The great hat question which agitated the House of Commons at the
commencement of the new Session, even placing Home Rule in a secondary
position, has subsided, and will probably not again be heard of during
the existence of the present Parliament. Whilst yet to the fore it was
discussed with vigour and freshness; but it is no new thing. With the
opening Session of every Parliament the activity and curiosity of new
members lead to inconvenient crowding of a chamber that was not
constructed to seat 670 members. In the early days of the 1880
Parliament the hat threatened to bring about a crisis. One evening Mr.
Mitchell Henry startled the House by addressing the Speaker from a side
gallery. This of itself was regarded as a breach of order, and many
members expected the Speaker would peremptorily interfere. But Mr.
Mitchell Henry, an old Parliamentary hand, knew he was within his right
in speaking from this unwonted position. The side galleries as far down
as the Bar are as much within the House as is the Treasury Bench, and
though orators frequenting them would naturally find a difficulty in
catching the Speaker's eye, there is no other reason why they should
not permanently occupy seats there.
Mr. Mitchell Henry explained that he spoke from this place because he
could not find any other. He had come down in ordinarily good time to
take his seat, and found all the benches on the floor appropriated by
having hats planted out along them. In each hat was fixed a card,
indicating the name of the owner. What had first puzzled Mr. Henry, and
upon reflection led him to the detection of systematic fraud, was
meeting in remote parts of the House, even in the street, members who
went about wearing a hat, although what purported to be their headgear
was being used to stake out a claim in the Legislative Chamber. Mr.
Henry made the suggestion that only what he called "the working hat"
should be recognised as an agent in securing a seat.
[Illustration: THE NON-WORKING HAT--UNIONIST.]
The strict morality of this arrangement was acquiesced in, and its
adoption generally approved. But nothing practical came of it.
By-and-by, in the ordinary evolution of things, the pressure of
competition for seats died off, and the supernumerary hat disappeared
from the scene. This Session the ancient trouble returned with increased
force, owing to the peculiar circumstances in which political parties
are subdivided. The Irish members insisting upon retaining their old
seats below the gangway to the left of the Speaker, there was no room
for the Dissentient Liberals to range themselves in their proper
quarters on the Opposition side. They, accordingly, moved over with the
Liberals, and appropriated two benches below the gangway, thus driving a
wedge of hostile force into the very centre of the Ministerial ranks. It
was the Radical quarter that was thus invaded, and its occupants were
not disposed tamely to submit to the incursion. The position was to be
held only by strategy. Hence the historic appearance on the scene on the
first day of the Session of Mr. Austen Chamberlain with relays of hats,
which he set out along the coveted benches, and so secured them for the
sitting. On the other side of the House a similar contest was going
forward between the Irish Nationalist members, represented by Dr.
Tanner, and their Ulster brethren, who acknowledge a leader in Colonel
Saunderson.
[Illustration: THE NON-WORKING HAT--IRISH.]
These tactics are made possible by the peculiar, indeed unique,
arrangement by which seats are secured in the House of Commons. In all
other Legislative Assemblies in the world each member has assigned to
him a seat and desk, reserved for him as long as he is a member. That
would be an impossible arrangement in the House of Commons, for the
sufficient reason that while there are 670 duly returned members, there
is not sitting room for much more than half the number. When a member of
the House of Commons desires to secure a particular seat for a given
night he must be in his place at prayer time, which on four days a week
is at three o'clock in the afternoon. On the fifth day, Wednesday,
prayers are due at noon. At prayer time, and only then, there are
obtainable tickets upon which a member may write his name, and, sticking
the pasteboard in the brass frame at the back of the seat, is happy for
the night.
Where, what Mr. Mitchell Henry called, the non-working hat comes in is
in the practice of members gathering before prayer time and placing
their hats on the seat they desire to retain. That is a preliminary that
receives no official recognition. "No prayer, no seat," is the axiom,
and unless a member be actually present in the body when the Chaplain
reads prayers, he is not held to have established a claim. Thus his
spiritual comfort is subtly and indispensably linked with his material
comfort.