volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

302 An Action for Slander.
action, saying that " Mr. Budge must defend himself
in the first instance. Upon the case being decided
their Lordships will consider an application for reimbursement
of the cost incurred, or of so much as
the Solicitor to the Treasury advises to have been
properly expended." The case was tried before
Mr. Justice Cave in June and July, 1893, and the hearing
occupied five days ; Mr. Rassam obtained a verdict
in his favour with £$0 as damages. Obviously I am
not the proper person to discuss the merits of the case.
It was fully reported in the daily papers and was the
subject of comment in some of them on the day after
its conclusion. I may here quote some portions of the
leading articles in The Times and Daily News.
From The Times, July 4th, 1893, p. 10.
" Mr. Budge, who is now the assistant-keeper of
Assyrian antiquities in the Museum, was sent out to
Bagdad some years after Mr. Rassam had completed
his work, and he appears to have heard rumours there
which he wrongly credited. At all events, in June, 1891,
a conversation took place at the Museum in which the
defendant used words which, in the opinion of the jury,
implied that the plaintiff was a party to the theft of
antiquities, the property of the Museum. Sir Henry
Layard, who was himself the first great explorer of
Assyria, was present at the time, and the defendant
substantially repeated the charge in a second conversation
at Sir Henry Layard's house. On the first
occasion, although the slanderous words were uttered
in a public part of the Museum, nobody but officials
of the Museum and Sir Henry appears to have been
present ; on the second, the conversation, we are told,
took place ' in strict confidence.' The Judge, however,
laid down that although Sir Henry Layard had voluntarily
done much useful work for the Museum, there
was nothing in his position to make the conversation
' privileged.' The fact that the second conversation
took place in confidence and that Mr. Budge had been