LIBELLING THE KING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11691, 28 June 1901, Page 4

LIBELLING THE KING.

The Victorian State Assembly has nobly vindicated the loyalty of the colonies in its expulsion of a member legally responsible for the republication in Melbourne of the Irish People libel upon the King. The majority of 64 to 17 for 1 this course was not merely overwhelming in itself, but made more noticeably so by the fact that the minority were advocates of a milder punishment and not desirous that Mr. Findley should escape scot-free. The culprit himself appears to have been unaware that the publication for which he was responsible as publisher contained the scurrilous reprint and made a most complete repudiation of the article and the paper in which it appeared. But though we may well hope, for the credit of colonial representation, that he was in this an unconscious offender, the Victorian Assembly expressed the colonial feeling when it so solidly endorsed its Premier in refusing to mitigate the penalty of expulsion. For the unutterable baseness of the libel in question, flung at the head of the State for no reason excepting that he is the head of the State, forged with the knowledge that our King is by his position unable to defend himself bj ordinary process of law, demanded an answering indication of how honest people regard such contemptible villainy. Mr. Findley has little claim to sympathy, for he must have consciously associated himself with a disreputable and disloyal . publication, since only such a journal it may reasonably be supposed would have reproduced such a slander. We trust his expulsion will be a precedent for future maintenance of Parliamentary discipline. We have not won the rights of free speech and free press in order that under pretence of their sanctity evil-speaking may flourish unchecked and treason parade itself without a blush even in the halls of Parliament: this is the stand taken in Victoria and approved by every loyalist throughout the Empire.