ity, when provoked beyond
what it can endure,--we, in our brotherly judgments upon each other,
ought, _a fortiori_, to take into the equity of our considerations the
amount and quality of the offence. It will be objected that the law, so
far from allowing for, expressly refuses to allow for, sudden sallies of
anger or explosions of vindictive fury, unless in so far as they are
extempore, and before the reflecting judgment has had time to recover
itself. Any indication that the party had leisure for calm review, or
for a cool selection of means and contrivances in executing his
vindictive purposes, will be fatal to a claim of that nature. This is
true; but the nature of a printed libel is, continually to renew itself
as an insult. The subject of it reads this libel, perhaps, in solitude;
and, by a great exertion of self-command, resolves to bear it with
fortitude and in silence. Some days after, in a public room, he sees
strangers reading it also: he hears them scoffing and laughing loudly:
in the midst of all this, he sees himself pointed out to their notice by
some one of the party who happens to be acquainted with his person; and,
possibly, if the libel take that particular shape which excessive malice
is most likely to select, he will hear the name of some female relative,
dearer, it may be to him, and more sacred in his ears, than all this
world beside, bandied about with scorn and mockery by those who have not
the poor excuse of the original libellers, but are, in fact, adopting
the second-hand malignity of others. Such cases, with respect to libels
that are quickened into popularity by interesting circumstances, or by a
personal interest attached to any of the parties, or by wit, or by
extraordinary malice, or by scenical circumstances, or by circumstances
unusually ludicrous, are but too likely to occur; and, with every fresh
repetition, the keenness of the original provocation is renewed, and in
an accelerated ratio. Again, with reference to my own case, or to any
case resembling that, let it be granted that I was immoderately and
unreasonably transported by anger at the moment;--I thought so myself,
after a time, when the journal which published the libel sank under the
public neglect; but this was an after consideration; and, at the moment,
how heavy an aggravation was given to the stings of the malice, by the
deep dejection, from embarrassed circumstances and from disordered
health, which then possessed me; agg