thar. v] THE PRIVILEGES AND PROCEDURE 455 
with legislative business; (d) assaults upon or interference 
with officers of the Assembly in the discharge of their duties ; 
(e) tampering with witnesses in respect of any evidence given 
before the Assembly or a committee; (f) presenting any 
forged document to the Assembly; (g) forging documents 
or records of the Assembly ; (A) bringing an action against 
or causing the arrest of a member for anything done by him 
in the Assembly ; (¢) causing the arrest or molestation of 
a member for a civil suit. The punishment to be awarded 
is imprisonment during such portion of the session as the 
Legislative Assembly may award, and the determination of 
the Assembly is to be final and conclusive. If any action 
is brought against the printer of any record of proceedings 
of the Assembly it shall be stayed by production of the 
original with an affidavit of the correctness of the copy, 
and the publication of extracts is protected if bona fide and 
without malice. The arrest and detention of any person 
under the authority of the Act is to be effected by the 
serjeant-at-arms or the keeper of the common jail in 
Edmonton, or the officer commanding the Royal North-West 
Mounted Police of the Edmonton district. 
It will be seen that the powers taken are pretty much the 
same as those of the Imperial House of Commons, though 
they do not expressly go so far as the powers of that House. 
In the case of one of the earliest Acts, that of Tasmania, in 
1858, it is laid down expressly that to a writ of habeas corpus 
issued it will be a conclusive answer that the prisoner is in 
custody under the authority of a warrant under the hand 
of the President of the Legislative Council or Speaker of 
the Legislative Assembly, providing for his detention on 
the ground of a contempt, the contempt to be set out in 
words to show under which of the heads enumerated in 
s. 3 of the Act the contempt falls. This is not the wide 
power to commit without specifying a contempt claimed 
and allowed to the House of Commons. The power of 
punishment in the case of Tasmania also is limited to the 
period of the session, and this is a rule in all cases, as in 
England. Moreover the Colonial Parliaments do not usually 
confer any right to punish by fine, a right which, though