The Judicial History of Individual Liberty. mayor. In the same year he was elected for the fifth time member of Parliament, and, after ten years' varied experience, in which he had made some lasting contributions to individual liberty, he took "his seat. In the midst of the excitement caused by the prosecution of Wilkes, Junius' letters
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sold by his servant in his shop, but it did not appear that Almon knew of or author ized the sale. Lord Mansfield held that a publisher was criminally liable for the acts of his servants, unless proved to be neither privy nor assenting to the publication. This doctrine, taken in connection with the action
LORD CAMDEN.
appeared. His famous Letter to the King appeared in the Morning Advertiser of De cember 19, 1769. Informations were im mediately filed against the printers and pub lishers of the letter. Almon, the bookseller, was first tried for selling the London Museum, in which the libel had been printed (20 St. Tr. 803). The paper was proved to have been
of subsequent judges in excluding exculpa tory evidence, rendered publication of a libel by a publisher's servant proof of criminality. Lord Mansfield also repeated in this case the doctrine which he had laid down in the case of the printers of the North Briton, that it was the province of the court alone to judge of the criminality of a libel.
