only by speaking. A conviction required a confession in open court, or the evidence of two witnesses to prove the words spoken. Also a prosecution had to be brought within six days of the offence. Section 4 was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1891. Discussions In 2001, The Guardian newspaper mounted an unsuccessful legal challenge to the Act in the High Court, alleging that the act "makes it a criminal offence, punishable by life imprisonment, to advocate abolition of the monarchy in print, even by peaceful means". They sought a declaration that the Human Rights Act 1998 had altered its meaning so that only violent conduct was criminal. The court held that this was a hypothetical question that did not deserve an answer, since The Guardian was not being prosecuted. The case eventually went to the House of Lords on appeal in 2003. In a unanimous judgement, the Lords agreed that the litigation was unnecessary; but the judges nevertheless agreed with Lord Steyn's view that [T]he part of section 3 of the 1848 Act which appears to criminalise the advocacy of republicanism is a relic of a bygone age and does not fit into the fabric of our modern legal system. The idea that section 3 could survive scrutiny under the Human Rights Act is unreal. In December 2013, the Ministry of Justice said that Section 3 of the Act, which had made it an offence punishable by life imprisonment to print, or otherwise "by any overt act or deed" to support the abolition of the monarchy or to "imagine, invent, devise, or intend to deprive or depose" the monarch, had been repealed in early 2013, without publicity. However, the Government later stated that the announcement that it had been repealed was wrong, and that it was still on the statute book. Relevant cases R v. Mitchel (1848) 7 State Tr. N.S. 599 R v. Cuffey (1848) 7 State Tr. N.S. 467, 12 JP 648 R v. Meany (1867) 10 Cox CC 506, IR 1 CL 500 Mulcahy v. R (1868) LR 3 HL 306 R v. Davitt (1870) 11 Cox CC 676 R v. Deasy (1883) 15 Cox CC 334 The last reported case under the Act in the United Kingdom was in 1883, although the Act was used in Australia in 1916 to prosecute the "Sydney Twelve". In 1972 three Irish republicans Joseph Callinan, Louis Marcantonio