AN AMENDED GAGGING BILL.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 314, 12 October 1865, Page 1

AN AMENDED GAGGING BILL.

(From the Now Zealantlcr.) Since we last referred to the subject, the Aci to prevent the printing and publishing of books, and the printing and publishing of newspapers in New Zealand, has been brought up in what is called an amended form. Tho whole of the amendment seems to consist in this: the Act when first introduced had thirty-live clauses, three schedules. In its amended form it has twenty-two clauses, two schedules, and a form of certificate. The Amended Act is equally objectionable with the original one. The effort to got at newspaper proprietors, and render impossible the publishing of newspapers, is too transparent to be hidden. The assertion made by the introducer of the bill was, if uttered with any knowledge at all, a deliberate falsehood. Mr J. C. Richmond is said in the newspaper reports to have assured the Council, where the bill first originated, that this bill was a mere matter of form. If Mr J. C. Richmond did make this statement to the Council, he most certainly uttered as deliberate an untruth as ever any man uttered in his life. The bill is oppressive, tyrannical in its every clause, and inquisitorial to a degree unknown to English law. There is no equivalent in the common law of England for the measure introduced as a

“ matter of form” by Mr James Crowe Richmond.and we can only say of Mr Richmond and his colleagues, that while they would be competent advisers for Charles the First end James the Second, they are unfit to be the Ministry of a free country. Journalism has had to struggle with difficulties enough, in most cases, in the colonies. In a great majority of cases, the leading journals have accumulated such a mass of liabilities in the service of the public, as to preclude really independent journalism for some years to come ; but should this measure pass into a law, the press of New Zealand will be infinitely less independent than the press of France is at the present moment : while the pains, penalties, and disabilities imposed upon every man who starts what is termed “ a newspaper”—a definition that the Act applies to every book or pamphlet published at intervals of less than twenty-six days—u ill be such as to prohibit any but Government tools and lickspittles from carrying on a public journal.