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The Maitland Mercury.
, ,. , - Thursday, July 15, 1875.
t STRANGERS IN PARLIAMENT.
Mb. Buchanan, restlessly searching for a new
objeot upon which to expend his boisterous
aotivity, has been somewhat whimsically moved
to declare and define a certain privilege of JPar
liament, which lie and men like bim have done
more daring the past session than any other
member to abuse He wishes that the right of
arsingle member,-' on his own motion, to clear
the Honse of strangers, by drawing the Speaker's
attention to'them, Bhould be curtailed; and that
the right should be exeroiscd in future by the
House voting, without; debate, when the ques-
tion is put by the Speaker. There ought to be
no objection, we should "think, to the principle
involved in this proposal : it is manifestly
inoonvenient that a single member, for a
capricious reason which be is not obliged to
state, should have power to exclude the public
and the Press- Tho exercise of the privilege is
a portion of that legacy of forms which we have
""received from the Imperial Parliament, and it
has been applied by us without recognition of
the faot that many of the conditions of
Colonial Legislative bodies are entirely different
from ' those of the House of Commons. The
Legislative bodies here have sprung into
¡existence full armed, as it were, from the will of
the people, and have adopted privileges, which
jin England were the growth of centuries, and the
.result of mutual concessions and adjustment,
.between the Sovereign on one side of the
-Parliament, and the people on the other. In
that view, many of the privileges claimed by
local Legislatures are incongruous and absurd
As Mr! Buchanan pointed out very properly,
the deliberations of the British Parliament
were secret in the first instance, because states-
men of the day, awakening to desires for
" liberty, were arrayed against a King who craved
despotic sway, and who had very great and
dangerous powers. And when, later still, the
power of the sovereign waned, and it became
, evident that power was coming to reside
more and more strongly in the opposite pole of
the sooial soale, Parliament remained jealous
.of the privileges it bad acquired in the
' Tong struggle with monarchs for its rights, Te
sisted its new master, and interposed barriers
against any new mastery till it was obliged by
'the force of advanced opinion to tbrow them
Idown one by one. So, gradually, the right to
report its debates was gained by the newspaper
press ; and although the fiction was maintained
. that this was done by a breaoh of privilege, the
privilege was in reality the fiotioD, and' the
practice has become established. But the
-foundation of oolonial legislatures was on an
entirely different basis; and they have adopted
the privileges of the Imperial Parliament, not
because they were necessary to the freedom of
their deliberations, but because they ex
" iated-a slavish adherence to custom, with-
out any thought whether the conditions
of our legislative bodies demanded or justified
the transplanting of all the privileges or only
modifications of them. It is easy to under
. stand that it is well in any case VSÍÍ the Itn
1 perial Parliament should retain the means of con-
ducting ita deliberations in secret Britain being
one of the great European Powers, must have c
diplomatic reasons for concealment occasionally
-we live in a world where truth cannot always
be boldly spoken where other countries, are'
' concerned, and where evasion or indicióos silence
is sometimes a necessity. Bat that is not the
'o'ase in these oolonies j the most'important oon
, corns with which our Legislative Assemblies
have to deal are domestic-the small beer of
polities; and there is no reason at
-any- time why all the movements made
" should not be bnown. Of course there
may be- occasions when it is desirable, for
,tbe maintenance of order, that the power
to,' olear the House should "be real and
sufficient, and Mr. Buchanan's proposal would
seem to meet the oase. Singularly enough, the
same question has arisen in the House of Com
t mons, owing to a misuse of the privilege by a
single member ; and it seems likely that an ill
defined privilege, resting oa a vague tradition,
may in England also be declared in unmistake
able terms. And although the conditions of
this oolony and of Great Britain vary, so as to
make the identical exercise of the pri
, rilege in both ludiorous as far as re-
gards New South Wales, we acknow-
ledge the force of a suggestion made
bj Mr. Parket, and acquiesced in by the leading
journal, that we should wait to ces what «he
House of Commons deoides for the future, and
regulate our conduot by that decision. When
the privilege emerges from a shadowy state of
dependence upon a past whioh, though not
likely to reour, was a reality for England, but a
myth for us, and is settled upon fixed terms
that are in harmony with the present enlighten
ment, it will be convenient that our practice in
this respect should be in accordance with that
of the mother-country. And at the same
time we may say, that while many of
the other privileges of Parliament have no
significance, except that they are m agreement
with the home practice, they may properly and
wisely be retained, beoause they have a clear
"value in" Bnomg~ the Legislative' body
round with a certain awe, a certain unapproach
ableness, jrhioh it is well for a governing power
io_keepjup.__ Thepriyileges of Parliament,
shadowy, mysterious, undefined, but still real,
serve a useful purpose io staving off the
familiarity whioh is often the parent of con-
tempt.
There is another point that seems to have
been lost sight of., In the days of Charles I
and in the immediately subsequent reigns, the
I debates in Parliament were secret, it is true, but
there was no jealousy or fear of the Press, simolv
beeause the newspaper systom was not then
in existence to bo feared But when
the constitutional ohecks apon the royal power
had been perfected, and Parliament feared the
invasion of its privileges from the popular side,
the exclusion of the Press was partly due to the
insolence of newly-acquired powor, _ and partly
to ignoranoe or misapprehension of the
functions which the Press ought to exer-
cise in a, free oountry. By degrees the
insolence was toned down, and the ignorance
removed,'and now it is admitted that the politi-
cal education of the people depends upon the
extent of its knowledge of the working of that
politioal machinery which the people themselves
create. Henoe, it would bo seen that in re-
considering the ne« terms upon which
the privilege is to be established, there
| should be taken into prominent account
the right of the people to know what their re-
presentatives are doing in Parliament The
right has been tacitly recognised, of course,
ever since reporting the proceedings of Parlia-
ment has been allowed; but it has been, never-
theless, a breaoh of privilege, and could be in-
termitted, as we know, by the action of a single
member, without reasons given. If Mr. Bu
ohanan's proposal, and Mr. Disraeli's, which is
really the same, are adopted, the Press will be
excluded only on the vote of the whole House.
That may do for England, where, as we
have said, diplomatic reasons may warrant
the absolute inviolability of Parliamentary
proceedings on certain occasions. But why
should it be so here ? This is one of the cus-
toms in which we may safely depart from the
new praotice of the House of Commons, sup-
posing Mr. Disraeli's resolution to be passed.
It is well, for the preservation of order, that
the House should have power instantly to ex-
clude strangers. At the same time it may be
worth while to say parenthetically that every
exclusion of strangers, in our experience, has
taken plaoe, not beoause of any fear that the
strangers might misconduct themselves, but
because a scene was imminent or waB proceeding,
in which members dipgraced themselves by
violence of langnage or conduot. Judging the
future from the past, therefore, and remember-
ing that the people have the "igbt to judge by
every action of their representatives the fitness
of those gentlemen for the dignity of members
of Parliament, we think the exclusion of
strangers should not mean the exclusion of the
Press, unless the reporters were expressly ordered
to withdraw by resolution of the House. Uni-
versal snffrage ought to carry with it the most
complete means of ascertaining the capability of
members returned to discbarge their duties,
especially in a country where universal suffrage
has come too soon for the state of politioal edu-
cation in which it finds the people
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