THE Mount Ida Chronicle THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1877.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 439, 13 September 1877, Page 2

THE Mount Ida Chronicle THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1877.

The alleged breach of the privileges of J the House of Representatives by the ' Oamaru Mail' is a matter of grave consideration. The Member for Waikato (Mr. F. Whitaker) first stated his grievance to the House, and asked it to declare by resolution upon the reading of the offensive article that its privileges had been violated. The House, in a spirit of delightfully nonchalant good nature, at once acceded to the request. Criticism had been applied to a Member of the House. The soundness of the .criticism was not weighed. Mr. Whitaker simply gave a flat denial to the charge. Id any Members appear to have considered that because the implicated Member was a Member of the Ministry, the offence was intensified. This conclusion, being unmitigated toadyism, cannot have influenced the majority of the House. Clearly, then, any adverse criticism upon a Member of the House which has not been.fortified by a previous promise extracted from the Member himself that he will not give it a flat denial is libellous. The magic letters M.H.R. at once endow ordinarymortals, previously not much more free from the gradual color of human 1 error than their fellows, with a supreme measure of infallibility. To them thenceforth a fact after intervals of time, looked at from the most variable points of view, will always be the same. The precedent of the 'Mail' case is this: If any Member chooses to deny any charge conveyed in a trenchant and somewhat severe press criticism, the fact of that denial at once establishes a breach of privileo-e, which must be pursued to its bitter end, and which endows the Member whose innocency has been ruffled with power to prosecute the offender, tiot on his own behalf, but, as the avenger, on behalf of the House. In this case' the £ Mail' was no doubt at fault in directly connecting Mr. Whitaker with the very shadey proceedings exposed in the Tairua investigation of 1875. Our contemporary should have followed the customary newspaper rule and immediately have accepted an emphatic denial of personal complicity. ISTo newspaper can go wrong in frankly accepting personal statements of an exculpatory character. The falsehood, if there be falsehood, rests on and aggravates the offence of the individual whose action has been criticised. In the; present case the temptation was very great not to extend to an exPremier the same rule which would have been cordially meted out to Jonn Snooks. The oflence of literary etiquette might easily have been overlooked. Our contemporary is but young, and no doubt he has found any number of hot-headed friends who, safe from the fire, would without the slightest compunction thrust in a sacrificial victim in the hope that through the cinders of the sacrifice something might be got out to implicate and embarrass an obnoxious Government. This press prosecution is a sign of the times. The Centraiistic car is on' the move; it creaks horribly, and proceeds in hideous noise.. Who would not be found patriotic enough to furnish.lubricating oil? Strangely patriotism is on- the # wane patriotism is but a word signifying an idea. .Hence an obscure newspaper hardly out of its swaddling clothes and a member of the bar whose prestige is on the wane afford an agreeable opportunity. That j such a prosecution as that now pending is possible, that a petitioner to the House should be refused a respectful reception to his petition of grievance, are two facts to be graven with an iron pen upon-the history of our day in letters not to be effaced during this generation.