ing the weight
which he derived from his wealth and munificence, or who could supply
his ardour and fearlessness.

PROSECUTION OF WOODFALL AND ALMON.

Almost every act which the government now committed tended only to
excite the public clamour and indignation. During this summer it
involved itself in new troubles, and exposed itself to fiercer attacks,
by prosecuting the printers and publishers of Junius's Letters. In the
month of June Woodfall was tried for printing in his newspaper, the
"Public Advertiser," one of these letters, which was addressed to his
majesty, and was considered a scandalous libel; and Almon was tried for
selling a re-publication of it in the "London Museum." Almon was found
guilty of publishing, and was sentenced to pay a fine of ten marks, and
find security for his good behaviour for two years. Wood-fall was found
"guilty of printing and publishing only" and in his case, the defendant
moved to stay the entering of judgment on the verdict, while the
attorney-general moved for a rule on the defendant, to show cause why
the verdict should not be entered according to the legal import of the
words. The attorney-general's motion was attended to first; and when the
matter came to be argued in the court of King's Bench, Lord Mansfield,
before whom both cases had been tried, went regularly through the whole
evidence, as well as his own charge to the jury. After recapitulating
the defence on the trial, his lordship remarked: "I directed the jury,
that if they believed the innuendoes, as to persons and things, to have
been properly filled up in the information, and to be the true meaning
of the paper, and if they gave credit to the witnesses, they must find
the defendant guilty. If the jury were obliged to determine whether the
paper was in law a libel or not, or to judge whether it was criminal,
or to what degree; or if they were to require proofs of a criminal
intention--then this direction was wrong. I told them, as I have always
told them before, that whether a libel or not, was a mere question of
law arising out of the record, and that all the epithets inserted in the
information were formal inferences of law. A general verdict of the
jury finds only what the law implies from the fact, for that is scarcely
possible to be produced: the law implies from the act of publication,
a criminal intent." After some further remarks of minor importance his
lordship continued: "The motion of the attorney-ge