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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4152, 11 July 1874, Page 2

The Bill to amend the Electric Telegraph Act was before the House of Representatives last night for its second reading, and would have passed through that stage but for au inadvertency, which led to the adjournment of the debate to Tuesday. Not observing that the hon. member for Auckland City West (Mr. T. B. Gillies) had finished his observations, and as the hands of the clock were closely approaching the hour of adjournment, the Premier suggested that the hon. member should move the adjournment

the debate till Tuesday, and the debate and the House were both adjourned till the usual hour of sitting on that day. The objects contemplated by the Bill, as explained by the Premier. —as the head of the department—are certainly of a nature to call for immediate legislation. They may be briefly stated as follows ;—To make offences against the Act more easily punishable ; to protect the officers of the department from being subject to actions for libel; to enact that telegrams shall not be considered as libels because of anything they may contain ; and to meet the power now exercised by Courts of Justice of ordering the production, as evidence, or the inspection of telegrams with a view to the discovery of matter on which actions for damages might be founded. It was necessary under the existing Act ■when damage was done to a line of telegraph to prove that it was maliciously done. This, the Premier remarked, was always difficult to prove, and it was proposed to do away ■with that necessity. It could scarcely have been thought, it was also remarked, the operator who merely forwarded a message could be proceeded against in actions for libel; but that opinion was entertained by lawyers, and it was therefore necessary to protect the employes of the department. Telegrams, it was held by the Government, should be treated as private letters, and no more subject to beregarded as publishing libels. The last object alluded to, but really the first and most important of the Bill, was that which related to the protection of telegrams from orders by the Court for unspecified telegrams between places named, which were merely roving or fishing commissions to lawyers to discover materials for legal suits. More than one case had lately occurred, it appears, to make legislation on this particular point necessary. The Government propose that telegrams shall only be producible in Court as evidence, with the consent of the sender or receiver. It was stated in the course of the Premier’s remarks that at present the practice was to keep the originals of telegrams’ for a period of five years, lest the department should be called upon to produce any of them. While he proposed the Bill to meet matters as they existed, however, the Premier expressed an opinion that the time was not far distant when the electricians would remove all difficulties as to the position of operators, as the time seemed to be not distant when the operators would not be required to read messages, as the fluid itself would transmit a facsimile of a message. The views of the Government were generally acquiesced in, but a proposition was made by Major Atkinson which was received with some favor. It was, that when an operator had transmitted a message he should place the original in an envelope, and forward it as an ordinary post letter, the telegraph message becoming merely an anticipation of what was to follow. Mr. Fox, however, desired that the opportunity now presented should be taken to introduce in the Bill two new clauses ; one to punish offenders against the inviolability of telegrams—that is, of persona who might become improperly acquainted with the contents of a telegram and circulated them ; and the other to enable the Government to trace out secondary as well as primary offenders in this respect by enabling them to give immunity to offenders who might give evidence which inculpated themselves, and to impose a full penalty upon any person so situated who should refuse to give evidence. The discussion of the Bill will be resumed on Tuesday.

A QUESTION arose in the House yesterday os to the propriety of suspending the Standing Orders to enable the Imprest Bill to be carried through all its stages. That step was not taken, but the hen. the Speaker took the occasion to remark that the time seemed to have come when it was necessary to revise the Standing Orders, that the business of the country might be facilitated. In the House of Commons it had been found necessary to limit the opportunities of private members to interpose obstacles in the way of business, because these could be so abused as to seriously embarrass the progress of the real work of the country without doing any good. Here, he thought, unnecessary delays were interposed ; in the passage of the Bill then before the House, for example,—a Bill to which no objection had been taken. He hoped to bo able during the recess to revise the Standing Orders, and present them to the House in such an amended form as would facilitate business, and be more in accordance with the present Orders of the House of Commons.

The Bill proposed by the Government for the Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt passed through Committee yesterday, and is ordered for the third reading on Friday next. This delay was proposed by the Premier himself, who submitted that as Ministers w«re guided in all legal matters by the advice of their properlyconstituted legal advisers, and as, unfortunately, the Attorney-General was not a member of the House, they could not accept the opinions of private members in opposition to those of the Attorney-General : that being the case, however, ho would not bring on the third reading before the day named, so as to enable him to consult the Attorney-General on various suggestions that had been made. Mr. T. B. Gillies had pointed out —as tho New Zealand JVmcahad done immediately on the second reading—that the second of the exceptions to tho operation of tho Act really made imprisonment for debt reach a petty class of offenders, persons who owed small sums for rates, amongst tho number, while the larger defaulters escaped. Mr. Sheehan renewed his highly imaginative suggestion that if by the operation of the Act persons who were now detained in custody at tho instance of creditors were released, the State should pay the claims, or at least the costs, of their creditors ; and he drew upon his reading for a parallel in tho fact that when England abolished slavery—which the hon. member for Rodney seemed to think was not half so bad as imprisonment for a few months —compensation was made to the slaveowners. The absurdity of the comparison drew a smile from more than one of “the grave and reverend seignors” to

whom it was addressed. Mr. Fox answered the youngmember from the North with thequiet ease of a practised thinker ; while Mr. Vogel, with au unconcealed sense of the humour of the thing, explained to the House that he hardly thought it would be necessary for him to consult the Attorney-General on the importance of that suggestion ! Mr. T.. L. Shepherd made a good hit by reminding the member for Hodney that when the doors of the debtors’ prisons in England were thrown open on the abolition of imprisonment for debt there, it had not entered into the mind of any of the opponents of the measure to suggest that the debts of the prisoners and the costs of their incarceration should he paid.