George Barrell Cheever: Deacon Giles' distillery (1844)

The time, I trust, has passed, when an immoral occupation could be shielded from the blaze of truth under the guardianship of law. It is part of the common liberties of our country, that all subjects may be freely examined, spoken, and written upon, and that any and every man may rightfully labor to turn the public indignation against any glaring evil, or iniquitous course of conduct. If there be an enormous inconsistency between any man's employment and his profession, his fellow-citizens are at liberty to point it out. There is nothing, either in law or in equity, which would make the adverting to an incongruity like the united sale of rum and Bibles injurious or libellous. If it be right to sell Bibles in a rum manufactory, or to manufacture rum where Bibles are sold, no man commits injustice, who says that such a thing is done; if it be wrong, that does not make the telling of it unjust. Truly, if anything ever could be a legitimate subject of censure or ridicule, it is that. Rum and Bibles! the gospel and perdition conjoined together, and sold at a price, from one and the same building, and that building a distillery! If the application of such censure as is implied in a bare reference to that fact can be called a libel, then the law of libel is morally wrong; for the ridicule is morally right,—indeed, it is perfectly irresistible. No man can avoid it; and with such an incongruity before the mind, who can avoid expressing it 1 It is a fair, just, proper subject for censure, if ever there was one. Nor does its expression imply malice. A thousand individuals might remark upon the monstrous inconsistency, without a particle of ill-feeling against the man who commits it.

Take a common sense view of this case in the light of one somewhat analogous, on which I will give you the opinion of the law. "The editor of a public newspaper," Lord Kenyon said, " may fairly and candidly comment on any place or species of public entertainment; but it must be done fairly, and without malice, or view to injure or prejudice the proprietor in the eye of the public: if so done, however severe the censure, the justice of it screens the editor from legal animadversion." Now, without the necessity of calling a distillery a place of public entertainment, you may apply the same principle in the case before you. I have simply referred to a fact in the history of a distiller's individual business, " without malice, or a view to injure," and I appeal to your honor if I have said anything too severe, or used any words of censure that are unjust. The bare starement of the fact is censure, the very mention of such a thing is inevitable ridicule. Whoever exhibits such an inconsistency, ridicules himself in the eye of the community. And if any man chooses to play the fool before society, shall another man be prosecuted for libel in describing his actions? If any man, however respectable, should, for the sake of gain, place himself in a ridiculous attitude, and enact a pantomime of folly and madness in the public street, and another should describe that scene in a newspaper, is there any court that could find that description a libel? It is simple matter of fact in the eyes of all, and however disgraceful, the relation of it cannot be libellous.