The Mother of Parliaments

by Harry Graham

There is no rule of procedure regulating the length of speeches in either House. A man may speak for as long as he likes, the only limit being set by his own powers of endurance or the patience of his audience; but his remarks must be relevant. "If any speak too long, and speak within the matter, he may not be cut off; but if he be long, and out of the matter, then may the Speaker gently admonish him of the shortness of the time, or the business of the House, and pray him to make as short he may."[248] As a matter of practice his fellow-members will probably have admonished him of the shortness of the time long before by shouting "'Vide! 'Vide!" until he brings his speech to a welcome close.

The determination to proceed in spite of this hint that his efforts are unappreciated only increases the uproar, for, as Burke once said, the House of Commons has an intense dislike for anything resembling obstinacy.[249] A Khedive of Egypt, who visited the House of Commons at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and listened with surprise to the deafening noise made by a political audience, came to the conclusion that the shouting of "'Vide!" was the ordinary English mode of expressing intense boredom. On his return to Egypt he suffered much from the protracted interviews which he was compelled to grant to Sir John Bowring, a prosy talker, who had been sent to Cairo in 1837 on a commercial mission. The Khedive's patience finally became exhausted, and one day, while Sir John was as usual addressing him at unconscionable length, His Highness began exclaiming "'Vide! 'Vide! 'Vide!" and continued doing so until his visitor was reduced to silence.

The words of Speaker Spencer Compton have often been quoted to show that members are acting within their rights in preventing the delivery of a speech; that, as Bright said, the House can employ noise "as a remedy" against a dull or prolix speaker. A member appealed to Compton to restore order, urging that he had a right to be heard. "No, sir," replied the Speaker, "you have a right to speak, but the House has a right to judge whether they will hear you!" This, according to so great an authority as Hatsell, was an altogether wrong decision, the Speaker's chief duty being to keep the House attentive and quiet.

In the House of Lords, where there is no Speaker to curtail a lengthy or irrelevant speech, any peer may propose that the noble lord who is on his legs "be no longer heard"—a disagreeable but effective way of informing a bore of his prolixity.[250] This method was unsuccessfully tried in the Commons in 1880. O'Donnell had put down a question asking whether M. Challemel Lacour, the prospective French Ambassador at the Court of St. James's, had, "as one of the Prefects of the Provisional Government of September 4, 1870, ordered the massacre of Colonel Latour's battalion, and had been fined £3000 by a Court of Justice for plundering a convent." Gladstone moved that the honourable member "be no longer heard;" but the Speaker, on being appealed to, stated that this was an unusual course, which had certainly not been adopted for at least two hundred years. A "scene" ensued, and finally O'Donnell was induced to put down the question again for a later date. Before this day arrived, however, the Speaker tactfully managed to suppress the question altogether, as being "beyond the cognisance of the House or the Queen's Government."

Occasional efforts have been made to stem the flow of parliamentary eloquence in the Commons, but without much success. The late Sir Carne Rasch tried for years to shorten speeches, but in vain. Mr. Hogan sought to introduce the New Zealand scheme, whereby the Speaker rings a bell when any member has spoken for twenty minutes; but though Mr. Balfour declared that twenty minutes erred on the side of generosity, nothing came of this suggestion. In spite of a good deal of unnecessary talking, the House of Commons gets through a lot of work, though there is no doubt that, as Bright said, more business could be done if so much time were not wasted in unprofitable eloquence.[251] Dr. Johnson, visiting a musical family of his acquaintance, suggested that they should all perform together. "There will then," he explained, "be more noise, but it will be sooner over." Similar suggestions have been made with regard to the House of Commons, but the question of stifling parliamentary loquacity remains unsolved.

When such loquacity was deliberately employed to delay business, obstruction took various forms, of which the favourite one a few years ago consisted of motions to adjourn the debate or adjourn the House. Sheridan once made this motion nineteen successive times, until members were so tired of tramping through the lobbies that they gave in and went home.[252] In 1831, on July 12th, the opponents of the Reform Bill saw that their only hope lay in retarding the business of the House. They set about to force a division on repeated motions for adjournment, and it was not until 7.30 a.m. of the following day that the Commons at length adjourned. Sir Charles Wetherell, who led the Opposition on this occasion, came out of the House to find that it was raining hard. "By God!" said he, "if I'd known this, they should have had a few more divisions!"[253]

In 1833, and again ten years later, the Irish party resisted two Bills by this means, on the latter occasion calling for no less than forty-four divisions. And when the Copyright Bill of 1839 was being debated, a minority of nine members compelled one hundred and twenty-seven of their colleagues to divide sixteen times.

There is, as Gladstone said, no art or science which has made such advance in modern times as has that of parliamentary obstruction. Gladstone himself resolutely and systematically obstructed the passage of the Divorce Bill, as Sir Robert Peel before him had obstructed Lord Grey's Reform Bill. These statesmen, however, employed a recognised form of opposition to some particular measure. It was left for the Irish party to devise a system of regular opposition to the conduct of any parliamentary business whatsoever.

Parnell's knowledge of the rules of debate was extensive and peculiar. He himself acted upon the advice which he once gave to a new member when he told him that the best way to learn the regulations of the House was by breaking them. It was he who originated the idea of employing what he called "the sacred right of obstruction" as a protest against the alleged Government neglect of Irish grievances. He sought by this means to show that, though his party was not powerful enough to carry through its own work properly, it was sufficiently strong to prevent the English Government from doing any work at all. In this way he no doubt thought to carry out the last wishes of Grattan, and to "keep knocking at the Union."

The forms of the House of Commons, as Sir George Cornwall Lewis has said, were avowedly contrived for the protection of minorities; and they are so effectual for their purpose as frequently to defeat the will of the great body of the House, and enable a few members to resist, at least for a time, a measure desired by the majority.[254] The Irish have, of course, always been dissatisfied. If they had happened to be in the wilderness with Moses, as Bright once observed, they would probably have complained of the Ten Commandments as a harassing piece of legislation—and not altogether without justification. But in 1874, when they adopted the attitude of antagonism to the transaction of all business, obstruction in such a form as this was a novelty, and their more constitutionally-minded leader, Butt, repudiated Parnell and his methods. The latter was not to be moved from his purpose, however, and with half a dozen intrepid and obstinate followers continued the practice of an organized plan of obstruction, of which the only flattering thing that can be said is that it was for a long time completely successful.