Press Laws

PRESS LAWS, the laws affecting the products of the print ing-press and newspapers in particular. (See NEWSPAPERS.) In English-speaking countries the liberty of the press is nowadays taken for granted. It was not always so, but in 1784 Lord Mansfield made the following pronouncement in R. v. Dean of St. Asaph (3 T.R. 431 n) : "The liberty of the press consists in printing without any previous licence, subject to the conse quences of the law." This liberty was a plant of slow growth in England, and in some Continental countries the State still exercises an authority over the newspaper press which in Anglo American spheres would be considered intolerable in time of peace. (See also CENSORSHIP.) In the middle ages the church kept a firm hand on the free expression of opinion, spoken or written, and when printing was discovered co-operated with the secular authority in keeping an even tighter hand on the printed word. The principle of the censorship over the products of the press, which is still maintained by the Roman Catholic Church (see INDEX LIBRORUM PROHI BITORUM), was initiated by a bull issued by Pope Alexander VI. in 1501 against unlicensed printing. In 1535 Francis I. issued an edict prescribing the death penalty for the unauthorized printing of books, and soon afterwards the Sorbonne became the licensing authority and remained so until the French Revolution.

England.

In England after the Reformation in Henry VIII.'s reign most of the rights of censorship passed from the ecclesi astical authorities to the Crown, which began to grant by letters patent the privilege of printing or selling books as a monopoly. Under Queen Mary the right of printing was limited to 97 mem bers of the Stationers' company, founded by royal charter in 1556, and their successors by apprenticeship. Under Queen Elizabeth the Star Chamber limited the number of printers and presses, and ordained that printing should be carried on only in London, Oxford and Cambridge. In view of the increase in unlicensed printing-presses, the Star Chamber in 1637 decreed that all printed books must be submitted for licence and registered by the Stationers' company before publication, with the penalty of forfeiture of all presses belonging to disobedient printers, who were disabled thereafter from carrying on their trade. The old

formula imprimatur (let it be printed) thenceforward denoted the authority to print the book. Law books had to be licensed by one of the chief justices or the chief baron of the Exchequer, certain other classes of books by special dignitaries, but most of the licensing devolved on the archbishop of Canterbury and his coadjutors and the chancellors or vice-chancellors of the universities. It was a similar ordinance made by the Long Parlia ment, of ter the Star Chamber had been abolished, that called forth John Milton's unlicensed essay, Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Under the Licensing Act of 1662 (in effect reproducing the Star Chamber order of 1637), practically the newspaper press was reduced to the London Ga zette. In 1695 the Licensing Act lapsed and, to quote Macaulay, "English literature was emancipated for ever from the control of the Government." Lord Chief Justice Russell (of Killowen) said in R. v. Gray 1900, 2 Q.B. at p. 4o : "The liberty of the press is no greater and no less than the liberty of every subject of the queen." (See CONTEMPT OF COURT.) One effect of unlicensed printing was to lay authors open to the attacks of literary piracy, and in 1709 the first Copyright Act (8 Anne c. 19) was enacted for their protection. The old power of a secretary of State to issue a warrant, general or special, for the purpose of searching for and seizing the author of a libel, or seizing the libellous papers themselves, was not finally declared illegal until the case of Entick v. Carrington in 1765 (St.Tr. xix. 103o). In 1776 the House of Commons passed a resolution in accordance with this decision. The compulsory stamp duty on newspapers was abandoned in 1855 (18 Vict. c. 27), the duty on paper in 1861 (24 Vict. c. 2o), the optional duty on newspapers in 1870 (33 and 34 Vict. c. 38).