[332:1] May, 237-38. Questions may also be addressed to the Speaker, or to private members in regard to bills or motions in their charge, but questions of this kind are few, and do not concern us here.
[333:1] May, 301.
[334:1] In the five years from 1873 to 1877 thirty-one such motions were made, of which all but three were withdrawn. Those three were negatived by an oral vote, and were not pushed to an actual division. In the next five years, up to the adoption of the Standing Order of 1882, the motions numbered sixty-four, and only eighteen of them were withdrawn, while twelve (one in 1878, seven in 1881, and four in 1882) were pushed to a division. For these and many other facts relating to these motions to adjourn I am indebted to my students at Harvard, Messrs. O. M. Dickerson and E. Takasugi.
[334:2] In 1871 and 1878.
[334:3] Now S.O. 22.
[334:4] The rules framed by the Speaker on Feb. 9, 1881, provided, in regard to motions to adjourn, that no adjournment should be moved before the business of the day was taken up, except by leave of the House; and that debate on a motion to adjourn made after business had been taken up, should be confined to the question of adjournment. Com. Papers, 1881, LXXIV., 1.
[335:1] Now S.O. 10. The changes made in 1902 did not affect these provisions, but merely the time when the debate on the motion should take place.
[336:1] The debate was over the arrest of Mr. Dillon, M.P. Mr. Gladstone, not thinking it a proper way to bring the question before the House, declined to resist the motion, which was carried without a division. Hans. 3 Ser. CCLXI., 183-216.
[336:2] In the twenty years that the Standing Order of 1882 remained unchanged, the number of motions to adjourn, before public business began averaged seven a year. In 1903 there were only three of them, and in 1904 seven; but in 1905, when Mr. Balfour's cabinet was manifestly losing its hold upon the country, the number rose to nine. Incidentally the change of rule has tended to shift the debates on those motions into the time reserved for private members, for the debate must occur at the evening sitting, and in the earlier part of the session two of the four evening sittings belong to the private members.
[337:1] May, 264-65, 286.