who was repeatedly expelled and re-elected. Mr.
Luttrell, a member of the House, then resigned
his seat by acceptance of the Chiltern Hundreds,
and came forward to contest Wilkes's election.
He was beaten, and petitioned against the
return. The House finished the plot by declaring
that, although Wilkes had the majority of votes
from the Middlesex electors, Luttrell was elected.
This was a reversal of law, not by the whole
Parliament, which is permissible; but by a single
estate of the realm, which is usurpation. Public
opinion asserted itself; and, a few years
afterwards, the objectionable resolution was, by the
House of Commons itself, expunged from the
journals as "subversive of the rights of the
whole body of electors of this kingdom."

The internal machinery of Parliament is
regulated in accordance with unwritten law,
established from its rolls and records by
precedents and continued experience. Its privileges
are whatever it has been the custom to observe
as such. But this must be old custom. More
than one hundred and fifty years ago the Lords,
at a conference, communicated to the Commons
a resolution "that neither House of Parliament
has power, by any vote or declaration, to create
to itself new privileges not warranted by the
known laws and customs of Parliament." To
this the Commons gave assent, and by this
principle Parliament has abided now for many
generations.

But Parliament always has been active in
the maintenance of its established privileges.
The House of Commons commits any one to
prison for contempt of its authority, and punishes
instantly any resistance to the Serjeant-at-Arms
or his officers in execution of its orders. The
Lords also protect their servants. The last case
of this kind in which the House of Lords asserted
its importance, was the great Umbrella Case. On
the twenty-sixth of March, in the year of Grace
one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven,
complaint was made to the assembled Lords
Spiritual and Temporal that John Bell had sued
F. Plass, doorkeeper of their House, in the
Westminster Court of Requests for the value of
an umbrella lost when it had been left in his
charge at the door during a debate. The Court
of Requests having ordered payment of the value
of the umbrella, with costs, Bell, the plaintiff,
and the Clerks of the Delinquent Court were
called before the Lords and reprimanded.

The Commons in one year sent to the Tower
a Lord Mayor and Alderman, who had convicted
one of its messengers of an assault in capturing
a person whom the House had ordered him to
seize. On a like occasion, when two judges in a
court of law had given judgment against the
Serjeant-at-Arms for arresting certain persons in
obedience to the orders of the House of Commons,
that House immediately put under arrest the
two judges themselves—Sir F. Pemberton and
Sir T. Jones—giving them into the custody of
the same Serjeant-at-Arms against whose power
they had decided. Yet there are bounds of law
beyond which the House does not follow its
servant. In the case of Sir Francis Burdett it
was declared, by the law courts, to be within the
duty of the officers of Parliament to break into
a dwelling-house and use armed force, if needful,
or the seizure of their prisoner; but an
attorney a few years ago obtained damages of a
hundred pounds, because the Serjeant-at-Arms,
finding him from home, remained for some hours
in his house awaiting his return, and so made
capture. Whoever is committed for a breach of
privilege is altogether in the hands of Parliament.
The judges have no power of investigation, and
the prisoner cannot be bailed.

It is a breach of the privilege of Parliament to
publish its debates, and either House may, by
enforcing that part of its old customary law, at
any moment stop the parliamentary reports.
This is not only customary law, but it has been
from time to time asserted formally by orders of
the House. At different times the Commons
have ordered, "That no news-letter writers do,
in their letters or other papers that they
disperse, presume to intermeddle with the debates
or other proceedings of this House;" or, "That
no printer or publisher of any printed news,
papers do presume to insert in any such papers-
any debates or other proceedings of this House;"
or again, "That it is an indignity to, and a
breach of the privilege of, this House, for any
person to presume to give, in written or printed
newspapers, any account or minute of the
debates or other proceedings. That upon discovery
of the authors, printers, or publishers of any
such newspaper, this House will proceed against
the offenders with the utmost severity." Yet
now, reporters' galleries are built into the two
Houses, and there is even private complaint made
if a report be not full enough. Of false reports
there is parliamentary notice taken in the true
parliamentary way, by complaint, not that there
is a report which is false, but that there is a
report at all, and that reporting is a breach of
privilege.

Libellous reflections upon the character or
proceedings of Parliament, or of any individual
of either House, have always been punished as
breaches of privilege. Once upon a time the
interpretation of the word libel was more
comprehensive than it is to-day. In sixteen hundred
and twenty-eight, Henry Aleyn was committed
for a libel on the last Parliament. In sixteen
hundred and forty-three, the Archdeacon of
Bath was committed for abusing the last
Parliament. In seventeen hundred and one, Thomas
Colepepper was committed for reflections upon
the last House of Commons; and the Attorney-
General was directed to prosecute him. These
were such libels as we now read every week in
public prints.

To offer any bribe of money to a member of
the House, though it be only a guinea fee to a
lawyer and M.P. for drawing up a petition to
the House, is breach of privilege. Members
proved to have received money-bribes suffer
expulsion. At the close of the seventeenth
century, the Speaker of the House of Commons,
the Secretary to the Treasury, and the Chairman
of the Committee on the Orphans Bill, received