I am mentioning the difficulty. If we were only concerned with these two things, namely freedom of speech and immunity from arrest, these matters could have been very easily mentioned in the article itself and we would have had no occasion to refer to the House of Commons. But the privileges which we speak of in relation to Parliament are much wider than to the two privileges, mentioned and which relate to individual members. The privileges of Parliament extends, for instance, to the rights of Parliament as against the public. Secondly, they also extend to rights as against the individual members. For instance, under the House of Commons’ power and privileges it is open to Parliament to convict any citizen for contempt of Parliament and when such privilege is exercised the jurisdiction of the court is ousted. That is an important privilege. Then again, it is open to Parliament to take action against any individual member of Parliament for anything that has been done by him which brings Parliament into disgrace. These are very grave matters-e.g., to commit to prison. The right to lack up a citizen for what parliament regards as contempt of itself is not an easy matter to define. Nor is it easy to say what are the acts and deeds of individual members which bring Parliament into disrepute.
