The Mother of Parliaments

It was said that it required great mental exertion to follow Fox while he was speaking, but none to remember what he had said; but that it was easy to follow Pitt, but hard to remember what there was in his speech that had pleased one. The difference between the two men was the difference between the orator and the debater. It resulted largely from the fact that the one gave much time to the preparation of his speeches, while the other relied upon the inspiration of the moment. Pitt, as Porson says, carefully considered his sentences before he uttered them; Fox threw himself into the middle of his, "and left it to God Almighty to get him out again."³⁵⁶ If the former was the more dignified as a speaker, the latter scored by being always so terribly in earnest. Grattan, who affirmed that Pitt's eloquence marked an era in the senate, that it resembled "sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music, of the spheres," and admitted that Pitt was right nine times for once that Fox was right, declared that that once of Fox was worth all the other nine times of Pitt.³⁵⁷

No doubt the Parliament of those days was not so critical a body as it has since become. Lord Chesterfield, at least, held it in the profoundest contempt. "When I first came into the House of Commons," he says, "I respected that assembly as a venerable one; and felt a certain awe upon me; but, upon better acquaintance, that awe soon vanished; and I discovered that, of the five hundred and sixty, not above thirty could understand reason, and that all the rest were peuple; that those thirty only required plain common-sense, dressed up in good language; and that all the others only required flowing and harmonious periods, whether they conveyed any meaning or not; having ears to hear, but not sense enough to judge."³⁵⁸ This scathing indictment of the intelligence of the Commons may possibly have been true at the time when it was written: it would certainly not be applicable to-day. Meaningless periods, however harmonious, are no longer tolerated. In Lord Chesterfield's day, however, sound seems to have been more important than sense, as may be gathered from an account he gives elsewhere of a speech made in 1751 in the House of Lords. He was speaking upon a Bill for the Reform of the Calendar, a subject upon which he knew absolutely nothing. To conceal his ignorance he conceived the idea of giving the House an historical account of calendars generally, from Ancient Egyptian to modern times, being particularly attentive to the choice of his words, to the harmony of his periods, and to his elocution. The peers were enchanted. "They thought I informed," he explains, "because I pleased them; and many of them said that I had made the whole very clear to them, when, God knows, I had not even attempted it."³⁵⁹

The gift of oratory is most certainly heaven-born, but its development demands a vast amount of purely mundane labour. The best speeches have ever been those in the preparation of which the most time and trouble have been expended. Burke's masterpieces were essays, laboriously constructed in the study; Sheridan's elaborate impromptus were carefully devised beforehand, and, if successful, occasionally repeated.³⁶⁰ Chatham, whose wonderful dominion over the House does not perhaps appear in his speeches, chose his words with the greatest care, and confided to a friend that in order to improve his vocabulary he had read "Bailey's Dictionary" twice through from beginning to end.

The fervid eloquence of such men as Plunket, Macaulay, Brougham, and Canning – "the last of the rhetoricians" – was the fruit of many an hour of laborious thought and study. Canning especially never spared himself. He would draw up for use in the House a paper, on which were written the heads of the subjects which he intended to touch upon. These heads were numbered, and the numbers sometimes extended to four or five hundred. Lord North, when he lost the thread of his discourse, would look through his notes with the utmost nonchalance, seeking the cue which was to lead him to further flights of eloquence. "It is not on this side of the paper, Mr. Speaker," he would declaim, still speaking in his oratorical tone; "neither is it on the other side!" Then, perhaps, he would suddenly come upon the desired note, and continue his unbroken oration without a sign of further hesitation.³⁶¹ Bright used to provide himself with small slips of paper, inscribed with his bon-mots, which he drew from his pocket as occasion required. He excelled, nevertheless, in scathing repartee. Once, during his absence through illness, a noble lord stated publicly that Bright had been afflicted by Providence with a disease of the brain as a punishment for his misuse of his talents. "It may be so," said Bright, on his return to the House, "but in any case it will be some consolation to the friends and family of the noble lord to know that the disease is one which even Providence could not inflict upon him."³⁶² He did not always get the best of it, however, and when he ridiculed Lord John Manners for the youthful couplet —

 
"Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die,
But leave us still our old nobility!"
 

the author justly retorted that he would far sooner be the foolish young man who wrote those lines than the malignant old man who quoted them.

That speeches should be as effective when read as when delivered is the highest quality of oratory. For this reason, perhaps, some speakers write out their speeches and commit them to memory. Disraeli did so with his more important orations, a fact which greatly enhances the pleasure of their perusal. Macaulay followed the same practice, and, indeed, it is said that the excessive elaboration of his oratory sometimes weakened its effect. Lord Randolph Churchill's earlier speeches were all memorised in this fashion. But it is not every man whose memory is sufficiently retentive to enable him to accomplish this feat, and a breakdown in the very middle of a humorous anecdote thoughtfully interspersed in a speech is a catastrophe which casts ridicule upon the speaker.³⁶³

Though matter may be a most important element in parliamentary speaking, manner undoubtedly counts for a good deal. Demosthenes practised declaiming with sharp weapons suspended above him so as to learn to keep still, and, as we have already seen, had some obscure reason for filling his mouth with pebbles. Neither of these practices is to be commended to modern orators, many of whom already speak as though their mouths were filled with hot potatoes, while their habitual gesticulations, if made in the neighbourhood of dependent cutlery, would result in reducing their bodies to one huge wound. Sir Watkin Wynne and his brother were long known in the House of Commons as "Bubble and Squeak," the former's voice being a smothered mumble suggestive of suppressed thunder, the latter's a childish treble. Mannerisms of gesture, as well as of speech, are easily contracted. Lord Mahon, "out-roaring torrents in their course," reinforced his stentorian lungs by violent gestures which were at times a source of bodily danger to his friends. Once, when speaking on a Bill he had brought in for the suppression of smuggling, he declared that this crime must be knocked on the head with one blow. To emphasize his meaning, he dealt the unfortunate Pitt, who was sitting just in front of him, a violent buffet on the head, much to the amusement of the House.³⁶⁴ The gesticulations of Sir Charles Wetherell, the well-known member, were less dangerous, if quainter. He used to unbutton his braces in a nervous fashion while addressing the House, leaving between his upper and lower garments an interregnum to which Speaker Manners Sutton once alluded as the honourable gentleman's only lucid interval. The late Lord Goschen would grasp himself firmly by the lapel of his coat, as though (to quote a well-known parliamentary writer) "otherwise he might run away and leave matters to explain themselves."³⁶⁵

Parliamentary eloquence to-day makes up in quantity for what it lacks in quality. The number of members who follow the advice of the Psalmist and earn a reputation for wisdom by a continual policy of eloquent silence³⁶⁶ has dwindled to vanishing point, since to speak in Parliament has come to be regarded as part of a member's duty to his constituents. In Gladstone's first session, in 1833, less than 6000 speeches were made in the House of Commons; fifty years later the number had increased to 21,000; to-day the steadily growing bulk of each volume of the "Parliamentary Debates" testifies to the swelling flood of oratory which is annually let loose within the precincts of Parliament. And if La Rochefoucauld's maxim be true, that we readily pardon those who bore us, but never those whom we bore, the House of Commons has need of a most forgiving spirit to listen patiently to so much of what can only be described as vox et praeterea nihil.

The level of eloquence is, no doubt, higher in the House of Lords than elsewhere. Peers include a greater number of orators among their numbers; opportunities for a display of their talents are more rare; their powers are not dissipated in prolonged debates, as in the Commons, but are reserved for full-dress occasions.

In neither House nowadays is there any exhibition of that old-fashioned rhetoric, florid and flamboyant, which was once so popular. What Mackintosh calls "an elevated kind of after-dinner conversation," such as Lord Salisbury affected so successfully, is the form taken by modern parliamentary eloquence. There are no appeals to sentiment, no quotations from the classics, no bombastic declamations.³⁶⁷ The House of Commons is still "a mob of gentlemen, the greater part of whom are neither without talent nor information,"³⁶⁸ and with such an audience learned generalities are out of place. Passion has to a large extent given way to business, and in Parliament to-day are rarely heard those "splendid common-places of the first-rate rhetorician," which Lord Morley considers necessary to sway assemblies.

We live in a material age. The flowers of rhetoric bloom no longer in the cold business-like atmosphere of the parliamentary garden; only the more practical but unromantic vegetables remain. The rich embroideries of trope and metaphor have been roughly torn from modern speech, leaving the bare skeleton of reason exposed to the public gaze. The grandiose orator of the past, with his ornate phraseology, his graceful periods, his quotations from the poets, has been ousted by the passionless debater, flinging, like the improvident O'Connell, his brood of robust thoughts into the world, without a rag to cover them. No one to-day would dream of expending fifty shillings – let alone fifty guineas – for the privilege of hearing a modern Sheridan address a twentieth-century Parliament; no modern Grattan (as Sheil might say) shatters the pinnacles of this establishment with the lightning of his eloquence.

The successful parliamentary speaker is no longer one who is able, in the words of Macaulay, to produce with rapidity a series of stirring but transitory impressions, to excite the minds of five hundred gentlemen at midnight, without saying anything that any of them will remember in the morning.³⁶⁹ Rather is he the cold judicious politician who chooses his words less for their beauty than for their immunity from subsequent perversion, who can crystallise in a few brief sentences, within the compass of a few minutes, the opinions that it would have taken his ancestors as many hours to express in the turgid rhetoric of a bygone age. The orator – as the name was once understood – is now a rara avis, but seldom raising his tuneful voice above the raucous cawing of his fellows. And whoever feels with Gibbon that the great speakers fill him with despair, and the bad ones with terror, will leave the precincts of Parliament to-day more often terrorstricken than desperate. That this should be so is no reason for giving way to gloom or sorrow. Parliamentary eloquence is not necessarily the sign of a country's greatness. The English Parliament, which began by acclaiming Burke as the prince of orators, soon became indifferent to his powers, and ended by labelling him the "Dinner Bell." Fox has left no memorial of any good wrought by his oratory. "Neither the Habeas Corpus Act, nor the Bill of Rights, nor Magna Charta originated in eloquence," and if it be true that "a senate of orators is a symptom of material decay,"³⁷⁰ we may look forward to the future of England with calm and perfect confidence.

CHAPTER XIII
PARLIAMENT AT WORK – (1)

In their efforts to grapple successfully with the ever-increasing mass of business brought before them, modern Parliaments show a tendency to prolong their labours to an ever-increasing extent. Each succeeding session lengthens, as Macaulay said, "like a human hair in the mouth."

In Tudor times the statutes to be passed were few in number, and the time occupied in legislation was consequently short. Members returned by "rotten" boroughs had no temptation to be prolix; their seats did not depend upon their parliamentary exertions, and their speeches were therefore commendably brief. Parliament to-day is often censured for the sterility of its legislative output, but during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries legislation in the modern sense of the word scarcely existed at all. Its time was chiefly spent in the discussion of libellous books and in disputes over constitutional questions of privilege.

October and November were the months fixed for the meeting of Parliament in Hanoverian times, and the prorogation usually took place in April. From 1805 to 1820 it met after Christmas. Since 1820 February has been the month generally chosen. Nowadays, not only have the sessions grown much longer – even the feast of St. Grouse on the 12th of August is no longer observed by politicians – but the hours of each sitting have been considerably extended. The session of 1847 was prolonged over 293 days; the Parliament of 1852 met on November 4 and sat until August 20 of the following year, and during the last two months of that session the House of Commons continued sitting for fifteen out of every twenty-four hours. In 1908, which contained two sessions, the House sat for 253 days, and the session of 1909 lasted from February 16 till December 3, during the latter weeks of which all-night sittings were of the commonest occurrence.

In proportion as the daily labours of the Legislature increased the hour for commencing work became later and later. In Charles I.'s time Parliament often met as early as 7 a.m., and would sit until twelve, the afternoon being devoted to the work of the committees.³⁷¹ Later on the hour of meeting was fixed for 8 or 9 a.m., and the House usually rose at 4 p.m., or earlier. The Commons always showed the strongest disinclination to sit in the afternoon, either because the midday meal did not leave them in a fit condition to legislate, or because no regular provision was made for lighting the House when twilight fell. "This council is a grave council and sober," said a member in 1659, and "ought not to do things in the dark," and the Speaker would occasionally regard his inability to distinguish one member from another as a sufficient excuse for adjourning the House.³⁷² The practice of sitting regularly after dark did not commence until the year 1717, when, by an order of the House, the Sergeant-at-Arms was directed to bring in candles as soon as daylight failed. Prior to that year the employment of artificial light had to be made the subject of a special motion, and Sergeants were sometimes reprimanded for providing candles without the necessary order.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the hours of sitting varied from time to time. Up to 1888 the House of Commons sat from 10 a.m. until 3.45 p.m. In that year the time for meeting was fixed at 3 p.m. and this was subsequently postponed for an hour.

Saturday and Sunday have long been recognised as regular parliamentary holidays, and on one other day in the week – either a Wednesday or Friday – the House of Commons has adjourned at an earlier hour than usual. This, however, was not always the case. In Stuart times Parliament sometimes sat on Sunday and even on Christmas Day,³⁷³ and it was on a Sunday – December 18, 1831 – that the Reform Bill was read a second time. This, however, was an exceptional instance, the adjournment over Saturday having been initiated by Sir Robert Walpole, who, as a keen sportsman, was always anxious to get away to the country, and believed that, as Dryden says, it were:

 
"Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for his noxious draught."
 

In more recent times it became the fashion to adjourn the House on Derby Day, in order to allow legislators to take part in the sport of kings. In 1872, this adjournment was made the subject of a heated debate, and though the division that ensued resulted in a large majority for the holiday-makers, the claims of sport gradually gave way to the more pressing demands of business, and ten years later, when the Prevention of Crimes (Ireland) Act was under discussion, the matter was considered too serious to allow of the usual Derby Day adjournment. The late Sir Wilfrid Lawson once cynically argued that if the Derby Day became a recognised official holiday the Speaker of the House of Commons ought to go to Epsom in his State-coach, "as he did at the thanksgiving for the Prince of Wales's recovery." The game of politics is nowadays treated more gravely than ever, and the most frivolous of modern politicians would scarcely dream of suggesting that the stern business of Westminster should be deserted for the pleasures of Epsom Downs. The House of Lords has always, until a year or two ago, adjourned over Ash Wednesday and Ascension Day, on the ground that if they met they would be taken to Church at the Abbey; but lately they have braved this terror and nothing so serious has happened.

Prior to 1882 the House of Lords met at five o'clock in the afternoon; they now meet three-quarters of an hour earlier.³⁷⁴ Except under circumstances of special pressure they take holidays on Friday and Saturday, and Sunday is, of course, for them, as for everybody else, a day of complete rest. Occasionally on other days the amount of work to be undertaken in the Upper House is so small as to be accomplished in a few minutes. The Lords, as has been irreverently observed, often sit scarcely long enough to boil an egg, and it is only towards the end of the session that they are compelled to extend their deliberations beyond the dinner-hour.³⁷⁵

The labours of the Commons are more arduous, and entail longer hours of sitting. On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday the House meets at 2.45 p.m. and continues sitting until 11 p.m., unless the day's business has been disposed of before that hour. At eleven o'clock the Speaker interrupts business, after which no opposed matter can be dealt with, but, by a Standing Order, it is permissible for a Minister of the Crown, at the commencement of the day's work, to move the suspension of the eleven o'clock rule. In this case no interruption takes place until the business under discussion is finished.

All-night sittings are not uncommon nowadays, but in former times they occurred but rarely. In 1742, the Speaker once sat in the Chair for seventeen hours at a stretch, and some fifty years later we find the Commons keeping an occasional all-night vigil. Sir Samuel Romilly left the House one evening to go to bed, and returned the next morning to find his colleagues still sitting. He began his speech by saying that he made no apology for rising to address the House at such a time, as seven o'clock was his usual hour for "getting up."³⁷⁶ In 1877, the Commons sat for a day and night, and again in 1881, the sitting on the latter occasion lasting forty-one hours; and since that day many sittings have been prolonged over the twenty-four hours. In 1909, the House sat after 1 a.m. o'clock on no less than thirty-seven occasions, after 4 a.m. on ten occasions, and once as late as nine o'clock in the morning.

Friday is, so to speak, a half-holiday for the Commons. On that day the House meets at noon, the interruption of business occurs at five o'clock, and, no matter what subject is under discussion, the House adjourns at 5.30 p.m. Before 1902, Wednesday was the day chosen for the short sitting, but the desire of many members to escape from London at the end of the week led to a change, and it is now possible for representatives from the most distant parts of England to pay flying weekly visits to their homes or constituencies.

For a few years recently the House of Commons always enjoyed an evening interval for dinner, but this agreeable adjournment was reluctantly sacrificed in 1906, and the "Speaker's chop" is now nothing but a fragrant memory. The dinner-hour is much too precious to be wasted at any table other than that of the House, for at 8.15 on many days any private business not disposed of at the beginning of the sitting is given precedence of all else, and what is known as "opposed" private business is also taken between that hour and 9.30 p.m.³⁷⁷

For the information of members a daily "notice paper" is published in two editions – a blue edition in the morning, and a white one in the early afternoon – containing the orders of the day and all notices of motions. To this is attached the "votes and proceedings," division lists, and an account of the business accomplished at the last sitting. In the "order book" of the House, also published daily, is a list of all future business definitely assigned to any particular sitting; while once a week a catalogue of all Public Bills that have been introduced, and some report of their progress, is also included.

By no means the least arduous of the many labours of Parliament are those which are undertaken by legislators serving upon the various Committees, of which the public knows so little, but whose work is very necessary to the carrying on of public business.

The appointment of Select Committees in both Houses has been practised ever since the earliest days of Parliament. The duties of these subsidiary bodies, which may be appointed for any purpose, are prescribed by the terms of the reference: they may collect facts for future legislation, investigate conduct, or examine the terms of a Bill referred to them, thus saving the time of the House. To them go all opposed Private Bills, when counsel appear to argue the merits of clashing interests.

The system of Committees perhaps originated in the conferences held in former times by the two Houses in the Painted Chamber. There are records of small deliberative bodies, somewhat similar in character to the modern Committees, in the middle of the sixteenth century. By the time Queen Elizabeth came to the throne such Committees were common, and were usually composed of members of one or other House. Select Committees did not exist until the eighteenth century, and were originally semi-judicial in character.

All members of the House of Commons are subject to be called upon to serve on Select Committees, being chosen for the purpose by a Committee of Selection, and the work thus done outside the actual Chamber adds considerably to the daily labours of politicians. No member may refuse to serve, if called upon to do so, and when, in 1846, Mr. Smith O'Brien declined to sit on an English Railway Committee, he was confined in the Clock Tower in the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms.

The whole House can also resolve itself at any time into a Committee, when its function becomes one of "deliberation rather than inquiry."³⁷⁸ Every Public Bill not referred to a Grand Committee must be considered in a Committee of the Whole House, and, indeed, the greater part of each session is occupied by this stage of legislation. The Committee of Supply and the Committee of Ways and Means are both "Committees of the Whole House," and are appointed to discuss the financial projects of the Government, the one to supervise expenditure, the other to devise taxation.

A Committee of the Whole House differs in no respect from the House itself, save that it is presided over by a chairman in place of the Speaker, and that the mace is removed from the Table. There are also some changes in the procedure of debate, as, for example, the cancelling of the rule forbidding a member to speak twice on the same question.

The idea of forming the House itself into a committee has developed, like so many parliamentary institutions, gradually and almost unconsciously. In days when the Speaker was too often the spy of the King it was considered advisable to get rid of him, and this could best be done by turning the House into a Committee and putting some other member in the Chair.

The Chairman of Committees in the Lords, and the Chairman of Ways and Means, or his deputy, in the Commons, takes the Chair when the House is in Committee, but it is permissible for either House to nominate any one of their number as a temporary Chairman.³⁷⁹

As a substitute for Committees of the Whole House in the Commons, two large Standing Committees, sometimes called Grand Committees, numbering from sixty to eighty members, are appointed to consider respectively all Bills relating to Law and Trade committed to them by the House. Besides the smaller committees already referred to there are Sessional Committees, appointed for each session, consisting of from eight to twelve members – as, for instance, the committee on Public Accounts, which meets once a week to look into the department of the Auditor-General – which control the internal arrangements of the House; and joint Committees of the two Houses, which discuss matters in which both are interested.

In the Lords also Standing Committees were instituted in 1889, but these were to supplement and not supersede the Whole House Committee stage, and after an experience of more than twenty years have proved their insufficient utility, they were abolished on June 24, 1910.

In the sixteenth century committees generally met outside the House, in the Star Chamber, in Lincoln's Inn, or elsewhere, but they have not done so for many years, numerous committee-rooms being nowadays provided within the precincts of the House.

At the commencement of every session the House of Lords elects a Chairman of Committees from among its own members. His duty it is to preside over Committees of the Whole House, or over Select Committees on whom the power of appointing their own Chairman is not expressly conferred. He is a salaried official of Parliament, and receives a sum of £2500 a year for his services. Similar duties are undertaken in the House of Commons by a Chairman of Committees and a Deputy Chairman, at salaries of £2500 and £1000 respectively.

The Crown usually appoints by commission one or more Lords to supply the place of Lord Chancellor, should that official be unavoidably absent. On emergency it may be moved that any lord present may be appointed temporarily to sit Speaker. In the House of Commons the Chairman of Ways and Means and the Deputy Chairman are similarly empowered to replace the Speaker when absent.

The problem of providing a substitute for the Speaker was not settled until 1855, prior to which date no steps seem to have been taken to fill the Chair in the event of a Speaker's sudden illness or absence. It appears to have been considered inadvisable to frame any scheme of relief which should facilitate his frequent absence. It was, further, the general sense of the House that no temporary president could command that implicit acquiescence in the rulings of the Chair which is so necessary for the maintenance of order in debate.

To the Chairman of Committees, whom one would regard as a natural substitute for the Speaker, the House has never been willing to accord the complete consideration to which the Chair is entitled; the fact that he is liable at any moment to sink again into the body of the House robs this official of much of his authority. In the reign of James I. we find a Chairman complaining that some member had threatened to "pull him out of the Chair, that he should put no more tricks upon the House." And in 1810 another member, Fuller by name, who had lost the Chairman's eye and his own temper, called that official a "d – insignificant puppy," and said that he didn't care a snap of the fingers for him or for the House either.³⁸⁰

The question of replacing the Speaker has, therefore, always been a delicate one, and for many years no attempt was made to solve it. In 1656, owing to the illness of Sir Thomas Widdrington, another member occupied the Chair for a period of a few weeks, and, during the next few years, several Speakers complained of ill-health and were temporarily relieved. From 1547, when the Journals commence, to 1660, the Speaker was only absent on twelve occasions, and during the next hundred years the records of the House show only six cases of absence. The inconvenience caused by the rule which necessitated an adjournment on such occasions – curiously few in number though they were – can readily be imagined. On the death of Queen Anne, in 1714, the whole proceedings of Parliament were delayed, and the sittings postponed from day to day owing to the Speaker being away in the country and taking a long time to travel to London. The duty of being ever in his place at times involved great hardships. Addington was obliged to take the Chair three days after the death of his father, persevering by a painful effort in this stern adherence to the path of duty.³⁸¹

In the year 1640, a prolonged session was the cause of many members absenting themselves from their places in the House of Commons. In order to ensure a more general attendance it was then determined that the Speaker should not take the Chair unless there were at least forty members present in the House. This rule still holds good, and to-day, if a quorum of forty is not obtainable before four o'clock, the sitting is suspended until that hour. Should the same difficulty arise after four o'clock, the House is adjourned until the next sitting day.³⁸² An exception is made in favour of the hour between 8.15 and 9.15, but if a division be taken during that hour in the absence of a quorum, the business in debate must be postponed and the next business brought on. When, too, a message from the Crown is delivered, the House of Commons is held to be "made" even though forty members are not present. On such an occasion the business of the day can be proceeded with so long as no notice is taken of the absence of a quorum.