(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)
[Illustration: "OBSTRUCTION."]
It is thirteen years since a new Parliament last blithely started on its
way with Mr. Gladstone sitting in the seat of the Premier. Since March,
1880, a great deal has happened, not least in the change of
circumstances under which the business of the House of Commons is
conducted. The majority of the House of Commons may be Liberal or
Conservative, according to a passing flood of conviction on the part of
the constituencies. When presumptuous hands are stretched forth to touch
the Ark of its procedure, its instincts are all Tory. For more than two
hundred years preceding the advent of a Tory Ministry in 1886, this was
so. Mr. Gladstone, driven to desperation in the second Session of the
Parliament of 1880-5, endeavoured to reform procedure so that
obstruction might be fought on even terms. He was met by such resolute
and persistent opposition from the Conservative side that, even with an
overwhelming majority at his back, he succeeded only in tinkering the
pot. Oddly enough, it was left for the Conservatives when they came into
office to revolutionize the system upon which, through the ages,
Parliamentary business had been carried on.
There was nothing in the reforms more startling to the old
Parliamentarian than the proposal automatically to close debate at
midnight. A dozen years ago members of the House of Commons assembled at
four o'clock for prayers. Questions began at half-past four, and no one
could say at what hour of the night or of the next morning the cry "Who
goes home?" might echo through the lobby. In those days Mr. O'Donnell
was master of the situation, and he had many imitators. A debate carried
on through several nights might seem to be approaching a conclusion. The
Leader of the Opposition, rising between eleven o'clock and midnight,
spoke in a crowded House. The Premier, or his lieutenant, followed,
assuming to wind up the debate. Members wearied of the long sitting were
prepared to go forth to the division lobby; when from below the gangway
on the left there uprose a familiar figure, and there was heard a
well-known voice.
[Illustration: F. H. O'DONNELL.]
These usually belonged to Mr. O'Donnell bent upon vindicating the right
of a private member to interpose when the constituted authorities of the
House had agreed in the opinion that a debate had been continued long
enough. A roar of execration from the fagged legislators greeted the
intruder. He expected this, and was in no degree perturbed. In earliest
practice he had a way of dropping his eye-glass as if startled by the
uproar, and searched for it with puzzled, preoccupied expression,
apparently debating with himself what this outburst might portend. He
did not love the British House of Commons, and delighted in thwarting
its purposes. But he knew what was due to it in the way of respect, and,
however angry passions might rise, however turbulent the scene, he would
never address it looking upon it with the naked eye. As his eye-glass
was constantly tumbling out, and as search for it was preternaturally
deliberate, it played an appreciable part in the prolongation of
successive Sessions.
[Illustration: "EYE-GLASS PLAY."]
What has become of Frank Hugh now, I wonder? Vanishing from the House of
Commons, he reappeared for a while on the scene, characteristically
acting the part of the petrel that heralded the storm Mr. Pigott
ineffectively tried to ride. It must be a consolation to Mr. O'Donnell,
in his retirement, wherever it is passed, to reflect on the fact that it
was he who directly brought about the appointment of the Parnell
Commission, with all it effected. His action for libel brought against
the _Times_ preluded and inevitably led up to the formal investigation
of the famous Charges and Allegations.
The member for Dungarvan was, in his day, the most thoroughly disliked
man in the House of Commons, distaste for Mr. Parnell and for Mr. Biggar
in his early prime being softened by contrast with his subtler
provocation. An exceedingly clever debater, he was a phrase maker, some
of whose epigrams Mr. Disraeli would not have disowned. He was a
parliamentary type of ancient standing, and apparently ineradicable
growth. In the present House of Commons fresh developments are presented
by Mr. Seymour Keay and Mr. Morton. These are distinct varieties, but
from the unmistakable root. Both are gifted with boundless volubility,
unhampered by ordinary considerations of coherency and cogency. Neither
is influenced by that sense of the dread majesty of the House of Commons
which keeps some members dumb all through their parliamentary life, and
to the last, as in the case of Mr. Bright, weighs upon even great
orators. The difference between the older and the new development is
that whilst over Mr. O'Donnell's intentional and deliberate vacuity of
speech there gleamed frequent flashes of wit, Mr. Morton and Mr. Keay
are only occasionally funny, and then the effect was undesigned.
[Illustration: O'DONNELL'S LAST APPEARANCE.]
[Illustration: MR. SEYMOUR KEAY.]
Since we have these two gentlemen still with us, it would be rash to say
that if Mr. O'Donnell could revisit the glimpses of Big Ben he would
find his occupation gone. He would certainly discover that his
opportunities had been limited, and would have to recommence practice
under greatly altered conditions. One of the former member for
Dungarvan's famous achievements took place in the infancy of the
Parliament of 1880-5, and, apart from its dramatic interest, is valuable
as illustrating the change effected in parliamentary procedure by the
New Rules. On that particular June night the paper was loaded with
questions in a fashion unfamiliar in the last Parliament, though there
are not lacking signs of renewed activity since political parties
changed places. Question No. 23 stood in the name of Mr. O'Donnell, and
contained in his best literary style a serious indictment of M.
Challemel-Lacour, just nominated by the French Government as their
representative at the Court of St. James.
[Illustration: MR. A. C. MORTON.]
Sir Charles Dilke, then Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, made
categorical reply, directly traversing all the points in the indictment.
When he resumed his seat Mr. O'Donnell rose in his usual deliberate
manner, captured his eye-glass, and having fixed it to his satisfaction,
remarked in his drawling voice that it was "perfectly impossible to
accept the explanation of the Government." Being interrupted with cries
of "Order! Order!" he quietly played his trump card: "If I am not
allowed to explain," he said, "I will conclude with a motion."
[Illustration: SIR CHARLES DILKE.]
The House howled again, but it was a cry of despair. Mr. O'Donnell, they
knew, had the whip hand. In those good old days he, or any other member
desiring to obstruct ordinary procedure, might, in the middle of
questions, start a debate on any subject under the sun. This and other
outrages were doubtless recalled by the House of Commons when revising
its Rules. It then ordered that no member might, during the progress of
questions, interpose with a motion on which to found debate. If, in this
current month of March, Mr. O'Donnell, being a member of the House of
Commons, had wanted to attack M. Challemel-Lacour, he must needs have
waited till the last question on the paper was disposed of, and could
then have moved the adjournment only if his description of the
question--as one of urgent public importance--was approved by the
Speaker, and if, thereafter, forty members rose to support the request
for a hearing.
In June, 1880, all that was left for the crowded House to do was to roar
with resentment. Mr. O'Donnell was used to this incentive, and had it
been withheld would probably have shown signs of failing vigour. As it
was, he produced a pocket-handkerchief, took down his eye-glass and
carefully polished it, whilst members yelled and tossed about on their
seats with impotent fury. Under the existing Rules this scene, if it had
ever opened, would have been promptly blotted out. The closure would
have been moved, probably a division taken, and the business of the
evening would have gone forward. There was no closure in those days, and
Mr. Gladstone, after hurried consultation with Sir Erskine May, hastily
moved that Mr. O'Donnell be not heard.
A shout of savage exultation rising from every bench, save those on
which the Irish members sat, hailed a stroke that promised to deliver
the House from the thraldom of Mr. O'Donnell at the very moment when its
chains had taken a final twist. In ordinary circumstances this
resolution would have played the part of the as yet unconsecrated
closure. A division would have followed, the motion carried by an
overwhelming majority, and Mr. O'Donnell would have been temporarily
shut up.
But those were not ordinary times. The Fourth Party was in the prime of
its vigour. Lord Randolph Churchill's quick eye discovered an opening
for irritating Mr. Gladstone and damaging the Government by making what
should have been a business night one long turmoil. Mr. Parnell, whilst
disclaiming any personal sympathy with Mr. O'Donnell, moved the
adjournment of the debate, and poor, placid Sir Stafford Northcote,
egged on by the young bloods below the gangway, raised various points of
order. Finally, at eight o'clock, the House dividing on Mr. Parnell's
amendment, Sir Stafford Northcote voted with the Irish members, leading
a hundred men of the Party of Law and Order into the same lobby.
[Illustration: STIRRING UP SIR STAFFORD.]
Hour after hour the riot continued. At one time blameless Sir William
Harcourt, then Home Secretary, appearing at the table, a Conservative
member, amid tumultuous shouts, moved that he be not heard. When members
grew tired of shouting at each other they divided on fresh motions for
the adjournment, and it was not till one o'clock on the following
morning that Mr. O'Donnell, grateful for a pleasant evening, was good
enough to undertake that before he recurred to the question he would
give due notice, so that the Speaker might exercise his discretion in
revising its terms. At five minutes past one in the morning, after a
wrangle full eight hours long, the Speaker, with a pretty assumption of
nothing particular having happened, called on the next question on the
paper, which was Number 24.
All this might happen again on any night of this month save for the
beneficent action of the New Rules a long-suffering Parliament was
finally induced to adopt. On the threshold of a new Parliament it is
useful to recall the scene as an assistance in calculating what may be
accomplished by the Parliament elected in 1892, as compared with that
which began its history in 1880. On the face of it, Parliament to-day
has much less time at its disposal for the accomplishment of work than
it had a dozen years ago. Then, the duration of a sitting was
indefinite. The House might, as it did in February, 1881, meet at four
o'clock on a Monday afternoon and sit continuously till Wednesday
morning. Now, the Speaker takes the Chair at three o'clock; public
business commences at half-past three; and at midnight, save in cases
where the Standing Order has been formally suspended, the Speaker leaves
the Chair, and the House adjourns, whoever may be on his feet.
[Illustration: "DISGUST."]
The influence of this automatic procedure is beneficially felt
throughout the whole of debate. One wholesome influence works in the
direction of using up the early hours of the sitting, an arrangement
which carries comfort to countless printing offices and editorial
sanctums. Some time before the New Rules came into operation, Mr.
Gladstone discovered for himself the convenience and desirability of
taking part in debate at the earliest possible hour of a sitting. His
earlier associations drifted round a directly opposite course. In the
good old days the champions of debate did not interpose till close upon
midnight, when they had the advantage of audiences sustained and
exhilarated by dinner. That was before the era of special wires to the
provincial papers, early morning trams, and vastly increased circulation
for the London journals. Mr. Gladstone discovered that he was more
carefully reported and his observations more deliberately discussed if
he spoke between five and seven o'clock in the evening than if,
following his earlier habit, he addressed the House between eleven and
one in the morning. He has, accordingly, for some years been accustomed,
when he has an important speech to deliver, to interpose in debate
immediately after questions.
This habit has become general, even compulsory, with members who may,
within certain limits, choose their own time for speaking. All the cream
of debate is now skimmed before the dinner-hour. At the close of a
pitched battle, the two Leaders of Party, as heretofore, wind up the
debate. But their opportunity for orating is severely circumscribed. The
audience in the House of Commons does not begin to reassemble after
dinner till half-past ten. Rising at that hour, the Leader of the
Opposition, if he fairly divides the available time with the right
honourable gentleman opposite, must not speak more than three-quarters
of an hour, and should not exceed forty minutes.
This is a necessity desirable not less in the orator's interest than in
that of the audience. Except for the exposition of an intricate measure,
twenty minutes is ample time for any man to say what is useful for his
fellow-men to hear. All Mr. Disraeli's best speeches were made within
half an hour, and if he thought it necessary, from a sense of the
importance of his position, to prolong them, his stock of good things
was exhausted in twenty minutes, the rest being what Carlyle
disrespectfully described as thrice-boiled cole-wort. Mr. Gladstone can
go on indefinitely, and in very recent times has been known to hold his
audience spell-bound for three hours. But even he has profited by the
beneficent tyranny that now rules the limit of debate, and, rising with
the knowledge that he has but forty minutes to speak in, has excelled
himself. For less exuberant speakers not gifted with his genius, the new
discipline is even more marked in its benefits.
[Illustration: MR. KEIR HARDIE.]
* * * * *
It is too soon to endeavour to estimate the general characteristics of
the _personnel_ of the new Parliament. It will probably turn out to be
very much of the same class as the innumerable army of its predecessors.
When Mr. Keir Hardie came down on the opening day in a wagonette, with
flags flying and accordions playing, it was cried aloud in some quarters
that the end was at hand. This apprehension was strengthened when Mr.
Hardie strolled about the House with a tweed travelling cap on his head,
the Speaker at the time being in the chair. This, as Dr. Johnson
explained, when the lady asked him why he had described the horse's
pastern as its knee, was "ignorance, pure ignorance." Mr. Hardie is not
a man of the quietest manners, as was testified to by the apparition in
Palace Yard of the wagonette and its musical party; but in the
much-talked-of incident of the cap he sinned inadvertently. Before the
Speaker took the chair he had seen members walking about with their hats
on. He had observed that even in his presence they remained seated with
their heads covered. The shade of etiquette which approves this fashion
whilst it sternly prohibits a member from keeping his hat on when in
motion, even to the extent of leaning over to speak to a friend on the
bench below him, was too fine to catch the eye of a new member.
Mr. Keir Hardie has done much worse things than this in his public
appearances during the recess, and since the Session opened there has
not been lacking evidence of resolve to keep himself in the front of the
stage where the gallery may see him. But this is no new thing, to be
cited in proof of the deterioration of the composition and style of the
House of Commons. It has been done repeatedly in various fashions within
recent memory, and always with the same result. No man, not even Mr.
Biggar--and he may be cited as the most ruthless experimenter--has
successfully struggled against the subtle disciplinary influence of the
House of Commons.
From the first the member for Cavan set himself in deliberate fashion to
outrage Parliamentary traditions and usages. He finished by becoming a
punctilious practitioner of Parliamentary forms, a stickler for the
minutest observation of order. Whilst Mr. Gladstone and other members of
old standing were content to preface their speeches with the
monosyllable "Sir," nothing less than "Mr. Speaker, sir," would satisfy
Mr. Biggar. No one who has not heard the inflection of tone with which
this was uttered, nor seen the oratorical sweep of the hand that
launched it on its course, can realize how much of combined deference
and authority the phrase is capable of. Mr. Biggar, having in his early
Parliamentary days defied the Chair and affronted the sensibilities of
the House, alike in the matter of dress and deportment, developed into a
portly gentleman of almost smug appearance, a terror to new members. Woe
to any who in his ignorance passed between the Chair and the member
addressing it; who walked in from a division with his hat on; or who
stood an inch or two within the Bar whilst debate was going forward. Mr.
Biggar's strident cry of "Order! Order!" reverberated through the House.
Others joined in the shout, and the abashed offender hastily withdrew
into obscurity.
[Illustration: THE LATE MR. BIGGAR.]
It is the same with others of less strongly marked character. Vanity or
garrulity may force a new member into a position of notoriety. He may,
according to his measure of determination, try a fall again and again
with the House, and may sometimes, as in the case of Mr. O'Donnell, seem
to win. But in the end the House of Commons proves victorious. It is a
sort of whetstone on which blades of various temperature operate. In
time, they either forego the practice or wear themselves away. In either
case the whetstone remains.
This is a rule without exception, and is a reassuring reflection in view
of the talk about the degeneracy of the House of Commons, and the
decadence of its standard of manner. It would not be difficult to show
that the House at present in Session will, from the point of view of
manners, favourably compare with any that have gone before--though, to
be just, the comparison should be sought with Parliaments elected under
similar conditions, with the Liberals in office and the Conservatives in
opposition. That is an arrangement always found to be more conducive to
lively proceedings than when parties are disposed in the contrary order.
The Parliament dissolved last year was decorously dull. Mr. Gladstone in
opposition is not prone to show sport, and no encouragement was held out
to enterprising groups below the gangway to bait the Government. It was
very different in the Parliament of 1880-5, of which fact the
Challemel-Lacour episode is an illustration, only a little more piquant
in flavour than the average supply.
There are already signs that the new Parliament will not lie under the
charge of deplorable dulness brought against its predecessor. But these
varying moods are due to waves of political passion, and do not affect
the question whether the House of Commons as a body of English gentlemen
met for the discharge of public business has or has not deteriorated. I
have an engraving of a picture of the House of Commons in pre-Reform
days. It was carefully drawn in the Session of 1842. A more respectable
body of the gentlemen of England it would be difficult to gather
together. With the possible exception of one or two political
adventurers like the then member for Shrewsbury, there is probably not a
man in the House who is not well born or at least rich. Mr. Keir Hardie
would look strange indeed in these serried ranks of portly gentlemen
with high coat collars, cravats up to their chin, short-bodied coats
showing the waistcoat beneath, and the tightly trousered legs. Yet this
House, and its equally prim successors, had its obstruction, its
personal wrangles, and its occasional duel. Peel was attacked by
Disraeli in a fashion and in language that would not be tolerated in the
House of Commons now, even though the target were Mr. Gladstone.
It is not necessary to go back as far as the days of Peel or
Parliamentary Reform to sustain the bold assertion that, so far from
having degenerated, the manners of the House of Commons have improved.
In the Parliament elected in 1874 there sat on the Conservative side a
gentleman named Smollet, who early distinguished himself by bringing
Parliamentary debate down to the level of conversation in "Roderick
Random." In those days Mr. Gladstone was down after the General
Election, and Mr. Smollet, to the uproarious delight of gentlemen near
him, savagely kicked him.
[Illustration: "MOBBING HIM."]
It was in the second year of this same Parliament, less than twenty
years ago, that Mr. Gladstone, issuing from a division lobby, was
suddenly pounced upon by some fifty or sixty Conservative members, and
howled at for the space of several moments. It is, happily, possible for
Mr. Gladstone to forget, or at least to forgive, personal attacks made
upon him through his long career. In this very month of the new Session
he may be nightly seen working in cordial fashion with ancient
adversaries from Ireland, describing as "my honourable friends"
gentlemen who, ten years ago and for some time subsequently, heaped on
his head the coarsest vituperation permitted by practised manipulation
of Parliamentary forms. But this scene in the division lobby on the 12th
of April, 1875, is burned into his recollection. I have heard him,
within the last few months, refer to it in those tones of profound
indignation and with that flashing fire in his eyes only seen when he is
deeply moved. He mentioned, what I think was not known, that Lord
Hartington happened to be walking with him at the time. But there was no
mistake for whom the angry cries were meant. Mr. Gladstone spoke with
the profounder indignation because, as he said, he had on this occasion
gone out to vote on behalf of a man whose character he detested, because
he saw in the action taken against him an attack upon one of the
privileges of Parliament.
That scene was an outburst of political animosity; and the movements of
political animosity, like the dicta of taste, are not to be disputed.
But on the question of good manners, the only one here under
consideration, it may be affirmed that the present House of Commons
would be safe from lapse into such an exhibition. To this better state
of things the operation of the New Rules has conspicuously contributed,
and though, as we know, they have not operated to the absolute
extinction of Parliamentary scenes, they have appreciably limited
opportunity and incentive.
_Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives_.