consequence of the defendant having published a false and scandalous libel of and concerning the plaintiff. The defendant pleaded Not Guilty, and also put upon the record several pleas justifying the several parts of the alleged libel. The following evidence given for the plaintiff. : was H. W. Hobhouse.I was in the civil service of the East-India company. I think, because my writing is on it, that I received the letter now produced. I received it from the plaintiff at Trieste, in the year 1819. The letter was unsealed when I received it, in an inclosure. Be fore I received it I had some conversation with the defendant about it, but I do not remember the particulars. I think the defendant told me, that he had seen the plaintiff in Syria, that the plaintiff was going to publish a work that he, the defendant, considered the plaintiff's conduct unfair towards him, that he had written a letter to the plaintiff from Thebes, and that he would send me a copy of it. He did send me the copy in a few days inclosed in the letter now produced. The letter was here read, it was dated November the 16th, 1819, and was to the following effect : "Dear Sir-I have found the rough draft of the letter, which I wrote to Buckingham, when I first saw his advertisement in the Calcutta newspaper. I send it to you inclosed. There may be a few verbal alterations, since I kept no duplicate. I wish you to show it to my friend Mr. at Aleppo, and to Mr. and Mrs. Rich, at Bagdad. You may make what use you think proper of it; but if, on your arrival in India, you find the work withdrawn, it will be better perhaps to be merciful to him. "Yours, &c. “W. J. BANKES." The following libel was then put in and read:- LETTER to Mr. Buckingham, dated from Thebes, June 12, 1819. "Mr. Buckingham-After some anecdotes respecting your conduct, which you cannot but suspect must have come, however late, to my knowledge before this time, you cannot expect that I should address you otherwise than I should the lowest of mankind. It is indeed with reluctance that I stoop to address you at all. It will require, however, no long preface to acquaint you with the object of this letter, since your own conscience will point it out to you from the moment that you shall recognise a hand writing, which must be familiar to you, since you have copied it, and are about to turn the transcript to account. You have hoped that the distance of place would befriend you have hoped that I should shrink from proclaiming that I have been imposed upon. It would have been far more politic in you to have shrunk from being proclaimed the man who has imposed. you hem to so unmerited a stigma; one amongst the number (whom you would not have dared even to allude co had he been alive) is unhappily unable to repel the imputation in is own person, I mean the late Mr. Burkhardt, whom you so imprudently cite as your bosom friend. The boast is rash and ill-timed. "Are you not aware that copies of a letter are extant, in which he styles you a villain; in which he says that the rogue can be brought to a sense of duty only by a kick? Do you wish then to publish your own disgrace, by letting the world know how well you were known to that excellent person, who, during the two last years of his life, lost no opportunity of testifying his contempt and aversion for your character. "Do not imagine that these sentiments were confined to the page of a single letter. Sheik Ibrahim was too open and too honourable to wish others to be deceived, as he had been for a time himself. Had his letters to me reached me sooner than they did, I should have had timely warning to beware how I trusted you, and you would never have had that opportunity which you have seized of abusing my kindness and confidence. "It is beneath me to expostulate with you, but I will state some facts to yourself which I have already stated to others that the journey beyond Jordan to Dgerask and Omkais was arranged, and the Arabs under engagement to conduct me thither before I ever saw you; that you introduced yourself to me by a letter, stating that you were intimate with some of my best friends, and studiously concealing from me (both then and afterwards) that you were in any person's employ; that it was at my invitation (I being always under the supposition that you were a free agent) that you went with me, having previously agreed to take down my notes and the journal when I should wish it; that the whole expenses of that journey were upon me; that the notes and journal were in great part taken down from my mouth (especially what relates to Dgerask), with the exception of that of the two or three last days, which were written with my own hand, and afterwards copied fair by you; but above all, that the plan of the ruins at Dgerask was constructed and noted with my own hand, and that all the assistance that I derived from you, even in collecting the materials for it, was in your. ascertaining for me the relative bearings of some of the buildings with my compass; that as to the plan of the theatre, you did not even know that I had made it till you saw it at Nazareth. "It is hardly necessary to remind you that you neither copied a single inscription, nor made a single sketch on the spot, since you are, I know, incapable of the one, and your ignorance of Latin and Greek must, I should suppose, unfit you for the other; add to which you had not a single sheet of paper on which you could have done either, if I except a pocketbook about four inches square. "The great ground plan was traced at a window of the convent at Nazareth (as both my servants can testify), and you have copies from my drawings at the tombs at Omkias, taken at the same time. These last are probably to furnish the vignettes and appropriate engravings which are announced. Surely you must laugh at the simplicity of your subscribers when you are alone, with whom you are to pass for a draughtsman, being ignorant of the very first principles of design; for an accurate copier of inscriptions, being ignorant of all the ancient languages; and for an explainer of antiquities, being incapable of even distinguishing between the architecture of the Turks and the Romans. I have said enough. It is in vain to at tempt to make a man sensible of ingratitude who has been guilty of fraud. "What I demand is, the immediate restitution of those copies from my papers, without exception, and without your retaining any duplicates of them. Let them be put into the hands of sir Evan Nepean, whom I have begged that he will do me the favour to take charge of them; and let all that portion of the work advertised that treats of a journey made at my expense, and compiled from my notes, be suppressed. I leave you otherwise to take the consequence: should you persist, the matter shall be notified in a manner that shall make your character as notorious in England and India as it is already in Egypt and Syria. You will find that you have not duped an obscure individual, who is obliged to bear it and hold his tongue. WM. J. BANKES. "When this letter was written, I did not know that the person to whom it is addressed was editor of the in which his long-winded paper advertisement appeared, but supposed him to be still at Bombay. Several letters, which passed between the plaintiff and the defendant, in 1816, were put in and read, in order to shew the terms on which the parties were, and the favourable opinions expressed by the defendant of the plaintiff. The advertisement in the Calcutta Journal, announcing the appearance of his book, was also put in and read. John Murray. I am a publisher in London. The manuscript now produced I received about five or six years ago; when I parted with it, I believe it was given by Mr. Clerk to Dr. Babington; this was some months after I received it. Cross-examined.-At the time I got the manuscript back from Dr. Babington, I had not seen the letter Mr. Bankes sent to Mr. Hobhouse; Mr. Buckingham sent me two or three portfolios of drawings and engravings; can't say how many drawings; there were more than two; might be five or six; the rest consisted of old French engravings. Those produced are some of the old engravings. Dr. Babington.-I am a physician; have travelled in the East ; I became acquainted there with Mr. Buckingham in April, 1815; we travelled together in the East; in that year I saw Mr. Buckingham copy inscriptions in India; I have never seen him make drawings or sketches; I saw Mr. Buckingham in Madras, in April, 1818, where I have seen manuscript notes of his travels; I believe I have seen those now produced, but I can't say positively; the books in which the notes from which the account of Djerask was drawn up were small ones like those now produced. When I returned to this country, I went to Mr. Murray's, in order to look after Mr. Buckingham's interest. I got the manuscript now produced from Mr. Murray in the end of January or the beginning of February, 1820. I gave the manuscript to Messrs. Longman and Co., but I don't know whether the book was printed from this manuscript. I have never compared the manuscript with the printed book. Mr. Buckingham introduced me to Mr. Burkhardt, at Cairo, and to colonel Misset, at Alexandria. He appeared to be on intimate terms with them. He introduced me to the one in November, and to the other in December, 1815. In consequence of his introduction I received civilities from those gentlemen. When Mr. Murray returned me the manuscripts, he gave me up a number of drawings, perhaps between twenty and thirty, certainly sufficient to make vignettes for cach chapter. I think I have seen Mr. Buckingham take sketches of head-lands, when we were travelling together near the Red Sea, but I can't speak positively to that fact. Mr. Arrowsmith.-I am a chartengrayer; I have compared the drawing of the Ruins of Geraza in the published book with the drawing (Mr. Buckingham's) now produced, and they correspond. I have compared the smaller one (the copy of Mr. Bankes's) with the one in the books, and they differ materially in the bearings. In one place they differ as much as seven points. There are eighteen places in the whole map. I measured thirty or forty bearings, and I found that in eight out of ten of them, there was a difference between the drawing in the book and the smaller map. There is also a difference in the shape of the figures and of the buildings. There are in the drawing in the book two rows of pillars which are not to be found in the smaller map. There are many other variations. tiff. This was the case for the plain Mr. Gurney addressed the jury for the defendant. Mr. Bankes, he stated, was a gentleman of great acquirements, who, instead of wasting his youth in dissipation, had devoted it to the advancement of literature and science. Whilst he was thus employed, he had the misfortune to fall in with the plaintiff, who was at that time, in plain English, nothing more than a messenger for a company of merchants, who had given him a sum of money for conveying their despatches; but which he intrusted to the hands of a stranger, leaving the despatches to shift for themselves. When the plaintiff wrote the letter in question, he was considerably irritated, and it was natural that he should, when he saw that he was, by a person under obligations to him, about to be deprived of the fruits of years of toil and labour-years which he might have spent in all the enjoyments of his native land. He did not mean to say, that those feelings would justify the defendant in writing that which was not true; but he trusted that he should be able to show that every statement was perfectly true, and then, of course, damages would be out of the question. The deposition of Mr. Biggs, of Bombay, stating, that the plaintiff had, upon the occasion in question, been employed to convey despatches over-land to India, and that he had sent them by another person, having been read, the French engravings having, in the margin, the plaintiff's manuscript instructions for the necessary alterations, as to costume, &c, were put in, and the marginal notes were read in evidence. A. Da Costa, examined through an interpreter.I was in the defendant's service during the time he was travelling in Syria. I was in his service for seven years; I entered his service in 1813; I was with him in Egypt and in Palestine; I first saw Mr. Buckingham at the convent in Jerusalem; the defendant was then on the Dead Sea; the plaintiff asked me if I would be good enough to deliver a letter to my master; he said that he came from Bethlehem, and that he had been in Egypt. He said, that he knew Sheik Ibrahim (Mr. Burkhardt), and colonel Missett, in Egypt. I delivered the letter to the defendant, who read it, and then tore it into pieces. At that time Mr. Bankes had an Arab with him, to make an application to the governor of the town, to release his son out of prison. The son was liberated, and I then went to bring another Arab to accompany us on our journey. The Arab's name was Mahomet Mehedi. Mahomet Mehedi was with Mr. Bankes before I saw Mr. Buckingham. The plaintiff afterwards made an application to Mr. Bankes for permission to accompany him to Djerask. The defendant refused, and said he did not wish to have any company. The plaintiff made application two or three days before Mr. Bankes gave any answer. After some time, permission was given to the plaintiff to accompany the defendant, upon the plaintiff's promise that he would go for pleasure, and not either write or make any drawings. I saw the party set out. The party consisted of Mahomet, who came from Egypt, Mahomet Mehedi, two Arabs, and Mr. Buckingham. The servant, Mahomet, carried a portfolio, a tin case tres. for drawing-paper, and compasses. All those articles belonged to Mr. Bankes. Mr. Buckingham had no portfolio. I kept Mr. Bankes's money in a bag, but Mr. Bankes took some in a girdle which he had about his body. Mr. Buckingham left his servant at Jerusalem. I paid the Arabs 250 piasI took the money out of the bag; Mr. Buckingham never put any money into the bag. On one day he asked me for the loan of ten dollars, but I said I could not give them without my master's orders. I afterwards gave him the money by my master's orders. plaintiff at Nazareth, writing a copy of my master's note-book. I recollect the defendant making the produced plan at Nazareth, after his return from Djerask. I afterwards saw the plaintiff tracing the plan at the window of the Convent. I saw the Giovanni Benatti examined, through an interpreter.—I was in Syria, and went by the name of Mahomet; I acted as interpreter to the defendant, whom I accompanied to Djerask. I was with the defendant when he agreed with the Arabs to guide him to Djerask. Mahomet Mehedi, the Arab, who had accompanied Mr. Bankes from the Dead Sea, had a son in prison, in Jerusalem; and, to procure his release from prison, the defendant made the governor a present of a telescope, some silver, and pearls for a lady's necklace. I carried the defendant's portfolio to Djerask. The plaintiff had no paper; the day was raining, and Mr. Bankes was in a grotto, taking a drawing of Djerask; Mr. Bankes was speaking, and Mr. Buckingham was writing. The plaintiff did not make any drawing. During the journey there |