remedy that the Code contemplates. Such a construction would lead to the result that every proceeding to punish a contempt in open court is a special proceeding, because it is a remedy, and therefore an order made in such a proceeding, refusing to punish a person guilty of such a.contempt, would be appealable, because it would be final, and would affect a substantial right —the right of the court to vindicate its own authority. Surely it would be final, and affect a substantial right, if it punished the defendant in the contempt proceeding. It would, indeed, seem anomalous that an appellate court should have power to compel an inferior court to punish a criminal contempt—an insult to the judge or a willful breach of peace in open court, which such inferior court had refused to punish—or that it should have power to review the action of such inferior court, and discharge one whom that court had adjudged guilty of such a contempt. It is true that the judge who presides over the court against which the contempt is directed is not regarded as having any personal interest in the matter. The law punishes the contemnor out of no personal consideration for the judge. The punishment is not meted out as “balm to hurt mind.” Nor is there in the law aught of malice against him who is punished. The power is exercised by the court as the representative in this respect of the people—the ultimate sovereigns—and in their interest and for their good. The maintenance of the authority of the judiciary is indispensable to the stability of the government. Having power over neither the purse nor the sword, it is helpless and defenseless, open to wanton insult, the object of universal derision and contempt, unless the people have by necessary implication, vested in the judiciary authority to assert its power, to compel respect and obedience to its orders and decrees and to preserve order and decorum in open court by calling upon the physical power of the state to uphold this independent department of the government in its full integrity. The people, by the very act of creating a judicial department, necessarily vested in it this prerogative. This power to punish for contempt, which inheres in the very constitution of every court, is to be exercised solely for the public good, that a branch of the people’s government may not lose its
