daffy-down-dilly

Three years ago I published an essay, called “Injured Parties,” in which I explore how attitudes towards defamation and verbal “injury” have changed over time. In light of that I was interested to note, in one of Sayers’s novels, Lord Peter Wimsey’s comment that it is a criminal libel to call a lawyer a “daffy-down-dilly.” Now, literally a daffy-down-dilly, or daffadowndilly, is simply a daffodil. So what is Lord Peter talking about? This thread on Stack Exchange explains. A daffy-down-dilly is a lawyer who works both sides of a case. To accuse someone of being a daffy-down-dilly is to accuse them of criminal professional malpractice, which means that you may be sued for libel.

When in 1843 a Defamation and Libel Bill was moving through Parliament, one Lord Campbell, in the House of Lords, got deep into the weeds of the relevant distinctions:

Their Lordships might expect him, as he was perhaps casting reflections on others, to give them some proof of these actionable offences. If it were said of a barrister, that he was “a daffy down dilly,” that is actionable. If he is said “to be a dunce,” — [The Lord Chancellor: Or a dandy.] — or that he has “no more law in him than a jackanapes,” that is actionable. Nay, it was actionable to say that a barrister “has more law in him than the devil,” for he must have less law, and not more than that personage. Now, with regard to words imputing indictable offences, it was an actionable offence to say that Mr. A. had held up his hand to Mr. B., for that was held to be an inducement to commit an assault. In Comyn’s Digest it was held that to say a man had not repaired a road or a bridge, which he ought to repair, was actionable, because the slander imputed to him an act for which he might be fined as a misdemeanor. For such trifling words as these a man might bring his action, and recover damages under the law of slander; but for words of a most serious nature, which might ruin a man’s character, no action could be maintained if they did not ascribe to him conduct inconsistent with the duties of his profession, or impute to him an indictable offence. To call a lawyer a swindler was not actionable. But if a letter containing those words were sent to a single individual, though not shown to another person, an action would lie. If the words were only spoken, it might be proclaimed in the face of the whole county of Middlesex, that a barrister was a swindler, and no action could be brought. If it were said, “a man is a cheat, and I will prove him a cheat; he is a cheat, and stole two bonds from me,” no action would lie, because the bonds were considered only a security, and in that state, as a security, they were a chose in action. So, to say of a man “he is a thief, and stole my trees,” no action would lie, because they were fixtures on the freehold, and on them a man could not commit a larceny. To say a man “stole corn from my field” is not actionable, because the corn was growing or standing, and therefore no action would lie. To say also that a “man stole iron bars out of my window” is not actionable, because the bars are part of the house, and a man cannot commit larceny with a house. So, to state that a “man stole the shutters” is not actionable, for the same reason…. Neither was it actionable to speak most irreverent words of a parson; that was according to a judgment given, which must be well known to his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack, though the same words, if spoken of a lawyer, would be actionable. It might be said of a parson and it was so held by a judge, that he was a “bon padre and un grand fou.” An action was brought on these words but it appeared by the decision of the court they were not actionable, for the court said in its Norman French, that the man had not said anything against the parson, for a “bon parson might be a d—d fool.”

Some of these distinctions are too subtle for me, I must admit. But I approve of the theology underlying the argument that a lawyer must have less law in him than the Devil. The Devil has nothing but law on his side; the lawyer may not have grace, but at least he may have prudence and equity.