PRIVILEGE.
THE privilege of the Pulpit appears to be as knotty a point of law as the privilege of Parliament. The four Judges of the Court of Exchequer talked at it for some good hours on Thurs- day; but only to show that they were full of doubts and mie- gimp on the matter.
As in the case of Parliament, so in that of the Pulpit, the privi- lege most tenaciously asserted is that of saying with impunity things that would subject other utterers to actions of libel, or at the very least to disagreeable animadversion.
It was incidentally, apropos of a motion for a new trial in the action of the Reverend Mr. Gathercole against Mr. Miall of the Nonconformist, that the discussion arose. It was maintained on behalf of the reverend gentleman, that anything a clergyman may be pleased to say in a sermon, as being said in the discharge of his official duty, is privileged even from comment ; and that anything he says, writes, or prints, in administering a charity among parishioners, is entitled to the same immunity. Mr. Baron Parke entertains a "strong opinion" that a clergy- man in preaching verbal sermons, in the ordinary discharge of his duty as a pastor in his parish-church, does not make them public property ; and that he therefore does not afford sufficient occasion for comment. And Mr. Baron Parke has an opinion quite as strong, that anything a clergyman ma7 introduce into the regulations of a charity club, composed of parishioners, enjoys the same privilege. Mr. Baron Alderson thinks that• it is an open question whether sermons are liable to criticism, but is at the same time " by no means sure" that he does not agree with his brother Parke. The Chief Baron and Baron Rolfe dissent from this view ; but, as Baron Parke pithily wound up the ar- gument, "with all due deference to my brother Rolfe, I think so still."-
If Baron Parke's views of Pulpit privilege are correct—and the question is obviously undecided—it confers upon the clergy a power of rather an unpleasant nature for third parties. In the good old times, clergymen indulged in a wide latitude of personal animadversion. The sermons of some old Scotch divines—John Knox, Welsh, and Renwick, for example—took strange liberties in this way, not only with private individuals, but with their legiti- mate Sovereigns ; the "Merry Monarch" affording the last- named rather a rich subject. The practice has gone out of fashion, but is not entirely obsolete ; and the sermons of the Reverend Mr. Gathercole are said to contain some curious spe- cimens of this style of pulpit oratory. Again, the Reverend Mr. Gathercole, in his capacity of legislator for a charitable club, took upon him to classify Dissenters along with infidels and drunkards. A gratuitous insult of this kind to a respectable class is not calculated to promote mutual forbearance, and that kindly . peace which is desirable among neighbours and free
given ven to personal attack in the pulpit may be productive of serious injury to individuals. It is not easy to find out a defence against this invidious privi- lege of the pulpit. One is conceivable in such a case as the reso- lutions of the charity club. It has been decided that the privilege of Parliament does not extend to its printer : vicarious animad- versions might deter any printer from making himself the instru- ment of the Vicar's spleen. The experiment is at least worth trying. But the case of the sermon seems hopeless. Often as newspaper printers and publishers have been punished for circu- lating libels spoken by Members of Parliament, Members will still offend at times.
"With all due deference" to Baron Parke, we venture to think the privilege of the pulpit uncalled-for and untenable. Full power of rebuke, in so far as his own flock are concerned, may be indispensable to the due discharge of a pastor's functions; but it is not necessary that the power should be extended to the sheep of other folds. It appears that the privilege of the pulpit might with advantage be restricted, as Mathews might have said, to the "larroping of their own niggers."
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