At a quarter past eight o'clock the first business is a motion for adjournment on an urgent matter of public business, in the occasional instances where leave has been obtained at the afternoon sitting to make it. Next follows any postponed private business that may have been assigned to that evening; and then come the notices of motions and orders of the day.
By the new arrangement with its definite time for certain business, the work of the House is better distributed. There is no longer the same danger that the discussion of a private bill or of a motion to adjourn, or an interminable series of questions, will unexpectedly cut a great piece out of the hours when the House is most crowded, and the leading men are waiting to debate a great public measure. At the afternoon sitting the regular business of the day is reached at a quarter before four, or very little later, and it proceeds without interruption until a quarter before eight. After that hour—unless there is an opposed private bill, which does not often take long, or by chance a motion to adjourn—the regular business, which may not be the same as at the afternoon sitting, begins again, and goes on until eleven. With the habits of slack attendance when nothing is expected, and the necessity for a presence in force when a division that touches the Treasury Bench may be taken, it is a matter of no small import to be able to forecast the business of a sitting.
The severe pressure for time has thus brought about a minute allotment of the hours at each sitting for definite kinds of business, and the same cause has produced a similar, although less exact, distribution in the work of the session as a whole.
Order of Business for the Session.
The regular session of Parliament opens about the beginning of February, and the first business is the address in reply to the King's speech. Formerly it was an elaborate affair, which referred to the clauses of the speech in succession, but since 1890 it has taken the form of a single resolution expressing simply the thanks of the Commons for his Majesty's most gracious speech. Amendments are moved by the various sections of the Opposition in the shape of additions thereto, pointing out how the government has done things it ought not to have done, and left undone things it ought to have done; and even members of the majority, who are disgruntled because their pet hobbies have been left unnoticed, follow the same course. The debates on the address take practically the whole time of the House for two or three weeks.[308:1] As soon as they are over, the Committee of Supply is set up, and sits one or two days each week, the rest of the sittings being taken up with government measures, and with business introduced by private members.
Hope springs eternal in the legislative breast, and every assembly undertakes more work than it can accomplish thoroughly. In some legislatures this results in a headlong rushing through of measures almost without discussion at the end of the session. But while, under closure by compartments and the supply rule, this may be true in England of certain clauses of bills and of large parts of the appropriations, it is not true of bills as a whole. Parliament is, primarily, a forum for debate, rather than a machine for legislation, and bills that cannot be discussed at some length are dropped. After the Whitsuntide recess every year, the leader of the House announces that owing to lack of time the government has found it necessary to abandon such and such measures, a proceeding familiarly known as the slaughter of the innocents. But it is not their own bills alone that the ministers are obliged to slay. In order to get through their own remaining work they have long been in the habit of taking by special order, after the Easter recess, a part of the sittings reserved for private members, and of seizing all the rest soon after Whitsuntide. The practice was regulated and made systematic by the new rules of 1902; but this brings us to the relation of the cabinet and of private members to the work of the House, which forms the subject of the following chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[302:1] Until 1888 the regular hour of meeting on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday was a quarter before four o'clock; but as there was no provision for adjournment at any fixed hour, debate on a subject might go on indefinitely; and, in fact, all-night sittings were common. In 1879 a standing order had been adopted that no opposed business, not specially exempted, should be taken up after half-past twelve; but this did not put a stop to a business in hand at that hour. Owing to the fatigue caused by late sittings (Temple, "Life in Parliament," 184-85), a standing order was adopted in 1888 changing the hour of meeting on those four days to three o'clock, and providing that at midnight the business under consideration should, unless specially exempted, be interrupted; that no other opposed business should thereafter be taken up; and that the House should adjourn not later than one o'clock. The hours of sitting on Wednesday were left as before at from noon to six o'clock.
For some time it had been the habit, especially in the latter part of the session, to break the day occasionally into two sittings, the earlier one beginning at two o'clock, and being called a morning sitting. After 1888 these two sittings were held from two until seven, and from nine until twelve (S.O. of March 7, 1888), the days being commonly Tuesdays and Fridays.