First of all, if a young Englishman is of the well-to-do order, and is ambitious, he will strive to take some part in politics. He may not be born to be a member of the House of Lords: and only six hundred or so of him can hope to become members of the House of Commons. But there are numerous other avenues of political activity, such as County Councils and Committees of all kinds. It is a wholesome aspiration of the best type of Englishmen to take some part, not necessarily a paid part, in the government and administration of their country. The supreme ambition, then, of the young Englishman may be said to be to work in the House of Commons; and that keeps "the Mother of Parliaments," in spite of all that pessimists may say, the leading legislative body of the world.
In its vast membership the House of Commons includes experts on every subject under the sun. There is no topic of debate imaginable on which some member cannot speak as a past-master. And the House insists that if you wish to engage its attention you must have something to say. You may halt or stumble in your speech, but you must have something to say or you will fail to get a hearing, no matter how charmingly you may talk. That helps the debate to a high level, discouraging talk for mere talk's sake.
"Mr. Speaker," who presides over the House of Commons, seems to be always a genius in the art of managing a deliberative assembly. At any rate, one never hears of a weak "Mr. Speaker." The present one takes it to be his duty to suppress all irrelevance and all tediousness in debate. He insists that a member shall say his say without circumlocution or repetition. With the vigilance of a ratting terrier he watches for discursiveness, and pounces upon the offender at once. I recollect a debate on the Indian question, arising out of the House of Lords' amendments in an Indian governing Councils Bill. All the speakers in the debate were experts with an inside knowledge of Indian affairs. They all spoke with terseness and directness. But there were, nevertheless, four interruptions from Mr. Speaker, that "the hon. member was not sticking to the point at issue." In each case you recognised that Mr. Speaker was right. In one case, and one case only, did the rebuked member attempt to argue the point. "I was only going to point out, Mr. Speaker," he started. The whole House rose against him. "'Vide, 'Vide," they called from front and cross and back benches. He attempted again, and again the cries of "'Vide" drowned his voice; and he had to submit without argument. The House clearly believed in its tyrant. It requires a curious sort of genius to be so able to "proof-read" a current debate and hit at once on the first divergence into redundancy.
If a "Mr. Speaker" is to become a tradition as one of the greatest of the many great Mr. Speakers, then he must have a sense of humour as well as a gift of prompt decision. The present Mr. Speaker has that qualification. He does not say "funny" things. But in almost every ruling and reproof there is a slight flavour of fun. A rule of the House was made after the "Suffragettes" made trouble once or twice in the chamber, that the Women's Gallery, a curious gilded bird-cage perched up in the roof of the House, should be open only to "relatives of members." Mr. Speaker was asked to define what closeness of relation justified admission. "That," said Mr. Speaker, "I must leave to the individual consciences of hon. members." The House chuckled and understood that any respectable person could be counted as a feminine relative for purposes of admission to the gallery.
For the student of the origins of the English-race it is interesting—and quite easy of accomplishment if you have an acquaintance who is a member of Parliament—to see the quaint ceremony in the Lords of the Royal Assent being given to Bills. On the occasion on which I attended, the Chancellor and two Peers, acting as Commissioners for the King, sat in solemn state, the Chancellor finding obvious difficulty in accommodating both a huge wig and a cocked hat on his head. To them entered as far as the Bar of the House, on summons, some of the Commons, heralded by Black Rod and led by the Speaker. The titles of the Bills were recited by a clerk, and, with much ritual of bowing, the Royal Assent was granted in Norman French: "Le Roy le veult." It was rather a pity that the Bills were painfully prosaic ones, dealing with tramways and the like. The elaborate medieval ceremony would have been more fitting to some great measure of statecraft. Still it did not seem incongruous. That is a characteristic of London. It is a medieval city modernised, but without the flavour of the medievalism being spoiled.
Of course it is well known that the present are not the original Houses of Parliament; it may not be so familiar a fact that Westminster Hall covers the old site, and that tablets, let into its walls, mark the limits, curiously small, of the old House of Commons. The King is supposed by tradition to open Parliament in the Hall of Westminster on the old site of the Commons. But to do so he would have to stand exactly on the spot where King Charles I. rose to receive a death sentence from his revolted Commons; and I think that lately our monarchs have shown sentimental objections to this and have let tradition in the matter go.
The House of Lords and the House of Commons are built in the one straight line, with the lobbies intervening. The King, when seated on the throne, can see right through (all the doors being open) to the Speaker on his chair some four hundred yards away. The Lords have the finer debating hall; but the Commons, it is complained, monopolise all the comfortable smoking and lounge rooms. Evidently they think that the noble lords have enough comfort in their own homes.
Lately a committee of the Houses of Parliament have been discussing the question of redecorating the buildings, and have come practically to the conclusion to do nothing. In some of the halls mural paintings of a rather astonishing kind, betraying a time when artistic standards were a little lower than now, cover the panels. To fill the gaps with paintings of this epoch would make for incongruity. To imitate the old-fashioned and rather bad-fashioned existing panels does not seem advisable. So probably the difficulty will be solved by doing nothing, unless a daring wight suggests the painting out of some old work to make room for a complete set of modern frescoes. Probably, if there were just now an unquestionably pre-eminent British artist offering for the work, that would be done. As it is, the Mother of Parliaments remains with some of her halls a little patchy in decoration; some of them, indeed, a good deal ugly.
But, of course, governing the country is the business of the few. Tempting though it is to linger on at Westminster, let us see other classes of England at work. The historic industry of England is agriculture, and it is to this day one of the most important, though a dwindling one lately. Still, however, the English are an agricultural people; though it is around the agriculture of a century ago that their affections are entwined. Modern agriculture, nevertheless, hardly exists in England, neither in the production of grain nor of fruit. The average orchard seems better designed to be an insectarium for the cultivation of pests than for the growth of good fruit. Straggling unkempt trees, growing for the most part their own wild way, naturally do not produce like the well-disciplined trees of the modern orchardist. But the soil is wondrous kind. That anything at all should come of such culture, or neglect of culture, is to be explained by a great graciousness of Nature.