilty of printing and publishing, they submit with becoming humility to the House, that it is unnecessary to secure, by such excessive accumulation of penalties, a compliance with a regulation which, in case of an inoffensive paper, they can have no interest to omit, and of which the punishment is so disproportioned to the offence. If the publication be of an illegal nature, or of a dangerous tendency, the printer is discovered when there is evidence to convict him of neglecting the regulation of the act, and he may be punished according to the degree of guilt which he has really incurred. The House, indeed, cannot doubt that the provisions in question have been converted into an engine of vexation and oppression to the petitioners, without any benefit to the public, when they are informed, that, in every instance of prosecution, the publication on which the. printer has been sued has been of an innocent or even useful nature; in most cases, though the punishment may be so severe, an improper motive cannot even be imputed to the offender, there is no temptation to fraudulent evasion, and the occasions on which the printer is most likely to expose himself to exorbitant forfeitures, are those in which his vigilance is beguiled by the innocence of the matter. Contemplating disobedience to this act he would guard against detection, but in printing an harmless hand bill, he does not reflect that he may forfeit 100,000l. by the forget fulness of a moment; all the chances of escape are reserved for deliberate violation of the law, and the utmost severity of forfeiture is incident to casual inadvertency; and the petitioners beg leave further to submit to the House, that, while penalties and inconveniencies of such serious magnitude may be incurred without any intention to violate the law, and without any criminal negligence of conduct, persons of common prudence must be deterred from engaging in an occupation attended with such hazard. The petitioners are the principal sufferers by the hardships, laid upon a business from which they expected to gain a reputable subsistence, and which it is too late for them to abandon, but the discouragement so severely felt by them, will ultimately prove injurious to the public at large, since it must tend to banish capital, ability, and reputation from a branch of industry by which numbers of persons are now honourably supported, from which no inconsiderable revenue is derived to the state, and which once was considered deserving of the peculiar favour of a free country. The violation of the law against which it was the object of the legislature to guard, is most likely to be committed by men who have neither property nor character to forfeit, and it would probably be found that the security of the public from seditious, immoral, irreligious, or libellous publications, can be little promoted by the studied degradation of the press, and by compelling all men of spirit, integrity, and prudence, to seek other means of employment; and praying the House to take the premises into consideration, and to grant them such relief as to the wisdom of the House shall seem meet." The petition was ordered to lie upon the table; and Mr. Martin gave notice, that in consequence of the grievances there stated, he would, on this day fortnight, move for leave to bring in a bill, to explain and amend the 39th of the king, relating to this subject.