ABSTRACT
The Court then proceeded to hear Council on Behalf of the Observations on the probable Issue of the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was admitted that the Book did contain much of the Abuse which hath been already published, and which will hereafter be published against the Ministry; but it was said, that the Author did not look on this as the Property of any particular Bookseller, because it had all been already printed twenty times over by different Persons, and that he therefore imagined it to be nullius in Boni,2 like every Thing else of a base Nature. The Council farther said, that when there was not a single Fact to charge on the Ministry, the only way to write against them must be by general Slander; and unless there was a Liberty granted of transcribing from one another, this would soon be totally exhausted; that such a Restraint therefore would affect the Liberty of the Press, the most valuable Privilege of which is to abuse the Government: Nor could any Injury be thus done to the Proprietors of Libels, since it was manifest by Experience, that the Public will buy the same Scurrility a hundred times over. He said it had been always held lawful to quote the Words of an Author, in order to answer or to expose them; that this was the plain and honest Intention of the Book under Consideration, as would have appeared from the Motto, had the Booksellers or their Authors understood it; for that the literal Translation of it was, ‘It is natural to all Men to listen with Pleasure to Calumnies and Accusations; but to be themselves grieved at the Praises of others.’ A Disposition which, he said, greatly prevailed in this Nation at present.
