struction of plaintiff's business. But it was argued for the defendant that equity had no jurisdiction unless property was involved, and counsel seem to have taken property to mean such property as may be bought and sold. The court rejected this argument, holding that equity had power to secure not only one's business but his business reputation against wrongful injury. Malins, V. C., said: "I am told that a Court of Equity has no jurisdiction in such a case as this, though it is admitted it has jurisdiction where property is likely to be affected. What is property? One man has property in lands, another in goods, another in a business, another in skill, another in reputation; and whatever may have the effect of destroying property in any one of these things (even in a man's good name) is, in my opinion, destroying property of a most valuable description. But here it is distinctly sworn to, and cannot be denied, that the effect of this will be seriously damaging to the Plaintiff's business of a merchant. "Now the business of a merchant is about the most valuable kind of property that he can well have. Here it is the source of his fortune, and therefore to be injured in his business is to be injured in his property. But I go further, and say if it had only injured his reputation, it is within the jurisdiction of this Court to stop the publication of a libel of this description which goes to destroy his property or his reputation, which is his property, and, if possible, more valuable than other property." This may seem to confuse the two aspects of reputation and to indicate that the court thought of reputation on its purely personal side, where the injury goes to feelings, sensibility, and honor, as only a specially valuable asset. Possibly the meaning is that no matter whether the interest is one of personality or one of substance, the suit should be entertained on principles of equity jurisdiction. Or it may mean that reputation is always an asset and so should be secured by equity as such because in case of such an asset the legal remedy is necessarily inadequate. If the latter is meant, we cannot agree. But the interest in this case was one of substance only and the distinction did not press. The court might have assumed that equity protected rights of property but not rights of personality, and reached the same conclusion. The main point discussed was whether business credit and standing were entitled to protection as being property. Granting that they were, it remained to consider whether equity could protect them by injunction in view of the policy of the law as to freedom of speech. This point is not referred to. But there is an elaborate review of the prior cases in order to show that an injunction was not precluded by authority. As to the injunction against libel, Dixon v. Holden is generally regarded as overruled by Prudential Assur. Co. v. Knott.19 On the point chiefly argued, however, the view taken as to the meaning of the term property in connection with equity jurisdiction still obtains.20 In any event, therefore, so far as defamation infringes interests of substance, there is ample warrant for resort to equity for relief, unless the two obstacles next to be considered stand in the way. Next in order we must inquire whether common-law policy or constitutional provisions as to freedom of the press preclude relief by injunction against libel or written disparagement of property. The case which long determined the course of decision upon this point is Brandreth v. Lance." In that case the plaintiff was a manufacturer of pills which had come into extensive use, and in consequence was generally well known. The defendant, a discharged employee, was about to publish a pretended life of "Benjamin Brandling a distinguished pill vender," so palpably intended as a libel on the plaintiff that no one could misunderstand it. Suit was brought to enjoin this publication. It is clear that the interest which plaintiff sought to protect was one of personality only. There was some attempt to plead a threatened injury to plaintiff's business. But it was feeble and the court rightly considered that no such injury was involved. It is clear also that no roundabout mode of protecting personality such as that resorted to in Gee v. Pritchard was possible. The case was one of threatened invasion of privacy and of threatened defamation injuring the plaintiff's reputation, not as part of his substance, but as part of his personality. The chancellor sustained a demurrer on two grounds, one, that in any event equity will only protect property rights, interests of substance, not interests of personality; the other, that an injunction against defamation would infringe the liberty of the press and run counter to constitutional guarantees. "Principles of free government," we are told, require that preventive justice be in 19 10 Ch. App. 142. 20 This has been settled in the cases involving interference with business relations by strikes and boycotts. 6 POMEROY, EQUITY JURISPRUDENCE, 3 ed., §§ 592, 594. Cf. Monson v. Tussauds, [1894] 1 Q. B. 671. 21 8 Paige, 24. abeyance where the wrongs complained of involve printing, publishing, or writing. At the outset we might ask, why does not this argument apply equally to such a case as Gee v. Pritchard? For not only is that case cited and relied upon in Brandreth v. Lance, but it has been followed and approved universally.22 Probably the answer would be that in such a case as Gee v. Pritchard the defendant is not writing or publishing his own sentiments, opinions, or views, but is publishing those of another in which the other has a property. He is not endeavoring to give public utterance to his own ideas and opinions, he is trying to steal or destroy another's property by publishing another's writings to the world. Obviously the common-law policy or constitutional provision has no reference to such a situation. But the courts have not limited injunctions on the authority of Gee v. Pritchard to cases where A is about to print B's unpublished lectures or the manuscript of his unpublished book or letters of literary character and merit which he has written. They conceive that there is sufficient property in any private letter to meet the rule. Yet it might be urged that even so free speech on the part of A is not involved, as it may be where a defendant publishes his own composition. In order to show a common-law policy against enjoining a libel where the remedy at law is grossly inadequate, the chancellor in Brandreth v. Lance relies on two things—the abolition of the Star Chamber, and the Impeachment of Sir William Scroggs. As to the first point, he says: "The court of Star Chamber in England once exercised the power of cutting off the ears, branding the foreheads, and slitting the noses of the libellers of important personages (Hudson's Star Chamber, 2 Collect. Jurid. 224). And, as an incident to such a jurisdiction, that court was undoubtedly in the habit of restraining the publication of such libels by injunction. Since that court was abolished, however, I believe there is but one case upon record in which any court, either in this country or in England, has attempted by an injunction or order of the court, to prohibit or restrain the publication of a libel, as such, in anticipation." [Citing the case of the injunction against the "Weekly Packet of Advice from Rome" for which Chief Justice Scroggs was impeached.] 23 22 See 4 POMEROY, EQ. JUR., § 1353; 2 STORY, EQ. JUR., §§ 948, 948 a. The statement as to injunctions against libel in the Star Chamber seems to be quite without foundation. No case where the Star Chamber enjoined a libel appears in the Star Chamber cases in the Selden Society volumes, in the portions of Hudson's Star Chamber relating to civil jurisdiction (§ 4), libel (§ 11), or injunctions (§ 20), nor in the portions of Coke's Third and Fourth Institutes treating of the Star Chamber and of Libels. Indeed the chancellor does not say that he knows of any such case, and there is none in Hudson, which he cites. What the Star Chamber did was to punish libels and unlicensed writings as misdemeanors. The Star Chamber had a certain civil jurisdiction.24 But no one seems to have urged that enjoining defamation was an item thereof. As to the impeachment of Sir William Scroggs,25 the third article was based on an injunction issued by the Court of King's Bench against a publication of an unlicensed book. It was a sort of injunction against a public nuisance granted by the court with no case before it and without a hearing. Even if the book was a nuisance, the court could not abate it till after conviction. This arbitrary and high-handed proceeding has no relation to the question under consideration. We are brought, then, to the question which is the crux of the matter in this country, namely, what is an infringement of freedom of the press and freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the bills of rights in American constitutions? Historically these provisions are connected with censorship of publications in England. At first this censorship was exercised by the Crown, later by the Star Chamber, and finally by Parliament, which provided for the censoring of all written publications down to 1694, when the statute for the time being expired and was not renewed. Writers of the end of the eighteenth century took this obsolescence of the censorship as declaratory of a natural or common-law principle of liberty of the press, as one of the rights of Englishmen. Accordingly our bills of rights guarantee freedom of speech and of publication as an individual natural right. Blackstone, whose views were generally accepted as common law in this country when the bills of rights were framed, holds that liberty of the press means simply the absence of restraints upon publication in advance as distinguished from liability, civil or crim 24 Hudson, Star Chamber, § 4, 2 COLLECTANEA JURIDICA, 55. inal, for libelous or improper matter, when published.26 Story contends that it was intended to guarantee liberty of publishing the truth, with good motives and for proper ends, and approves a distinction between political publications, criticisms, and general discussions on the one hand and mere defamation of private individuals on the other hand.27 A third view is taken by Cooley. He considers that the bills of rights guarantee "not only liberty to publish but complete immunity from legal censure and punishment for the publication so long as it is not harmful in its character, when judged by such standards as the law affords." 28 In other words, printing and speaking are to be subject to general rules of law, not to administrative censorship or arbitrary legislative restriction. The cases are most nearly in accord with this view. Of the three doctrines as to the scope of liberty of publication, only Blackstone's would justify the position taken in Brandreth v. Lance, namely, that there can be no preventive judicial justice as against defamation; that as to writing and speaking, all legal action must necessarily come after the act. But this view is open to obvious criticism. For if liability for any sort of publication which the legislature chooses to penalize may be imposed upon the publisher after the act, the result may easily be to effectually prevent indirectly and so establish a censorship and evade the guarantee. Blackstone's doctrine has usually been criticised as not going far enough in securing against imposition of liability after publication upon arbitrary or unreasonable grounds. Equally it goes too far in denying to the law all power of restraint before publication. Although its best title to consideration is in the history of the subject, it goes beyond what history indicates as the main purpose, namely, freedom from a régime of general censorship and license of printing. No very clear line is to be found in the decisions. Excepting Brandreth v. Lance and the cases following it, Blackstone's view has been urged chiefly in dicta.29 So far as imposition of liability | L 26 I BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES, 152-53. Cf. the dicta of Lord Cottenham in Fleming v. Newton, 1 H. L. Cas. 363, 376. 27 2 STORY, CONSTITUTION, §§ 1880, 1886. Cf. Kent, C. J., in People v. Croswell, 3 John. Cas. 393. See also State v. Pioneer Press Co., 100 Minn. 173, 176, 110 N. W. 867. 28 CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS, 441-42. 29 E. g., "Besides it is well understood and received as a commentary on this provision for the liberty of the press, that it was intended to prevent all such previous re |