CRUSHING THE MINORITY. TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING POST.

Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 56, 5 September 1881, Page 3

CRUSHING THE MINORITY. TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING POST.

Sib — The events of the past week in the House of Representatives afford not only materials for history, but give immediate leßSona for the guidance of every elector throughout New Zealand. Public thanks are due to you for the impartial and dear manner you have described these proceedings from day to day, and for the lucid explanations commenting thereon. But I humbly, yet most earnestly, submit that the late arbitrary and unprecedented action of the Chairman of Committees, and more particularly that of the Speaker, should receive further discussion, not only through your columns, but by the electors of Wellington and every district in the colony, where men are to be found who are lovers of liberty, yet do not wish to Bee it separated from a respect for recognised law and order. These have been grossly violated, and I for one tremble for the immediate consequence if this sort of thing is to be allowed to exist during another session of Parliament. The high-handed action of the Speaker, backed by the silent, unreasoning brute force of a majority, amounts simply to this, that when he and they together may feel disposed, they will stop an appeal being made to the Speaker, as expressly provided by the Standing Orders, and thus practically destroy all written laws which they are all alike bound to obey until legally altered. The Speaker iv this last case has dared to suspend the Standing Orders, and the majority support him, in what I contend to be an illegal act, and fine a member .£2O who was exercising his legal right in an orderly and respect) nl manner. As well, bo it appears to me. might a judge of the Supreme Court set all statute law at defiance, order a jary to convict an innocent man, and hang him without appeal. No man's property or his life is safe in this country if the doctrine thus attempted to be laid down is to pass unchallenged, and the late proceeding allowed to stand as a precedent. It is a case wherein every man as well as every member of either House of Parliament is very directly concerned, and should, and will I trust, elicit here and elsewhere throughout New Zealand a clear and unwavering declaration of the sentiment of freemen who desire to live under a civilised system of law, rather than under the caprice and heated passion of a mere majority, supported by the illegal action of a subservient Speaker. Until last Friday night, I have always understood that there does not exist through the broad expanse of the British Empire a man, an officer, or the sovereign, whose conduot was not controlled by law. I am, &c, A Lov£B of Order and Libbbtt.