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ledge that they would be opposed by the Skeleton Army. The magistrates had put out a notice intended to forbid the meeting. The Salvationists however assembled, were met by the police, and told to obey the notice. X, one of the members, declined to obey and was arrested. He was subsequently with others convicted by the magistrates of holding an unlawful assembly. It was an undoubted fact that the meeting of the Salvation Army was likely to lead to an attack by the Skeleton Army, and in this sense cause a breach of the peace. The conviction however of X, by the magistrates was quashed on appeal to the Queen's Bench Division.

"What has happened here," say the Court, "is "that an unlawful organisation" [the Skeleton Army] "has assumed to itself the right to prevent the appel"lants and others from lawfully assembling together, "and the finding of the justices amounts to this, that "a man may be convicted for doing a lawful act if he "knows that his doing it may cause another to do an "unlawful act. There is no authority for such a "proposition'.

not made

of unlawful

proclama

No public meeting, further, which would not Meeting otherwise be illegal, becomes so (unless in virtue some special Act of Parliament) in consequence of by official any proclamation or notice by a Secretary of State, by tion of its a magistrate, or by any other official. Suppose, for example, that the Salvationists advertise throughout the town that they intend holding a meeting in a

1 Beatty v. Gillbanks, 9 Q. B. D. 308, p. 314, per Field J. See also Beatty v. Glenister, W. N. 1884, p. 93.

illegality.

field which they have hired near Oxford, that they intend to assemble in St. Giles's and march thence with banners flying and bands playing to their proposed place of worship. Suppose that the Home Secretary thinks that, for one reason or another, it is undesirable that the meeting should take place, and serves formal notice upon every member of the army, or to the officers who are going to conduct the so-called "campaign" at Oxford, that the gathering must not take place. This notice is so much waste paper. Assume that the meeting would have been lawful if the notice had not been issued, and it certainly will not become unlawful because a Secretary of State has forbidden it to take place. The proclamation has as little legal effect as would have a proclamation from the Home Office forbidding me or any other person to walk down the High Street. It follows therefore that the government has little or no power of preventing meetings which to all appearance are lawful, even though they may in fact turn out when actually convened to be unlawful because of the mode in which they are conducted. This is certainly a singular instance of the way in which adherence to the principle that the proper function of the state is the punishment, not the prevention, of crimes, deprives the executive of discretionary authority1.

1 Recent events in Switzerland suggest that the officials of a democratic Republic claim, whether rightly or not, an authority in regard to the restraint of public meetings which is not conceded in England to the Crown or its servants. This curiously illustrates the remarks cited from De Tocqueville, pp. 168-171, ante, in reference to the non-existence in Switzerland of a spirit of legality.

may be

holding

to public

A meeting, lastly, may be perfectly lawful which Meeting nevertheless any wise or public-spirited person would lawful hesitate to convene. For A, B, and C may have the though its right to hold a meeting, although their doing so will contrary as a matter of fact certainly excite others to deeds interest. of violence, and may probably produce bloodshed. Suppose that a zealous Protestant were to convene a meeting for the purpose of denouncing the evils. of the confessional; and were to choose as the scene of the gathering the midst of a large town filled with a population of Roman Catholic poor. The meeting would be lawful, but no one can doubt that it would provoke violence. Neither the government however, nor the magistrates, could prohibit it. Wise men might condemn, but the law would sanction an extreme exercise of the right of public meeting which would probably not be tolerated in any other European country. The best proof of the narrowness of the limits within which the ordinary law confines the power of the executive to interfere with the right of public meeting is to be found in the provisions of the Prevention of Crime (Ireland) Act, 1882, sect. 101. Nothing but such a special enactment would make it lawful for the Lord Lieutenant to prohibit a meeting which he knew to be dangerous to the public peace. The necessity for a Coercion. Act shows how limited are the powers possessed by the government under the ordinary law of the

1 Under this section the Lord Lieutenant is given power to prohibit any meeting which he has reason to believe to be dangerous to the public peace or the public safety. The Act however expired at the end of last Session.

land. Of the policy or impolicy of denying to the highest authorities in the state the power to take precautionary measures against the evils which may flow from the injudicious exercise of legal rights it is unnecessary here to say anything. The matter which is worth notice is the way in which the rules as to the right of public meeting illustrate both the legal spirit of our institutions and the process by which the decisions of the Courts as to the rights of individuals have in effect made the right of public meeting a part of the law of the constitution 1.

1 See generally as to the right of meeting, Stephen, Commentaries, iv. 213-217, and Stephen, History of Criminal Law, i. 202-205.

LECTURE VII.

THE RULE OF LAW ITS APPLICATIONS.

IV. Martial Law. V. The Army. VI. The Revenue.
VII. The Responsibility of Ministers.

PARLIAMENTARY SOVEREIGNTY AND THE RULE OF LAW.

line can be

tween

rules of

law or of

law and

THE rights already treated of in the foregoing No sharp lecture, as for example the right to personal freedom drawn beor the right to free expression of opinion, do not, it may be suggested, properly belong to the province of private constitutional law at all, but form part either of private criminal law strictly so called, or of the ordinary criminal law. constituThus A's right to personal freedom is, it may be said, tional law. only the right of A not to be assaulted or imprisoned by X, or (to look at the same thing from another point of view) is nothing else than the right of A if assaulted by X to bring an action against X, or to have X punished as a criminal for the assault. Now in this suggestion there lies an element of important truth, yet it is also undoubted that the right to personal freedom, the right to free discussion and the like, appear in the forefront of many written constitutions, and are in fact the chief advantages which citizens hope to gain by the change from a despotic to

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