Parliamentary Privilege

Privilege is a substitution for Law, where, from the nature of the / circumstances, a law cannot act without clashing with greater and more / general principles. The House of Commons must, of course, have the power of / taking cognizance of offences against its own rights. Sir Francis Burdett / might have been properly sent to the Tower for the speech he made in the / House [1]; but when afterwards he published it in Cobbett, and they took / cognizance of it as a breach of privilege, they violated the plain / distinction between privilege and law.

As a speech in the House, the House could alone animadvert upon it, / consistently with the effective preservation of its most necessary / prerogative of freedom of debate; but when that speech became a book, then / the law was to look to it; and there being a law of libel, commensurate / with every possible object of attack in the state, privilege, which acts, / or ought to act, only as a substitute for other laws, could have nothing to / do with it. I have heard that one distinguished individual said, -- "That he, / for one, would not shrink from affirming, that if the House of Commons / chose to _burn_ one of their own members in Palace Yard, it had an inherent / power and right by the constitution to do so. " This was said, if at all, by / a moderate-minded man; and may show to what atrocious tyranny some persons / may advance in theory, under shadow of this word privilege.