“ORDER, ORDER!”
1
What are the qualities, then, which make a successful President of
the representative Chamber? “Go and assemble yourselves together, and
elect one, a discreet, wise, and learned man, to be your Speaker.”
Such were the words a Lord Chancellor in the reign of Elizabeth
addressed to a new House of Commons. The order in which the qualities
deemed essential for the Speaker are arranged is not without its
significance. Discretion comes first. It might be given the second
place and the third also. Marked ability is by no means indispensable
in a Speaker. Intellectually his duties are not searching. But
undoubtedly in the twentieth century, as in the sixteenth, the
faculty which is of the highest importance in the art of the
Speakership is sagacity, prudence, circumspection—making allowances
for the weaknesses and eccentricities of human nature.
John Evelyn Denison had sat in the House for more than thirty years
when, in 1857, he was chosen Speaker. Nevertheless, he was awed by
the responsibilities of the Chair. In such a position timorousness
or irresolution would be fatal. To Denison the prospect was not made
less formidable by the reply which he got from his predecessor on
inquiring whether there was anyone to whom he could go for advice
and assistance on trying occasions. “No one,” said Shaw-Lefevre;
“you must learn to rely entirely upon yourself.” “And,” proceeds
Denison in his _Diary_, “I found this to be very true. Sometimes a
friend would hasten to the Chair and offer advice. I must say, it
was for the most part lucky I did not follow the advice. I spent the
first few years of my Speakership like the captain of a steamer on
the Thames, standing on the paddle-box, ever on the look-out for
shocks and collisions.” But these “shocks and collisions” are rarely
uncommon or unfamiliar. The House of Commons has not had a life
and growth of several centuries without providing an abundance of
precepts and examples for the guidance of its Speaker. Very little
happens in the House of Commons that has not happened there often
before. Almost every contingency that can possibly arise is covered
by a precedent, and if a Speaker be but acquainted with the forms
and procedure of the House and the rulings of his predecessors, both
of which hedge his course, he cannot go far astray. Nor is it the
fact that there is no one to whom he can go for advice. It is the
custom for Members to give the Speaker private notice of questions on
points of order; unless, of course, such as spring up unexpectedly in
debate; and for aid in the decision of these questions the Speaker
has not only the clerks who sit at the Table below him to refer to,
if necessary, as to custom and procedure, but also a counsel outside
to direct him on points of law. “I used to study the business of
the day carefully every morning,” says Denison, “and consider what
questions could arise upon it. Upon these questions I prepared myself
by referring to the rules, or, if needful, to precedents.” It is also
the practice for the clerks to have an audience with the Speaker
every day before the House meets, to draw his attention to points of
order that are likely to arise, and to confer with him generally on
the business of the day. Therefore it is a rare experience for the
Speaker to be brought suddenly face to face with an unprecedented
situation. And in such a difficulty he has the advantage of being
able, as the supreme authority in the House, to impose his ruling
unquestioned on all concerned, even should he have gone beyond his
exact functions and powers as the director of debate, the preserver
of order, the guardian of the rights of Members. Mr. Speaker Lowther
was asked, May 14, 1920, how a mistake he might make could be
redressed. His reply, greeted with loud laughter, was “The Chair,
like the Pope, is infallible.”
It must not be supposed, however, that smooth and easy is the way
of the President of the House of Commons. The whole art of the
Speakership does not consist in presenting a dignified, ceremonial
figure, in wig and gown, on a carved and canopied Chair, and having a
mastery of the technicalities of procedure. The situation that tests
most severely the mettle of the Speaker is one that not infrequently
arises in the House of Commons, when there is what the newspapers
call “a scene,” and he is expected to stand forth on the dais of
the Chair the one calm, serious, stern and impartial personality,
looming above the noise and recrimination which arises from the
benches below. It is not cleverness that is then the indispensable
quality in a Speaker. More to the purpose, for the controlling
and the moderating of the passions of a popular assembly, are the
superficial gifts of an impressive presence, an air of authority, a
ready tongue, and a resonant voice. Still, the control of the House
in such an emergency will depend not so much upon the appearance, the
temperament, the elocution of Mr. Speaker, as upon the measure of the
confidence and respect of Members which he has previously won by more
sterling qualities; and the qualities upon which the trust of the
House of Commons in its Speaker reposes most securely and abidingly
are strength of character, fairness of mind, urbanity of temper, or a
combination of tactful firmness with strict impartiality.
No doubt it is difficult for the Speaker to appear impartial at all
moments and to all sections of the House. Some passing feeling of
soreness will inevitably be felt by Members censured, or placed at a
disadvantage in Party engagements, by decisions of the Chair. But if
the Speaker has not impressed the House generally with his discretion
and judgment, with confidence in the impartiality of his rulings,
with the conviction that he regards himself as the guardian of the
House, and not the auxiliary of the Government in getting business
done, that feeling of soreness will not be, as it ought to be, brief
and transient, and the Speaker will find on a crucial occasion that
the Assembly has passed from his control.
Even so, the Speaker must not be too stern in action or demeanour.
I have witnessed many violent scenes in the House of Commons, and I
have invariably noticed that, in a clash of will and tempers, genial
expostulation by the Chair is most potent in the restoration of
order. Disraeli said of Denison that even “the rustle of his robes,”
as he rose to rebuke a breach of order, was sufficient to awe the
unruly Member into submission. But Members are not disposed to forget
that, after all, the Speaker is but the servant of the House. There
was once a very proud and haughty Speaker, Sir Edward Seymour by
name, in the reign of Charles II. “You are too big for the Chair and
for us,” said a Member smarting under a reprimand or a ruling. “For
you, that think yourself one of the governors of the world, to be
our servant is incongruous.” The Speaker must not be too fastidious
or impatient with the commonplace or the eccentric. He should have
a genial tolerance of the extravagant in personality and character,
which is certain to appear in company of 707 men, chosen from all
classes and all parts of the kingdom, and which, indeed, makes the
House of Commons a place of infinite interest, abounding in humour
and comedy. Moreover, the House will not tolerate the despot or the
master in an officer of its own creation. Indeed, it is a mistake
to suppose that the Speaker wields unfettered authority, that his
individual will is law in the House of Commons. It is true that his
controlling powers are great, and that his rulings on points of order
and procedure are final. But the will which he imposes upon the House
is not his own: it is the law of the House itself, for everything he
does must be in accordance with rule and precedent.
2
But suppose a Speaker, who, of course, puts his own interpretation
on precedents and Standing Orders, ultimately finds that he has made
a wrong ruling, what ought he to do in the way of rectifying it?
Thomas Moore relates in his _Diary_ an extraordinary discussion on
this point with Manners-Sutton after dinner one evening in 1829 at
the Speaker’s house. “Dwelt much on the advantages of humbug,” writes
Moore, in reference to Manners-Sutton; “of a man knowing how to take
care of his reputation, and to keep from being _found out_, so as
always to pass for cleverer than he is.” Moore says he himself argued
that this denoted a wise man, not a humbug. If by that line of policy
a man induced his fellow-men to give him credit for being cleverer
than he really was, the fault could not be his, so long as he did not
himself advance any claim to it as his due. The moment he _pretended_
to be what he was not, then began humbug, but not sooner. The poet
then goes on:
He still pushed his point, playfully, but pertinaciously, and in
illustration of what he meant put the following case: “Suppose
a Speaker rather new to his office, and a question brought into
discussion before him which Parties are equally divided upon,
and which he sees will run to very inconvenient lengths if not
instantly decided. Well, though ignorant entirely on the subject,
he assumes an air of authority, and gives his decision, which sets
the matter at rest. On going home he finds that he has decided
quite wrongly; and then, without making any further fuss about the
business, he quietly goes and _alters_ the _entry_ on the Journals.”
Moore again insisted that wisdom, and not humbug, was the
characteristic of such an action. “To his _supposed_ case all I had
to answer,” the poet writes, “was that I still thought the man a
wise one, and no humbug; by his resolution in a moment of difficulty
he prevented a _present_ mischief, and by his withdrawal of a wrong
precedent averted a _future_ one.”
There are only two instances of the action of a Speaker being made
the subject of a motion of censure, followed by a division. In
neither case, however, was the motion carried. On July 11, 1879,
Charles Stewart Parnell moved a vote of censure on Mr. Speaker
Brand on the ground that he had exceeded his duty in directing
the clerks at the Table to take notes of the speeches of the
Nationalist Members, then inaugurating their policy of obstructing
the proceedings of the House. The motion was lost by 421 votes to 29,
or a majority of 392—one of the largest recorded in the history of
Parliament. The Irish Members were also the movers of the other vote
of censure on the Speaker. On March 20, 1902, Joseph Chamberlain,
then Colonial Secretary, speaking on the concluding stages of the
South African War, quoted a saying of Vilonel, the Boer General,
that the enemies of South Africa were those who were continuing a
hopeless struggle. “He is a traitor,” interjected John Dillon, the
Irish Nationalist, and Chamberlain retorted; “The hon. gentleman
is a good judge of traitors.” Dillon appealed to the Chair whether
the expression of the Colonial Secretary was not unparliamentary.
“I deprecate interruptions and retorts,” replied Mr. Speaker Gully,
“and if the hon. gentleman had not himself interrupted the right
hon. gentleman, he would not have been subjected to a retort.” “Then
I desire to say that the right hon. gentleman is a damned liar!”
exclaimed Dillon. He was thereupon “named” by the Speaker, and, on
the motion of Arthur Balfour, was suspended from the service of the
House. On May 7th J. J. Mooney, a Member of the Irish Party, moved
that the Speaker ought to have ruled that the words applied by the
Colonial Secretary to Dillon were unparliamentary, and accordingly
have directed Chamberlain to withdraw them. On a division the action
of the Chair was supported by 398 votes to 63, or a majority of 335.
3
If the duties of the Speakership are arduous, its dignity is high
and its emoluments handsome. In former times the Speaker was paid
a salary of £5 a day, and a fee of £5 on every Private Bill. This
fluctuating income was replaced by a fixed salary of £6,000 a year
on the election of Henry Addington to the Chair in 1789. It was also
decided at the same time that a sum of £1,000 equipment money was
to be given to the Speaker on his first appointment. In the reign
of William IV the salary was reduced to £5,000 to be paid, free
of all taxes, out of the Consolidated Fund direct, without having
to be voted every year by the House of Commons. At the same time
an official secretary, with a salary of £500, was attached to the
office. The Speaker also has a residence, furnished by the State
and free of rent, rates and taxes, with coal and light supplied.
The Speaker’s house is in that conspicuous wing of the Palace of
Westminster, with its carved stonework and gothic windows, extending
from the Clock Tower to the river. It was first occupied by John
Evelyn Denison in 1857. Here the Speaker gives several official
entertainments during session. There are dinners to the Ministers,
to the leader Members of the Opposition, and to private Members.
According to long-established custom, a Member who accepts an
invitation to dine with Mr. Speaker is required to appear either in
uniform or Court dress, ordinary evening dress being debarred. As
a result, many eminent parliamentarians, such as William Cobbett,
Joseph Hume, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Joseph Cowen, all sturdy
democrats and Radicals, who could not bring themselves to wear Court
dress, never had the pleasure of dining as guests of Mr. Speaker.
The rule is still enforced. The only departure from it was made by
Mr. Speaker Peel during the short Liberal Parliament of 1895, when
he had a separate dinner party of the Labour Members of the House,
and told them they might come in any dress they pleased. But that
precedent, at least, has not once been followed at Westminster,
though subsequent Speakers have in such cases given luncheons instead
of dinners. The Speaker is attired at these dinners in a black velvet
Court suit, knee-breeches with silk stockings, a steel-handled
sword by his side, and lace ruffles round his neck and wrists. The
table and huge sideboards in the oak-panelled rooms are spread with
magnificent old plate, and the walls are hung with portraits of many
famous “First Commoners.”
The Speaker is the First Commoner of the Realm, according to an Act
of Parliament passed in 1688 (1 William and Mary, c. 21) after the
Revolution. It provided that the Speaker’s place in the order of
precedence is next after the peers of the Realm. In 1919 the Speaker
was raised a great many steps in the scale. By an Order in Council
issued by King George V it was ordained that he “shall have, hold and
enjoy place, pre-eminence and precedence, immediately after the Lord
President of the Council,” which makes him the seventh subject of
the Realm. The order is: Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor,
Archbishop of York, Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lord
President of the Council, the Speaker.
The Speakership is one of the highest prizes of political ambition.
In dignity and importance it is next, perhaps, to the office of
Prime Minister. Four Speakers have resigned in order to become
Prime Ministers. One of them, Henry Addington, after being Speaker
for twelve years, was summoned by George III, in 1801, to form an
Administration in succession to Pitt’s, which failed to complete its
Irish policy at the Union, owing to the King’s rooted objection to
Catholic emancipation. The only position for which the Speakership
would be relinquished is certainly that of Prime Minister. Sir John
Freeman-Mitford, who followed Addington in the Chair, resigned after
a year’s service in order to become Lord Chancellor of Ireland;
but he did so only at the earnest solicitation of the King and
the solatium of a salary of £10,000 per year and a peerage as
Lord Redesdale. The Lord Chancellorship of Ireland is a high and
honourable position, but it is unlikely that anyone would now give
up the Speakership of the House of Commons for it. Charles Abbot
resigned the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland—a post of greater
political importance than that of the Lord Chancellorship—in order to
succeed Freeman-Mitford as Speaker in 1802. Abbot refused the offer
of a Secretaryship of State from Perceval, the Prime Minister, in
1809 during his occupancy of the Chair; and Manners-Sutton could have
been Home Secretary in the Administration formed in 1827 by Canning,
but he did not think it good enough.
On the other hand, Ministers have been willing to give up their
portfolios for the Speaker’s Chair. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the
Exchequer of the Melbourne Administration, had his heart set on that
coveted office. He was in the running for the Speakership in 1835,
when James Abercromby was elected. In 1838 Abercromby intimated to
Lord Melbourne his intention to resign—throwing a curious side-light
on the relations at the time between Mr. Speaker and the Treasury
Bench—because from the attitude of Lord John Russell, the Leader of
the House, he felt he no longer possessed that degree of Ministerial
confidence which, in his opinion, was essential to the due conduct of
public business and the maintenance of the authority of the Chair.
The Prime Minister induced Abercromby to postpone his resignation,
and at the same time satisfied the renewed pretensions of his
Chancellor of the Exchequer with the promise that he should be the
Government candidate for the Chair whenever it became vacant. But
when Abercromby retired in the following year it was found that
Spring Rice was not acceptable to the Radicals, and Shaw-Lefevre was
selected in order to maintain the unity of the Party and preserve
the Liberal succession to the Chair. Again, on the resignation of
Arthur Wellesley Peel in 1895, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was
willing to lay down his portfolio as Secretary of State for War
in the then Liberal Government for the object of his ambition—the
Speakership; and it is said that he reluctantly yielded to the urgent
representations of his colleagues that the Party could ill spare his
services. Just ten years later he became Prime Minister.
Still, the office has, as a rule, fallen to unofficial Members, or to
Members who have held subordinate Ministerial appointments. Denison,
in the opening passages of his _Diary_, states that on April 8, 1857,
he was seated in his library at Ossington, when the letters were
brought in, and among them was the following:
94 PICCADILLY,
_April 7, 1857_.
MY DEAR DENISON,
We wish to be allowed to propose you for the Speakership of the
House of Commons. Will you agree?
Yours sincerely,
PALMERSTON.
Denison says the proposal took him by surprise. “Though,” he writes,
“I had attended of late years to several branches of the private
business, and had taken more part in the public business of the House
of Commons, I had never made the duties of the Chair my special
study.” William Court Gully had been ten years in Parliament before
his elevation to the Speaker’s Chair, but he was one of that large,
modest band of “silent Members” who, confining themselves to voting
in the division lobbies, are unknown in debate, and, consequently,
are never mentioned in the papers. Moreover, being a busy lawyer,
Gully took little or no part in the routine work of the House, such
as service on Committees upstairs, which is supposed to afford a good
training for the Speakership. Indeed, the Chair may be said to be the
one great prize that is open to the occupants of the back benches
as well as the front benches who possess the necessary physical and
mental qualities. Personal appearance is undoubtedly an essential
qualification for the office. This includes the possession of clear
vision. A Speaker with spectacles would look incongruous in an
assembly where the competition to catch his eye is so keen.
4
The term of office of Mr. Speaker is usually short. Arthur Onslow,
who was elected in 1726, continued in possession of the Chair for
thirty-five years, through five successive Parliaments, apparently
without ruffling a hair of his wig. So long an occupancy is now
wellnigh impossible. For one thing, the duties of Mr. Speaker are
physically more responsible and irksome. The sessions are longer,
the sittings of the House more protracted, and the fatigue of the
prolonged and often tedious hours in the Chair must be most severe
mentally and physically. Besides, there has grown up of late a
preference for a certain maturity of age in the Speaker. Arthur
Onslow was only thirty-six when he was called to the office. Henry
Addington, who occupied the Speaker’s Chair at the opening of the
nineteenth century, was thirty-two only on his appointment. William
Court Gully, who was in possession of the Chair at the opening of
the twentieth century, had passed his sixtieth year on his election.
The occupancy of the office must be comparatively brief if men are
appointed to it only when their heads are grey or bald. Of recent
Speakers, Henry Bouverie Brand sat for twelve years, Arthur Wellesley
Peel eleven years, William Court Gully ten years, James William
Lowther sixteen years.
The Speaker receives a pension of £4,000 a year. John Evelyn Denison
refused this retiring allowance. “Though without any pretensions
to wealth,” he wrote to Gladstone, then Prime Minister, “I have a
private fortune which will suffice, and for the few years of life
that remain to me I should be happier in feeling that I am not a
burden to my fellow-countrymen.” He retired in February 1872, and
died, without heir, in March 1873. A peerage is also conferred
on the Speaker when he resigns. This was not the custom in the
eighteenth century. When Arthur Onslow retired in 1761, after his
long service of thirty-five years, George III, in reply to the
address of the Commons to confer on Onslow “some signal mark of
honour,” gave him a pension of £3,000 a year for the lives of himself
and his son, but no peerage. The custom began in the nineteenth
century with Charles Abbot, who, on retiring in 1817, was made
Baron Colchester. Since then every Speaker has been “called to the
House of Lords”—Manners-Sutton as Lord Canterbury; Abercromby as
Lord Dunfermline; Shaw-Lefevre as Lord Eversley; Denison as Lord
Ossington; Brand as Lord Hampton; Peel as Lord Peel; Gully as Lord
Selby.
But he is Speaker no longer; another presides in his place; and
what a shadowy personage he seems, even as a Lord, compared with
the resounding fame and distinction that were his in the glorious
years when he filled with pomp and dignity the Chair of the House of
Commons!