West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1806.

West Coast Times, Issue 187, 25 April 1866, Page 2

West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1806.

The Parliament of Victoria has been prorogued by His Excellency Sir Chas. Darling, and re-convened — so that an interval of a day only elapsed between the closo of the ono session and the opening of another. Tho object of this political manoeuvre was to allow the Tariff Bill, which had been rejected by the Upper House, to be again introduced, such a course being prohibited by the standing orders " during tho same session." The Customs Duties Bill has accordingly been re-passed by the Legislative Assembly, and the new duties are now, again, being collected under it. The Council has intimated its intention of passing both this measure and the Gold Duty Repeal Bill if they aro sent up to it without " a tack," so as not to renew tho Constitutional question on which the Houses have hitherto been at war. It is probable that the Conference that has been arranged for, will result in the present settlement of the disputes between the two branches of tho legislature, and that — the " coordinate " rights of the Upper House being admitted by tho shape in which tho new measures will be sent up to it — the protectionist tariff will quickly become tho established law of the colony. One result of the necessity Ministers have felt themselves under of formally proroguiag Parliament, has been tho release of Mr Hugh George, the publisher of tho " Argus," imprisoned for contempt. According to the law of Parliament, the punitive power of the House is determined by the close of tho session. The exigencies of the Ministry requiring this step, Mr George has benefitted to the extent of becoming a freo man without tho payment of the heavy fees which, under any other circumstances, would have been the necessary condition-precedent of his liberation. Mr George's detention under the Speaker's warrant is hardly to be looked on in the light of a punishment, although,

no doubt, there were many exercises of petty tyranny. It undoubtedly, however, demonstrates the present most unsatisfootory condition of the law of "privilege of Parliament" as it prevails in the colonies. In England it is exercised with great caution, and only on occasions of imperative necessity. In the small colonial legislatures, on the other hand, composed of a few public men of an inferior grade, whoro party spirit runs high, the privilege power ia capablo of being employed as an instrument of great oppression. We entirely endorse tho view maintained by "Tho Argus," that the law of privilege should bo defined by a specific act, and the offences against it and the punishment due to them clearly defined also. Any exercise of an arbitrary power of punishment for an offence vaguely stated, appears to be quite alien to the spirit of the British judicial system. The power of declaring, by the vote of a popular Assembly, any act, or any words, to be a breach of privilege, and the power of following up the vote by an order of arrest and indefinite imprisonment, Avithout trial by jury or formal evidence given, is only too capable of being abused by a colonial legislature, to be entrusted to it with, any due regard to the liberty of the subject. It is to be hoped that Mr Hugh Georgo will be the last state martyr manufactured out of a state prisoner.