Chapter 4 focuses mainly on the evolution of the truth defense in Massachusetts; in Nova Scotia truth was a minor chord. In Massachusetts civil cases, however, judges systematically sought to contain truth and make it risky to plead, circumventing clear legislative intent to expand the reach of the truth defense. Special pleading was a casualty of this process. Similarly in criminal cases, judges ensured that a person accused of libel had to prove both truth and “good motives and justifiable ends”: neither well-intentioned but false, nor true but ill-meant statements would be protected. The key dynamic shaping this evolution was tension between reformers – abolitionists, temperance advocates, antimasons, Methodists and others – and more established, respectable men who did not wish to see their wives, children and other household subordinates drawn toward causes or imbued with knowledge of which they did not approve. Revealing unpleasant truths about reformers’ characters was much more palatable to courts than the same sorts of disclosures about those who defended orthodoxies. The idea that good intent was enough to save an accused person and that the defense could lead evidence of truth that might surprise the prosecution both fell, when it appeared they might save a reformer.

Chapter 2 describes the divergence between 1790 and 1830 of British and American thought on privilege and truth and describes the emergence of the common-law offense of publishing an obscene libel. The legal questions central to Burdett v. Abbot (King’s Bench, 1811) about the extent to which the British common law courts could consider parliamentary law are discussed. In Massachusetts the Supreme Judicial Court in Coffin v. Coffin in 1808 had much less constitutional difficulty constraining legislative privilege. Much more challenging in Massachusetts was the role of evidence of truth in a libel trial, after it had come in the 1790s to be understood as an appropriate defense for a republican citizen, criticism being necessary to the functioning of a republic. Evidence of truth became admissible in an ever-growing set of circumstances in which the public needed to be informed.