It is suggested to Q. (Bloomsbury), that Lord Brougham meant not to say
that Horne Tooke _had ever held_ or _maintained_ this strange doctrine,
"that the law of libel was unjust and absurd, because libel means a little
book," but that he _would_ have done so, or might have done so consistently
with his etymological theory, namely, that the _present_ sense of words is
to be sought in their primitive signification: _e.g._, in the _Diversions
of Purley_, vol. ii. p. 403., Horne Tooke says,--
"_True_, as we now write it, or _trew_, as it was formerly written,
means simply and merely that which is _trowed_; and, instead of its
being a rare commodity upon earth, except only in words, there is
nothing but truth in the world."
If we ought _now_ to use the word truth only in this sense, then, _pari
ratione_, we ought to mean only a little book when we use the word libel.