IMPRISONING AN EDITOR —DESPOTS IN THE ISLE OF MAN.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 14, 2 July 1864, Page 3

IMPRISONING AN EDITOR — DESPOTS IN THE ISLE OF MAN.

The following statement, says tlie Manchester Guardian, has been forwarded to us from Douglas. Isle of Man : — " The Legislature of the Isle of Man consists of a body caiied (lie House of Keys, a self-elected and irresponsible body of 2-1 members, and all laws for Ihe regulation of the affairs of the island must receive tin; sanction of this body. The House of Keys, being self-elect, in these days of popular election by the people, is not, as you may fancy, a very popular institution. The principal town in tlie Isle of Man is Douglas, a place well known in the northern and western portions of England as a summer resort. A few weeks ago the Douglas Town Commissioners, a body elected by the peopl.', and which has under its control the lighting, sewerage, cleansing, and paving of the town, laid before the self-elected House of Keys a bill to obtain further powers for the improvement of Douglas. Tlie majority of the members of the House of Keys are persons of agricultural pursuits ; they are almost entirely ignorant of sanitary regidations, and being selfelected, they are jealous of and prejudiced against a body elected by the exercise of the franchise, as the Douglas Town Commissioners are. The Keys, after spending four days in discussing the bill laid before them by the Douglas Town Commissioners, rejected it, greatly to the annoyance of the people of Douglas, who alone were to be taxed to carry out the improvements contemplated by the measure. Popular indignation was great on the matter, and two of the local newspapers commented severely on the arbitrary conduct of the self-elected Keys. The newspapers were the Isle of Man 'Limps and the- Mona's Herald. At a- meeting of the House of Keys, held on Tuesday, March 15, the articles in these papers on tbe bill alluded to -were declared lb be 'a contempt of tliis House and a breach of its privileges.' On thefollowing day Mr. James Brown, the proprietor of the; Isle of Man Times, and Mr. John Christian Fargher, the proprietor of tho Mona's' 1 Herald, were summoned before the bar of the self-elected House to answer for the alleged offence. Mr. ; Brown was asked to apologise for the articles which had appeared in his journal, and on refusing to do so he was sentenced- to six months' imprisonment ! Mr. John C. Fargher, of the Mona's Herald, 'having consented to apologise for the alleged offence, and to publish his apology in the next number of his paper, the irresponsible agricultural legislators consented to pardon him, providing his apology was satisfactory. Mr, Brown was at once conducted to the insular jail. .The-indignation of the people has been raised to fever heat by this outrage committed on the liberty of the' subject,'" and on .Saturday night an enthusi- ■ astic meeting was held for the purpose of appointing a- committee to raise a fund for trying, by means of a writ of habeas corpus, the legality of the despotic and arbitrary course pursued by the self-elected legislators."