The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 1912. TO STIFLE CRITICISM.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1405, 3 April 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 1912. TO STIFLE CRITICISM.

The session of tho New South Wales Parliament which has just ended will in future be looked back upon with shame by every intelligent and fair-minded citizen of that State. The M'Gowen Government, holding ofiico by virtue of an arrangement which placed a member who was then an opponent in the Speaker's chair, and pledged to introduce no contentious measures until after an appeal to tho electors, . foisted upon Parliament a series of highly controversial Bills, some of which' were deeply inimical to freedom and sound government. It sot itself to destroy tho system of nonpolitical control of the railways, to tamper with the national system of education, to increase the salaries of the members of the House, and, last and worst, to take special power to punish those who criticised it. Until recently wc thought the late Government of Now Zealand had tho worst record of any modern Admia> [ifltration in tfeo British Dsmuiiona.

for legislative and administrative attacks upon the liberty of the press and the liberty of speech, but we ure inclined to think that that bad eminence is now occupied by the MXlowen Ministry of New South Wales. The Parliamentary Privilege Rill, which was introduced during the closing days of last session, was a measure of the same kind as that by which the Seddon Government in 1905 created the offen.ee of "criminal defamation," and the Act of 1910 by which persons charged with that offence or with criminal libel were denied the right of trial by jury. It is in the same squalid category as the advertising boycott, the threat to stop financial criticism, and the defeated gag clauses of 190S, which would have made it penal to comment on a labour strike _ 'while in rirogress, or to hold a political meeting or publish political comment during the interval between the first aud second ballots. The M'Gowen Government, with tho aid of Mi;. Speaker Willis, has to a great extent stifled criticism in the House, j Members who say too plainly what they think of tho Government have been handed over to tho police and dragged out of the Chamber. They . have, however, been able to tell the people all about it in public meetings, whore they have been out of reach of autocratic power and amenable only to the laws of tho land. The M'Go wen-Willis tyranny determined to stop this practice, and accordingly Mr. Holman, the At-torney-General, introduced his Parliamentary Privileges Bill. He said its object was "to prevent a repetition of statements and attacks against those in authority, on the part of those whose only purpose was to attack and create disorderly scenes and abuse." The method by which this object was to be attained was to give the House all the powers of a judicial tribunal to try offenders against its dignity and punish them'by imprisonment. • This was necessary, the Minister urged, in order to protect Parliament from the slanders of the press and from unnecessarily abusive comment. It is obvious that such a measure would place any critic who displeased the Government at the mercy of the Government majority in the House. He need not be guilty of libel, or slander, or sedition; it would he enough to be an outspoken opponent of the Administration, and_ ho would be sent to prison by a tribunal in which the functions of prosecutor, jury, and judge wore all exercised together by a partisan majority. The effect of the .measure was correctly described by Mr. Wade, tho Leader of tho Opposition :

Under tire Hill discussion could be absolutely stifled, and the man who dared stand lin to expose v.-roiißdoinp; by the Government in n.-ra-or would find that tho penaltv for wounding the feelings of the wrongdoers was «nol. . . . Under this Bill Ministers could be abusive to tho last extreme, could be guilty of any kind of misconduct and gross abuses, but let those ounosed to thorn dare to ventilate them anil ho mteht bo thrust into paol for possibly throe" or four years. And this was democracy under Labour rule. Such a Bill could onlv be sunnorted by thoso who wore afraid of tho light of freo criticism.

And Mr. Wade went on to say,_ what any free man must have said in his place, that "neither their coercion, their leg-irons, nor their Darlinghurst Gaol wfluld deter him from speaking out if there were wrongs to be redressed."

Wo must do Mr. Holjian the justice to notice his plea that the House of Commons and the Legislature of Victoria already possess the powers that he wished to confer on the Parliament of New South Wales. That may be so, but like many other Parliamentary powers, they originated in tho infancy of the Constitution and have long since fallen into disuse. The House of Commons formerly had the solo authority to try election petitions, and the result was that such matters were always settled in the interests of the party which had a majority. Tho Commons therefore divested themselves of this power and' conferred it upon the lav/ courts. The power to punish offenders against their dignity they did not formally lay aside, but they practically ceased to use it, because they knew that party feeling unfitted them to exerciso it in a judicial spirit. The House of Commons in the eighteenth century punished for "breach of privilege" those who dared'to report its proceedings. It still has the power to do so, but instead it provides accommodation for the reporters. The M'Gowen Government simply wants to establish such a despotism as lilnglishmen have not had to submit to for centuries past. It would destroy the freedom of speech and freedom of the press in which all other freedom is involved. The reason is that it is afraid of criticism. We are reminded of the "famous outburst of Sheridan at a period when men were still struggling for the freedom which but a little while ago seemed so secure from all attack.

Give mc (Eaid Sheridan) but the liberty of the press and I will give the Minister a venal House of Peers—l will give him a corrupt and servile House o£ Commons—l will give him the full swing of the patronage o.f office—l will give him the whole host of Ministerial influence—l will givo him all tho power that place can confer upon liim to' purchase submission and overawe resistance;—and yet, armed with tho liberty of the press, I will go forth to meet him undaunted, I will attack tho mighty fabric he has reared with that mightier engine, I will shako down from its height corruption, and lay it beneath the ruins of tho abuses it was meant to shelter.

That passago sufficiently explains why some Governments do not. like newspapers and public meetings.