Sir Charles, who had meant slander, enveloped Mr. Bradley in a crimson glare.
Roger sped to the rescue. The combatants reminded him of a bull and a gadfly, and that is a contest which it is often good fun to watch. But the Crimes Circle had been founded to investigate the crimes of others, not to provide opportunities for new ones. Roger did not particularly like either the bull or the gadfly, but both amused him in their different ways; he certainly disliked neither. Mr. Bradley on the other hand disliked both Roger and Sir Charles. He disliked Roger the more of the two because Roger was a gentleman and pretended not to be, whereas he himself was not a gentleman and pretended he was. And that surely is cause enough to dislike anyone.
“I’m glad you raised that point, Sir Charles,” Roger now said smoothly. “It’s one we must consider. Personally I don’t see how we’re to progress at all unless we come to some arrangement concerning the law of slander, do you?”
Sir Charles consented to be mollified. “It is a difficult point,” he agreed, the lawyer in him immediately swamping the outraged human being. A born lawyer will turn aside from any other minor pursuit, even briefs, for a really knotty legal point, just as a born woman will put on her best set of underclothes and powder her nose before inserting the latter in the gas-oven.
“I think,” Roger said carefully, anxious not to wound legal susceptibilities (it was a bold proposition for a layman to make), “that we should disregard that particular law. I mean,” he added hastily, observing the look of pain on Sir Charles’s brow at being asked to condone this violation of a lex intangenda, “I mean, we should come to some such arrangement as that anything said in this room should be without prejudice, or among friends, or—or not in the spirit of the adverb,” he plunged desperately, “or whatever the legal wriggle is.” On the whole it was not a tactful speech.
But it is doubtful whether Sir Charles heard it. A dreamy look had come into his eyes, as of a Lord of Appeal crooning over a piece of red tape. “Slander, as we all know,” he murmured, “consists in the malicious speaking of such words as render the party who speaks them in the hearing of others liable to an action at the suit of the party to whom they apply. In this case, the imputation being of a crime or misdemeanour which is punishable corporeally, pecuniary damage would not have to be proved, and, the imputation being defamatory, its falsity would be presumed and the burden of proving its truth would be laid upon the defendant. We should therefore have the interesting situation of the defendant in a slander action becoming, in essence, the plaintiff in a civil suit for murder. And really,” said Sir Charles in much perplexity, “I don’t know what would happen then.”
“Er—what about privilege?” suggested Roger feebly.
“Of course,” Sir Charles disregarded him, “there would have to be stated in the declaration the actual words used, not merely their meaning and general inference, and failure to prove them as stated would result in the plaintiff being nonsuited; so that unless notes were taken here and signed by a witness who had heard the defamation, I do not quite see how an action could lie.”
“Privilege?” murmured Roger despairingly.
“Moreover I should be of the opinion,” said Sir Charles, brightening, “that this might be regarded as one of those proper occasions upon which statements, in themselves defamatory, and even false, may be made if from a perfectly proper motive and with an entire belief in their truth. In that case the presumption would be reversed and the burden would be on the plaintiff to prove, and that to the satisfaction of a jury, that the defendant was actuated by express malice. In that case I rather fancy that the court would be guided almost wholly by considerations of public expediency, which would probably mean that—”
“Privilege!” said Roger loudly.
Sir Charles turned on him the dull eye of a red-ink fiend. But this time the word had penetrated. “I was coming to that,” he reproved. “Now in our case I hardly think that a plea of public privilege would be accepted. As to private privilege, the limits are of course exceedingly difficult to define. It would be doubtful if we could plead successfully that all statements made here are matters of purely private communication, because it is a question whether this Circle does constitute, in actual fact, a private or a public gathering. One could,” said Sir Charles with much interest, “argue either way. Or even, for the matter of that, that it is a private body meeting in public, or, vice versa, a public gathering held in private. The point is a very debatable one.” Sir Charles swung his glasses for a moment to emphasise the extreme debatability of the point.
“But I do feel inclined to venture the opinion,” he plunged at last, “that on the whole we might be justified in taking up our stand upon the submission that the occasion is privileged in so far as it is concerned entirely with communications which are made with no animus injuriandi but solely in performance of a duty not necessarily legal but moral or social, and any statements so uttered are covered by a plea of veritas convicii being made within proper limits by persons in the bona fide prosecution of their own and the public interest. I am bound to say
