2. The power of each house of parliament over those who do not belong to it is of a more extensive consideration, and has lain open, in some respects, to more doubt than that over its own members. It has been exercised, in the first place, very frequently, and from an early period, in order to protect the members personally, and in their properties, from anything which has been construed to interfere with the discharge of their functions. Every obstruction in these duties, by assaulting, challenging, insulting any single representative of the Commons, has from the middle of the sixteenth century downwards, that is, from the beginning of their regular journals, been justly deemed a breach of privilege, and an offence against the whole body. It has been punished generally by commitment, either to the custody of the house's officer, the serjeant-at-arms, or to the king's prison. This summary proceeding is usually defended by a technical analogy to what are called attachments for contempt, by which every court of record is entitled to punish by imprisonment, if not also by fine, any obstruction to its acts or contumacious resistance of them. But it tended also to raise the dignity of parliament in the eyes of the people, at times when the government, and even the courts of justice, were not greatly inclined to regard it; and has been also a necessary safeguard against the insolence of power. The majority are bound to respect, and indeed have respected, the rights of every member, however obnoxious to them, on all questions of privilege. Even in the case most likely to occur in the present age, that of libels, which by no unreasonable stretch come under the head of obstructions, it would be unjust that a patriotic legislator, exposed to calumny for his zeal in the public cause, should be necessarily driven to a troublesome and uncertain process at law, when the offence so manifestly affects the real interests of parliament and the nation. The application of this principle must of course require a discreet temper, which was not perhaps always observed in former times, especially in the reign of William III. Instances at least of punishment for breach of privilege by personal reflections are never so common as in the journals of that turbulent period.