Obscene publications were, historically, something for the canon law; the first prosecution in a court of common law was not until 1727. Prior to the passing of the 1959 Act, the publication of obscene materials within England and Wales was governed by the common law and the Obscene Publications Act 1857. The common law, as established in "R v Hicklin" 3 QB 360, set the test of "obscenity" as "whether the tendency of the letter published is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influence and into whose hands the publication might fall", while the 1857 Act allowed any stipendiary magistrate or any two Justices of the Peace to issue a warrant authorising the police to search for, seize and destroy any obscene publications. It was generally accepted that the existing law was heavily flawed, for several reasons. Firstly, the so-called "Hicklin test" from "R v Hicklin" was both unduly narrow and unyielding; it did not, for example, take into account the intentions of the defendant. Secondly, the test meant that individual sections of a published work could be analysed and the entire work declared obscene, even if the rest of the work was fairly mild. Thirdly, there was no defence based on the public good, and no opportunity to submit evidence showing the artistic merits of the work, and fourthly, works could be destroyed without the author or publisher even being informed and given an opportunity to speak.