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Show THE LIE AND THE LAW. If all men arc indeed liars, there is at least danger in informing certain individuals of the fact that they are, in this respect, human, and even the law has, during recent years, taken heed to the objection which most of us feel to being accused of deception. To call a man a liar in Mississippi, Kentucky or Arkansas is to be guilty of a misdemeanor for which you are liable to a fine of twenty dollars. South Carolina and Georgia consider it slander and punish it accordingly. Missouri going further, has a statute in which the law contrary to its usual us-ual practices becomes almost sensible, sen-sible, and virtually declares that whosoever who-soever says that a man is a liar justifies jus-tifies the insulted citizen in assault and battery. Nor does the matter end there. Alabama juries are on record as considering con-sidering the offensive epithet an equivalent to the "first blow," and, in cases of assault provoked by the phrase, North Carolina holds the user of it equally guilty with the man who forcibly resented it. There is a maximum fine of twenty-five dollars for calling a man a liar in Virginia, and the West Virginia statute says that "all words which from their usual us-ual construction and common acceptation accep-tation are construed as insults and tend to violence and .breach of the peace shall be actionable." Saturday Post. |