Public Opinion Comes of Age: Reform of the Libel Law in the Eighteenth Century
A series of cases over a period of sixty years had raised the question of whether juries could pronounce on the substance of charges of libel and sedition or merely on the facts of publication. H.M. Lubasz writes how Fox’s Libel Act of 1791 put an end to doubt and thereby admitted the public to a larger vote in political affairs.
The eighteenth century was the golden age of the English governing class. For more or less a hundred years, this class managed to govern Britain with tolerable efficiency and without much interference from any other political element. Before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, kings had claimed a very substantial share in the ordering of society and the conduct of government.
But the Revolution Settlement established both the practical predominance of the landed aristocrats and the constitutional principle of limited monarchy. For one reason or another, William III, Queen Anne and the first two Georges were generally content to accept this new division of power.
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