SPEECH for THOMAS CARNAN, Bookseller, at the Bar of the House of Commons, on the 10th of May 1779. As taken in shorthand.

THE SUBJECT.

By letters-patent of King James I., the Stationers' Company and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had obtained the exclusive right of printing almanacs, by virtue of a supposed copyright in the Crown. This monopoly had been submitted to from the date of the grant in the last century, until Mr Carnan, formerly a bookseller in St Paul's Churchyard, printed them, and sold them in the ordinary course of his trade. This spirited and active tradesman made many improvements upon the Stationers' and University almanacs, and, at a very considerable expense, compiled many of the various classes of useful information, by which pocket almanacs have been rendered so very convenient in the ordinary occurrences of life, but which, without the addition of the calendar, few would have been disposed to purchase.

Upon the sale of Carnan's almanacs becoming extensive and profitable, the two Universities and the Stationers' Company filed a bill in the Court of Exchequer, for an injunction to restrain it, praying that the copies sold might be accounted for, and the remainder delivered up to be cancelled.

It appears from the proceedings printed at the time by the late Mr Carnan, that the Court, doubting the validity of the King's charter, on which the right of the Universities and of the Stationers' Company was founded, directed a question upon its legality to be argued before the Court of Common Pleas, whose judges, after two arguments before them, certified that the patent was void in law; the Court of Exchequer thereupon dismissed the bill, and the injunction was dissolved.

Mr Carnan, having obtained this judgment, prosecuted his trade for a short time with increased activity, when a bill was introduced into the House of Commons by the late Earl of Guilford, then Lord North, Prime Minister, and Chancellor of the University of Oxford, to revest, by Act of Parliament, the monopoly in almanacs, which had fallen to the ground by the above-mentioned judgments in the King's courts.

The preamble of the bill recited the exclusive right given to the Stationers and Universities by the charter of Charles II., as a fund for the printing of curious and learned books, the uniform enjoyment under it, the judgments of the courts of law upon the invalidity of the charter, and the expediency of regranting the monopoly for the same useful purposes by the authority of Parliament.

VOL. I.

B

The bill being supported by all the influence of the two Universities in the House of Commons, and being introduced by Lord North in the plenitude of his authority, Mr Carnan's opposition to it by counsel was considered at the time as a forlorn hope; but to the high honour of the House of Commons, it appears from the journals, vol. xxxvii., p. 388, that immediately on Mr Erskine's retiring from the bar, the House divided, and that the bill was rejected by a majority of forty-five

votes.

THE SPEECH."

MR SPEAKER,-In preparing myself to appear before you, as counsel for a private individual, to oppose the enactment of a general and public statute, which was to affect the whole community, I felt myself under some sort of difficulty. Conscious that no man, or body of men, had a right to dictate to, or even to argue with Parliament on the exercise of the high and important trust of legislation, and that the policy and expediency of a law was rather the subject of debate in the House, than of argument at the bar, I was afraid that I should be obliged to confine myself to the special injury which the petitioner, as an individual, would suffer, and that you might be offended with any general observations, which, if not applying to him personally, might be thought unbecoming in me to offer to the superior wisdom of the House.

But I am relieved from that apprehension by the great indulgence with which you have listened to the general scope of the question from the learned gentleman (Mr Davenport) who has spoken before me, and likewise by the reflection, that I remember no instance where Parliament has taken away any right conferred by the law as a common benefit, without very satisfactory evidence that the universal good of the community required the sacrifice; because every unnecessary restraint on the natural liberty of mankind is a degree of tyranny which no wise legislature will inflict.

The general policy of the bill is then fully open to my investigation; because, if I can succeed in exposing the erroneous principles on which it is founded,-if I can show it to be repugnant to every wise and liberal system of government, I shall be listened to with the greater attention, and shall have the less to combat with, when I come to state the special grounds of objection which I am instructed to represent to you on behalf of the petitioner against it. Sir, I shall not recapitulate what you have already heard from the bar; you are in full possession of the facts which gave rise to the question, and I shall therefore proceed directly to the investigation of the principles which I mean to apply to them, in opposition to the bill before you-pledging myself to you to do it with as much truth and fidelity, as if I had the honour to speak to you as a member of the House. I am confident, sir, that, if you will indulge me with your attention, I shall make it appear that the very

same principles which emancipated almanacs from the fetters of the prerogative in the courts of law, ought equally to free them from all parliamentary restriction.

On the first introduction of printing, it was considered, as well in England as in other countries, to be a matter of state. The quick and extensive circulation of sentiments and opinions, which that invaluable art introduced, could not but fall under the gripe of governments, whose principal strength was built upon the ignorance of the people who were to submit to them. The PRESS was, therefore, wholly under the coercion of the Crown, and all printing, not only of public books containing ordinances religious or civil, but every species of publication whatsoever, was regulated by the King's proclamations, prohibitions, charters of privilege, and finally by the decrees of the Star-Chamber.

After the demolition of that odious jurisdiction, the Long Parliament, on its rupture with Charles I., assumed the same power which had before been in the Crown; and after the Restoration the same restrictions were re-enacted and re-annexed to the prerogative by the statute of the 13th and 14th of Charles II., and continued down by subsequent acts, till after the Revolution. In what manner they expired at last, in the time of King William, I need not state in this House; their happy abolition, and the vain attempts to revive them in the end of that reign, stand recorded on your own journals, I trust, as perpetual monuments of your wisdom and virtue. It is sufficient to say, that the expiration of these disgraceful statutes, by the refusal of Parliament to continue them any longer, formed THE GREAT ERA OF THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS IN THIS COUNTRY, and stripped the Crown of every prerogative over it, except that which, upon just and rational principles of government, must ever belong to the executive magistrate in all countries, namely, the exclusive right to publish religious or civil constitutions,-in a word, to promulgate every ordinance which contains the rules of action by which the subject is to live and to be governed. These always did, and, from the very nature of civil government, always ought to, belong to the sovereign, and hence have gained the title of prerogative copies.

When, therefore, the Stationers' Company, claiming the exclusive right of printing almanacs under a charter of King James I., applied to the Court of Exchequer for an injunction against the petitioner at your bar, the question submitted by the barons to the learned judges of the Common Pleas, namely, "WHETHER THE CROWN COULD GRANT SUCH EXCLUSIVE RIGHT? was neither more nor less than this question- Whether almanacs were such public ordinances, such matters of state, as belonged to the King by his prerogative, so as to enable him to communicate an exclusive right of printing them to a grantee of the Crown? For the press being thrown open by the expiration of the licensing Acts, nothing could

remain exclusively to such grantees but the printing of such books as, upon solid constitutional grounds, belonged to the superintendence of the Crown as matters of authority and state.

The question so submitted was twice solemnly argued in the Court of Common Pleas; when the judges unanimously certified that the Crown had no such power; and their determination, as evidently appears from the arguments of the counsel, which the Chief-Justice recognised with the strongest marks of approbation, was plainly founded on this,-that almanacs had no resemblance to those public acts, religious or civil, which, on principle, fall under the superintendence of the Crown.

The counsel (Mr Serjeant Glynn and Mr Serjeant Hill), two of the most learned men in the profession, who argued the case for the plaintiff's, were aware that the King's prerogative in this particular had no absolute and fixed foundation, either by prescription or statute, but that it depended on public policy, and the reasonable limitation of executive power for the common good; they felt that the judges had no other standard by which to determine whether it was a prerogative copy, than by settling upon principles of good sense whether it ought to be one; they laboured, therefore, to show the propriety of the revision of almanacs by public authority; they said they contained the regulation of time, which was matter of public institution, having a reference to all laws and ordinances,-that they were part of the Prayer-Book, which belonged to the King as head of the Church,-that they contained matters which were received as conclusive evidence in courts of justice, and therefore ought to be published by authority,-that the trial by almanac was a mode of decision not unknown,-that many inconveniences might arise to the public from mistakes in the matters they contained: many other arguments of the like nature were relied on, which it is unnecessary for me to enumerate in this place, as they were rejected by the Court; and likewise, because the only reason of my mentioning them at all is to show, that the public expediency or propriety of subjecting almanacs to revision by authority, appeared to those eminent lawyers, and to the Court, which approved of their arguments, as only the standard by which the King's prerogative over them was to be measured. For if the judges had been bound to decide on that prerogative by strict precedent, or by any other rule than a judicial construction of the just and reasonable extent of prerogative, these arguments, founded on convenience, expediency, and propriety, would have been downright impertinence and nonsense; but taking them, as I do, and as the judges did, they were (though unsuccessful, as they ought to be) every way worthy of the very able men who maintained them for their clients.

Thus, sir, the exclusive right of printing almanacs, which, from the bigotry and slavery of former times, had so long been monopolised as a prerogative copy, was at last thrown open to the subject,

as not falling within the reason of those books, which still remain, and ever must remain, the undisputed property of the Crown.

The only two questions, therefore, that arise on the bill before you are-First, Whether it be wise or expedient for Parliament to revive a monopoly so recently condemned by the courts of law as unjust, from not being a fit subject of a monopoly, and to give it to the very same parties who have so long enjoyed it by usurpation, and who have, besides, grossly abused it? Secondly, Whether Parliament can, consistently with the first principles of justice, overlook the injury which will be sustained by the petitioner as an individual, from his being deprived of the exercise of the lawful trade by which he lives,-a trade which he began with the free spirit of an Englishman in contempt of an illegal usurpation,-a trade supported and sanctioned by a decree of one of the highest judicatures known to the constitution?

Surely, sir, the bill ought to be rejected with indignation by this House, under such circumstances of private injustice, independently of public inexpediency. If you were to adopt it, the law would be henceforth a snare to the subject-no man would venture to engage hereafter in any commercial enterprise, since he never could be sure that, although the tide of his fortunes was running in a free and legal channel, its course might not be turned by Parliament into the bosom of a monopolist.

Let us now consider more minutely the two questions for your consideration: the general policy, and the private injury.

As to the first, no doubt the Legislature is supreme, and may create monopolies which the Crown cannot. But let it be recollected, that the very same reasons which emancipated almanacs from the prerogative in the courts below, equally apply against any interference of Parliament. If almanacs be not publications of a nature to fall within the legal construction of prerogative copyrights, why should Parliament grant a monopoly of them, since it is impossible to deny that, if they contain such matters as in policy required the stamp or revision of public authority, the exclusive right of printing them would have been inherent in the Crown by prerogative, upon legal principles of executive power, in which case an Act would not have been necessary to protect the charter. And it is equally impossible to deny, on the other hand, that if they be not such publications as require to be issued or reviewed by authority, they then stand on the general footing of all other printing, by which men in a free country are permitted to circulate knowledge. The bill, therefore, is either nugatory, or the patent is void; and, if the patent be void, Parliament cannot set it up again without a dangerous infringement of the general liberty of the press.

Sir, when I reflect that this proposed monopoly is a monopoly in PRINTING, and that it gives, or rather continues it, to the Company of Stationers-the very same body of men who were the literary