The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1883. LICENCE OF SPEECH.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1478, 8 September 1883, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1883. LICENCE OF SPEECH.

The last deliberate Act of the House of Representatives this session has been possibly the ono that stands most to its'credit in any honorable record, It was to condemn 'license of.,.speech' as opposed to ' liberty of speech.' Mr Dargaville claimed that his attack on Major Atkinson was a proper exercise of' liberty of speech,' but tho House, very properly censured it ns' license of speech,' and even one of his apologists, Mr Shbeiian, endeavored to oxonlpato him by arguing that ' license of speech' was better than 'a gagged mouth/ Wo are glad to see that Parliament has at last drawn a line between ' liberty of j speech' and 1 license of speech.' Tho former should be maintained at all costs, and the latter put down at any hazard, The former builds tip and exalts any deliberative chamber, but the latter degrades and debases it, It is sometimes difficult to distinguish in any mere form of words tho difference between freedom and license of speech, but any intelligent man can almost intuitively separate llio one frbm tho ; other. Practically ' liberty of speech' 1 is freedom to declare truth or that

which can be established as true, < License of speech, on the other hand, is freedom to "declare truth or false- 1 hood without any responsibility to • establish one or the other, or to (lis- ! tinguish one from the other. Now . that Parliament has set its foot down , on " license of speech" we liopo that ' the country will follow its example. ' Mr Darqavillr talks about appealing I from the House to the electors, but we ' trust the latter will have tod much sense to reverse the verdict of censure which has been passed upon him. It is creditable to Mr Montgomery—the leader of the Opposition—that he should have in his capacity as a member of the Dakgavu&e Inquiry Committee condemned the license of Bpeech practiced by his follower. When both parties in the House, friends and foes, condemn a man in Mr Darqavulk's position the electors would only bring discredit and contempt on their own ! heads by taking his part. On the clearest possible evidence Mr Dargayille has been convicted of slander by his fellow members, and though he may, like a brazenmonument, endure the frown of the House, he cannot but feel acutely his humiliating position. He has ; , turned on his reprovers, and tried to make out that ho has been persecuted, but much in the same way as an ordinary malefactor regards himself as the victim of the tyranny of the bench and tho police. He has been in no sense of the term a petmuted man, but lie has, and that very properly, been a punished man; and, uotwitstanding his bravado, he must feel the lash. We trust that the next session will v freo from Darqavillk incidents, and that the House will not again be called upon to enforce the distinction between liberty and license of of speech.