[DEBATES INTRODUCED BY PRINTED STATEMENTS.]

As this single device could be adopted alone, I will try and meet the objections to it, if I am only fortunate enough to light on any. My experience of public bodies suggests but very few; and I think the strongest is the reluctance to take the requisite trouble. Most men think beforehand what they are to say in introducing a resolution to a public body, but do not consider it necessary to write down their speech at full. Then, again, there is a peculiar satisfaction in holding the attention of a meeting for a certain time, great in proportion to the success of the effort. But, on the other hand, many persons do write their speeches, and many are not so much at ease in speaking but that they would dispense with it willingly. The conclusive answer on the whole is—the greater good of the commonwealth. Such objections as these are not of a kind to weigh down the manifest advantages, at all events, in the case of corporations full of business and pressed for time.

I believe that a debate so introduced would be shortened by more than the time gained by cutting off the speech of the mover. The greater preparation of everyone's mind at the commencement would make people satisfied with a less amount of speaking, and what there was would be more to the purpose.

We can best understand the effects of such an innovation by referring to the familiar experience of having to decide on the Report of Committee, which has been previously circulated among the members. This is usually the most summary act of a deliberative body; partly owing, no doubt, to the fact that the concurrence of a certain proportion is already gained; while the pros and cons have been sifted by a regular conference and debate. Yet we all feel that we are in a much better position by having had before us in print, for some time previous, the materials necessary to a conclusion. At a later stage, I will consider the modes of raising the quality and status of the introductory speech to something of the nature of a Committee's Report.[[19]]

The second step is to impose upon the mover of every amendment the same obligation to hand in his speech, in writing, along with the terms of the amendment. Many public bodies do not require notice of amendments. It would be in all cases a great improvement to insist upon such notice, and of course a still greater improvement to require the reasons to be given in also, that they might be circulated as above. The debate is now two steps in advance without a moment's loss of time to the constituted meeting; while what remains is likely to be much more rapidly gone through.

The movers of resolutions and of amendments should, as a matter of course, have the right of reply; a portion of the oral system that would, I presume, survive all the advances towards printing direct.

There remains, however, one farther move, in itself as defensible, and as much fraught with advantage as the two others. The resolution and the amendments being in the hands of the members of a body, together with the speeches in support of each, any member might be at liberty to send in, also for circulation in print, whatever remarks would constitute his speech in the debate, thereby making a still greater saving of the time of the body. This would, no doubt, be felt as the greatest innovation of all, being tantamount to the extinction of oral debate; there being then nothing left but the replies of the movers. We need not, however, go the length of compulsion; while a certain number would choose to print at once, the others could still, if they chose, abide by the old plan of oral address. One can easily surmise that these last would need to justify their choice by conspicuous merit; an assembly, having in print so many speeches already, would not be in a mood to listen to others of indifferent quality.

[THE MAGIC OF ORATORY NOT DONE AWAY WITH.]

Such a wholesale transfer of living speech to the silent perusal of the printed page, if seriously proposed in any assembly, would lead to a vehement defence of the power of spoken oratory. We should be told of the miraculous sway of the human voice, of the way that Whitfield entranced Hume and emptied Franklin's purse; while, most certainly, neither of these two would ever have perused one of his printed sermons. And, if the reply were that Whitfield was not a legislator, we should be met by the speeches of Wilberforce and Canning and Brougham upon slavery, where the thrill of the living voice accelerated the conviction of the audience. In speaking of the Homeric Assembly, Mr. Gladstone remarks, in answer to Grote's argument to prove it a political nullity, that the speakers were repeatedly cheered, and that the cheering of an audience contributes to the decision.

Now, I am not insensible to the power of speech, nor to the multitudinous waves of human feeling aroused in the encounters of oratory before a large assembly. Apart from this excitement, it would often be difficult to get people to go through the drudgery of public meetings. Any plan that would abolish entirely the dramatic element of legislation would have small chance of being adopted. It is only when the painful side of debate comes into predominance, that we willingly forego some of its pleasures: the intolerable weariness, the close air, the late nights, must be counted along with the occasional thrills of delirious excitement. But as far as regards our great legislative bodies, it will be easy to show that there would still exist, in other forms, an ample scope for living oratory to make up for the deadness that would fall upon the chief assembly.