I have reminded you, Sir, that our powers, whatever they may be, are under a written Constitution, and in this important respect clearly distinguishable from the powers of the House of Commons, which are the growth of tradition and immemorial usage. I am not the first person to take this ground. I find it judicially asserted in most authentic judgments, to which I beg to call the attention of the Senate. I have in my hands the fourth volume of Moore’s Privy Council Cases, cases argued in the Privy Council of England, many of them being cases that have come up from the Colonies,--and here is one, being an appeal from the Supreme Court of the island of Newfoundland. I will read the marginal note:-- “The House of Assembly of the island of Newfoundland does not possess, as a legal incident, the power of arrest, with a view of adjudication on a contempt committed out of the House,--but only such powers as are reasonably necessary for the proper exercise of its functions and duties as a local Legislature. “_Semble._--The House of Commons possess this power only by virtue of ancient usage and prescription, the _Lex et Consuetudo Parliamenti_. “_Semble._--The Crown, by its prerogative, can create a Legislative Assembly in a settled colony, subordinate to Parliament, but with supreme power within the limits of the colony for the government of its inhabitants; but, “_Quære._--Whether it can bestow upon it an authority, namely, that of committing for contempt, not incidental to it by law?”[114] I will not take time in reading extracts from the opinion of the Court, which goes on the ground that the Legislature of the Colony is acting under a commission from the Crown in the nature of a Constitution, being a written text, and that it could not therefore claim for itself those vast, immense, unknown privileges and prerogatives which by long usage are recognized as belonging to the House of Commons. But the question was presented at a later day in another case before the Privy Council, which came from the Supreme Court of Van Diemen’s Land. I cite now Moore’s Privy Council Cases, volume eleven. This case was decided in 1858. It is therefore a recent authority. The marginal note is as follows:-- “The _Lex et Consuetudo Parliamenti_ applies exclusively to the House of Lords and House of Commons in England, and is not conferred upon a Supreme Legislative Assembly of a colony or settlement by the introduction of the Common Law of England into the colony. “No distinction in this respect exists between Colonial Legislative Councils and Assemblies whose power is derived by grant from the Crown or created under the authority of an Act of the Imperial Parliament.”[115]