Will the Public Please Step Forward? Libel Law and Public Opinion in Byron’s The Vision of Judgment

Abstract

THE LEGAL REPERCUSSIONS OF BYRON'S THE VISION OF JUDGMENT ARE well known. John Hunt, who had published poem in first issue of Liberal, was tried for libel, found guilty by jury, and sentenced to pay hundred pounds as well as to enter into securities for five years. (1) In many ways, prosecution was typical of period. Decided by special jury, trial involved a pair of witnesses and hinged on a reading of charged material. But there was a distinctive irony to targeting work for prosecution: Vision of Judgment a poem about limitations of judgment, inadequacy of representation, and prohibitive heterogeneity of public opinion. Considering his low opinion of English legal system, we might reasonably wonder why Byron retains judicial framework employed by his satirical target Robert Southey in A Vision of Judgement--complete with recognizable legal language and protocol--to censure Laureate and condemn late king. But whereas Southey employs framework to legitimize his judgment of George ill, trial Byron stages deliberately abortive. arguments are inconclusive, witnesses fail to provide any definitive testimony, and trial ultimately disintegrates, derailed as much by a defective process as by discordant poetry. While this result reflects on English legal system more broadly, poem engages with a specific judicial problem, that was highlighted by slew of libel trials that led up to publication of Vision: disconnect between public opinion and courtroom invocations of the people. In his Vision, Byron not simply repudiating Southey's verdict, but reimagining relationship between courtroom and public. By conspicuously failing to represent public opinion fully in heavenly trial, Vision of Judgment underscores representational limitations of judicial process--limitations that had become especially prominent in 1821. Criticism of libel law was intense when Byron conceived poem, in part because shifts in interpretation and prosecution of libel law had fundamentally compromised its application in courtroom. gradual implementation of 1792 Libel Act, which allowed jury to determine whether or not a work was libellous in nature, made trials increasingly dependent on invocation of public opinion. But in practice, effectively representing reading public in courtroom proved impossible, and libel prosecutions were required to make expansive claims (both implicit and explicit) to speak for English people--claims that were unavoidably specious and unsubstantiated. In his Vision, Byron deliberately reproduces central defect of contemporary libel trials, crucially premising heavenly trial on an abortive invocation of the people. A universal shoal of shades called to voice public attitude against late king, but conclusively representing sentiments of this motley crowd proves impossible, as neither Wilkes, Junius, nor Southey can move beyond their own private priorities and concerns. Accentuating failure of these key witnesses, Vision of Judgment foregrounds disjunction between individual witness and multifarious multitude, demonstrating that public opinion cannot be effectively reduced to one or two persons. (2) Though Byron's poem mirrors English legal system, none of existing scholarship on Vision of Judgment has considered poem's jurisprudential subtexts. For most of twentieth century, critics typically situated poem within a biographical narrative, treating it first and foremost as a satirical response to Robert Southey's A Vision of Judgement (1821). (3) The best introduction to Byron's Vision of Judgment of 1822, commentators have regularly suggested, is laureate poem which inspired it. (4) While this approach helped explain origins of poem, it necessarily left intellectual and historical contexts of Vision comparatively neglected. …