MR. SPEAKER
1
As “Mr. Speaker” does not speak in the debates, the title of
the President of the House of Commons appears, at first sight,
paradoxical. The original function of the office was to sum up, like
the Judge at a trial, the arguments of both sides at the close of
a debate. “If any doubt arise upon a Bill,” says an Order passed
in 1604, “the Speaker to explain, but not to sway the House with
argument or dispute.” Mr. Speaker had also to “speak” the views of
the House in its contentions with the Crown, about supplies and
taxes, before the Revolution of 1688.
The duties of the Speaker to-day are not so anxious or troublesome.
The occasions on which he conveys the views or desires of the Commons
to the Sovereign, or his representatives, the Lords Commissioners
in the House of Lords, are rare, and always formal or ceremonious.
He has been relieved long since of the invidious task of summing
up a debate in which the contending parties had argued out their
differences. His duties are now more appropriate to his office, as
controller and guide of a deliberative Assembly. He keeps the talk
strictly to the subject of discussion. He decides points of order.
He interprets the rules of the House. He is ever ready to assist
Members in doubt or difficulty about a question, a motion or a Bill.
He guards with jealous care the authority, honour and dignity of
the House. He is most concerned with the maintenance of its great
traditions of good order, decorum, and freedom of opinion.
Above all, Mr. Speaker must be scrupulously fair, absolutely just,
in rulings which may affect any of the political sections of the
Assembly. For the most precious attribute of the Chair of the
House of Commons is impartiality. The Speaker, like the King, is
supposed to have no politics. That has become almost a recognized
constitutional principle. Of course, he is returned to the House
originally as a supporter of one or other of the political parties.
It follows also that on his first appointment to the Chair he is
necessarily the choice, or the nominee, of the political Party
which at the time is supreme. The Chair of the House of Commons,
when vacated by resignation or death, has always been considered
the legitimate prize of the Party then in office or in power.
Accordingly the Speaker has invariably been chosen from the ranks of
the Ministerialists. All the Speakers of the nineteenth century—Sir
Henry Addington, Sir John Freeman-Mitford, Charles Abbot, Charles
Manners-Sutton, James Abercromby, Charles Shaw-Lefevre, John Evelyn
Denison, Henry Bouverie Brand, Arthur Wellesley Peel and William
Court Gully—were so chosen and appointed, and so was James William
Lowther, the first Speaker elected in the twentieth century. But
whether the Speaker is first designated by the Government, or, in
case of a division, is carried by the majority of the Government,
when he is being conducted by his proposer and seconder from his
place on the benches to the Chair, he, as it were, doffs his Party
colours, be they buff or blue, and wears, instead, the white flower
of a neutral political life; and, once in the Chair, he is regarded
as the choice of the whole House, from which his authority is
derived and of which, to use the ancient phrase, he is “the mouth.”
Henceforth he sits above all Parties. As Speaker he has no political
opinions. So he remains Speaker—being re-elected unanimously at the
first meeting of each new Parliament—until he decides to resign or is
removed by death. This concurrence of both sides in the appointment
of Mr. Speaker adds immensely to his judicial independence in
presiding over the Party conflicts which are waged on the floor of
the House of Commons.
Once only has a Speaker been dismissed on the assembling of a new
Parliament because he was supposed to be hostile to the Party
which came back from the country in a majority. This was Charles
Manners-Sutton. A Tory himself, he was the nominee of the Tory
Administration in office at the resignation of Charles Abbot in 1817.
The moderate Conservatives and Whigs put forward Charles William
Wynn. His brother, Sir Watkin Wynn, who was also in the House, and
he were known as “Bubble and Squeak,” on account of the peculiarity
of their voices. Indeed, Canning thought the only objection to Wynn
as a candidate for the Chair was that Members might be tempted to
address him as “Mr. Squeaker.” However, Manners-Sutton was elected
by the large majority of 160; and in accordance with precedent he
was reappointed to the position after General Elections in 1819,
1820, 1826, 1830 and 1831. In July 1832, during the struggle over
the great Reform Bill, he intimated his wish to retire at the close
of the Parliament. A vote of thanks for his services was unanimously
passed, on the motion of Lord Althorp, the Whig Leader of the House,
an annuity of £4,000 was granted to him, and one of £3,000, after
his death, to his heir male. But the Whig Ministers, returned again
to power at the General Election which followed the passing of the
Reform Act, were apprehensive that a new and inexperienced Speaker
would be unable to control the first reformed Parliament in which, it
was feared, there might be discordant and unruly elements, and they
induced Manners-Sutton to consent to occupy the Chair for some time
longer. The Radicals, however, decided to oppose his re-election.
Accordingly, at the meeting of the new Parliament on January 29,
1833, after Manners-Sutton had been proposed by Lord Morpeth and
seconded by Sir Francis Burdett, both Whigs, Edward John Littleton
was put up in opposition to him by Joseph Hume and Daniel O’Connell.
A division was taken, and Littleton was rejected by 241 votes to 31,
or the enormous majority of 210. Thereupon Charles Manners-Sutton was
declared elected Speaker unanimously.
When a new Parliament next assembled, on February 19, 1835, the
Tories were in office, the Whigs having been summarily dismissed
by William IV; but, as the result of the General Election which
followed, a majority of Whigs confronted Sir Robert Peel, Prime
Minister, in the House of Commons, determined to fight him on every
issue. Charles Manners-Sutton was again nominated for the Chair,
this time his proposer and seconder being Tories. That he was a
staunch Tory everybody was well aware. But he was charged with overt
acts of partisanship, in breach of the principle that as Speaker
he was bound to be absolutely impartial. It was said that he had
been concerned in the Tory opposition to the reform of Parliament,
and had, in fact, tried to constitute an anti-Reform Administration
himself. It was further said that he had helped in the overthrow of
the late Whig Government, and that, had the Tories been successful
at the polls, he would have been appointed to high office in Peel’s
Cabinet. Though he denied these charges, the Whigs as a Party opposed
his re-election to the Chair; and their nominee, James Abercromby,
was carried in a most exciting contest by the narrow majority of
10, or by 316 votes to 306. “Such a division was never known before
in the House of Commons,” writes Charles Greville in his _Memoirs_.
“Much money was won and lost. Everybody betted. I won £55.”
2
Lord John Russell, speaking in the 1835 debate, said the House of
Commons was under no obligation in a new Parliament to re-elect the
Speaker, unless he had won for himself the confidence and esteem not
of his own Party alone, but of the general body of Members. Even so,
no attempt has since been made to depose a Speaker on Party grounds,
even when a General Election has upset the balance of Parties in the
House of Commons. On the retirement of Abercromby in May 1839, the
Whigs, being still in office, nominated Charles Shaw-Lefevre; the
Tories ran Henry Goulburn, and the former was elected by a majority
of 18, or by 317 votes against 299. The General Election of 1841
resulted in a change of Government. The Melbourne Administration,
which elected Shaw-Lefevre to the Chair, was overthrown at the
polls, and the Tories came back with a large majority. Many of
the victors in the electoral contest were disposed to follow the
example set by their opponents in 1835, and make a Party question
of the Speakership of the new Parliament. But their leader and
Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, refused to countenance this line
of action. “I do not think it necessary,” said he, in a speech
supporting the re-election of Shaw-Lefevre in August 1841, “that
the person elected to the Chair, who has ably and conscientiously
performed his duty, should be displaced because his political
opinions are not consonant with those of the majority of the House.”
The re-election of Shaw-Lefevre was, accordingly, unanimous. Peel’s
wise view of the Speakership has since prevailed. The continuity of
the office has not been broken since the dismissal of Manners-Sutton
in 1835. John Evelyn Denison was unanimously chosen to succeed
Shaw-Lefevre in 1857, Henry Bouverie Brand to succeed Denison in
1872, and Arthur Wellesley Peel to succeed Brand in 1884. The Whigs,
or Liberals, were in office on each occasion that the Speakership
became vacant by resignation in those years. And the Conservatives,
on their return to power, reappointed Denison in 1866, Brand in 1874,
and Peel in 1886.
The circumstances attending the election of William Court Gully
as Speaker gave both to the principle that the Chair is above
the strife and the prejudices of Party, and the precedent of its
occupant’s continuity of office, an accession of strength which
perhaps makes them stable and decisive for all time. Gully had sat
in the House as a Liberal for ten years when, on the retirement of
Peel in May 1895, he was nominated for the Chair by the Liberal
Government. The Unionist Opposition proposed Sir Matthew White
Ridley, a highly respected member of their Party, and a man of long
and varied experience in parliamentary affairs. On a division Gully
was elected by the narrow majority of 11. The voting was: Gully,
285; White Ridley, 274. It was publicly declared at the time that,
as the Unionists had disapproved the candidature of Gully, they held
themselves free to put a nominee of their own in the Chair should
they have a majority in the next new Parliament. A few weeks later
the Liberal Government was defeated in the House of Commons, and
a dissolution followed. It is the custom to allow the Speaker a
walk-over in his constituency at the General Election. But Gully’s
seat at Carlisle was on this occasion contested, and his Unionist
opponent received from Arthur Balfour, then Leader of the Unionist
Party, a letter warmly endorsing his candidature and wishing him
success. In his address to the constituents Gully made no reference
to politics. As Speaker of the House of Commons, he could have
nothing to say to Party controversy. Like his predecessors, he
recognized that a Speaker cannot descend into the rough strife of
the electoral battle, not even to canvass the electors, without
impairing the independence and the dignity of the Chair of the House
of Commons. The contest ended in his re-election by a substantial
majority.
The Unionists came back triumphant from the country. There was still
a feeling in the Party, though not, indeed, prevailing to any wide
extent, that the Speaker of the new Parliament should be chosen from
its ranks. It was pointed out that for sixty years there had not
been a Conservative Speaker—Manners-Sutton having been the last—and,
apart altogether from the legitimate ambition of the Conservatives
to have a Speaker of their own way of thinking, it was argued that
in building up the body of precedents which guide, if they do not
control, the duties of the Chair, Conservative opinion ought to have
its proper share, if these precedents are truly to reflect the sense
of the House generally. But tradition and practice in the House of
Commons were too powerful to be overborne. At the meeting of the
new Parliament, in August 1895, Gully was unanimously re-elected to
the Chair. The aloofness and supremacy of the Speakership has one
fine effect. It gives to the House, despite its Party divisions, an
ennobling sense of national unity.
3
The Speaker forfeits—actually, though perhaps not theoretically—his
rights as the representative of a constituency in the House. He
is disqualified from speaking in the debates and voting in the
divisions. The constituency which he represents is, therefore, in
a sense disfranchised. But there is no record of a constituency
ever having objected to its representative being made Speaker. No
doubt it appreciates the distinction. Formerly it was customary
for the Speaker to join in the debates and divisions when the House
was in Committee, he having left the Chair, and the proceedings
being presided over by the Chairman. In Committee on the Bill for
the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, Mr. Speaker Addington, on
February 12, 1799, declared that, while he was in favour of the
plan, he was strongly opposed to Catholic emancipation with which
Pitt was disposed to accompany it. If it were a question, he said,
between the re-enactment of all the Popery laws for the repression of
Ireland, or the Union, coupled with Catholic emancipation, for the
pacification of Ireland, he would prefer the former. Again, during
the Committee stage of the Bill introduced by Henry Grattan, in 1813,
to qualify Roman Catholics for election as Members of Parliament, an
amendment to omit the vital words, “to sit and vote in either House
of Parliament,” was moved by Mr. Speaker Abbot (strongly opposed,
like Addington, to the removal of the Catholic disabilities), and
having been carried by a majority, though only a small one of four
votes, proved fatal to the measure. Manners-Sutton also exercised his
right to speak in Committee three times on such highly controversial
questions as Catholic emancipation and the claims of Dissenters
to be admitted to the Universities, to both of which he, like his
predecessors in the Chair, answered an uncompromising “No.”
But so high has the Chair of the House of Commons been since lifted
above the conflicts of politics, that partisanship so aggressive
would not now be tolerated in the Speaker. On the last two occasions
that a Speaker interested himself in proceedings in Committee, the
questions at issue had no relation whatever to Party politics. In
1856 Shaw-Lefevre spoke in defence of the Board of Trustees of the
British Museum, of which he was a member. In 1870 Evelyn Denison
voted to exempt horses employed on farms from a licence duty which
was proposed in the Budget. This was the last occasion that a Speaker
in wig and gown passed through the division lobby to record his vote,
and it is probable that never again will a Speaker speak or vote in
Committee. Indeed, Mr. Speaker Gully directed that his name should
be removed from the printed lists supplied to the clerks in the
division lobbies for the purpose of recording how members voted. The
only vote which a Speaker now gives is a casting vote, should the
numbers on each side in a division be equal. It is the custom for the
Speaker to give his casting vote in such a way as to avoid making
the decision final—thus giving the House another opportunity of
considering the question—and to state his reasons, which are entered
in the _Journals_.
Occasions for the Speaker’s casting vote rarely arise. Peel was
called upon to give it but once during his eleven years of office;
that was on the Marriages Confirmation (Antwerp) Bill in July,
1887. The object of the measure was to confirm marriages solemnized
at Antwerp by a Dr. Potts, chaplain to a British and American
chapel from 1880 to 1884, the invalidity of which was caused by a
technicality. The tie was a motion to adjourn the debate, and Mr.
Speaker Peel gave his casting vote for the adjournment. Gully’s
experience in this respect was singular. On the sole occasion he was
called upon to give his casting vote no tie really existed. It was on
May 11, 1899, in connection with the second reading of the Vehicles
(Lights) Bill. “The tellers for the Ayes and the Noes came up to the
Table almost at the same time,” said Gully, describing the incident.
“One of the tellers gave his number as forty, and the teller for the
Ayes was then turned to and asked his number. In point of fact the
teller for the Ayes had succeeded by a majority of three. His number
should have been forty-three, but he was so elated at hearing of a
victory which he had not expected that at the moment he only repeated
what the other Member had said, and he said ‘forty,’ whereupon there
was a tie. I then gave my vote for the Ayes, doing that which a
Speaker always did on such occasions, although I do not think I had
formed any opinion at all upon the Bill. Still, in doing what I did
I pursued the proper course, because it gave the opportunity on the
third reading for the expression of a decided opinion on the Bill.”