Peers and members of Parliament to-day have no such weaknesses, or, at any rate, refrain from exhibiting them in Parliament. There have been, of course, exceptional instances, even in modern times, of persons speaking under the influence of drink, but these are so rare as scarcely to deserve mention. An Irishman in a conspicuously genial frame of mind referred to a Conservative member in the lobby as a "d—— fool." The latter overheard this remark and contemptuously retorted that his honourable friend was drunk. "I may be drunk," admitted the Irishman, "but to-morrow I shall be sober. Whereas you'll be a d—— fool to-morrow, and the next day, and all the rest of your life!" During one of those interminable sittings of 1877, when obstruction was at its height, another Irishman, "weary with watching, and warm with whisky," applied the same opprobrious term to a fellow member. On being ordered to withdraw the expression he explained that it "was only a quotation." "Whether the remark of the hon. gentleman can be explained by a quotation or a potation," said the Chairman, "it is equally inadmissible, and I must beg him in future to mind his p's and q's."[294]
Irish members have probably been the cause of more parliamentary disturbance than all the rest of their colleagues put together. Daniel O'Connell, whom Disraeli once called "the vagabond delegate of a foreign priesthood,"[295] was a perpetual source of trouble to the House. In 1840, he was the centre of one of the most noisy scenes that has ever outraged its dignity. Macaulay declared that he had never before or since seen such unseemly behaviour, or heard such scurrilous language used in Parliament. Members on both sides of the House stood up and shouted at the tops of their voices, shaking their fists in one another's faces.[296] Lord Norreys and Lord Maidstone particularly distinguished themselves by the pandemonium they created, while others of their colleagues gave farmyard imitations, and for a long time the whole House continued in a state of ferment. O'Connell's reference to the sounds emitted by honourable gentlemen as "beastly bellowings" only made matters worse. As a French visitor who was present during this scene has described: "Pendant plusieures heures plus de cinq cents membres crient de toutes leurs forces 'à l'ordre! à la porte O'Connell!' le tout accompagné des imitations zoologiques les plus étranges et les plus affreuses. C'étaient les cris de deux armées de sauvages en presence."[297]
"Imitations zoologiques" have always been a popular but by no means the only method employed by members desirous of drowning the words of a tiresome speaker. John Rolle, the hero of the "Rolliad," promoted a "smoking and spitting party "to interrupt and annoy Burke.[298] In 1784, the latter told a number of youthful opponents who interrupted him with their howls that he could teach a pack of hounds to yelp with more melody and equal comprehension. Ten years before the O'Connell scene Brougham excited the House to uproar of a similarly puerile character. He remained calm and unmoved, however, and, when the bestial cries of his audience subsided for a moment, pleasantly observed that by a wonderful disposition of nature every animal had its peculiar mode of expressing itself, and that he was too much of a philosopher to quarrel with any of those modes—a remark which does not appear to have subdued the clamour to any appreciable extent.[299] A similar uproar which the Speaker was powerless to quell arose in 1872, when Sir Charles Dilke brought forward a motion to inquire into the manner in which the income and allowances of the Crown were spent.
Members who are anxious to bring a debate to a close still have recourse to sound, crying, "'Vide! 'Vide!" in an earsplitting fashion, which occasionally evokes a rebuke from the Speaker. But there is seldom, nowadays, such a scene of violence as occurred in both Houses upon the dissolution of Parliament in April, 1831. The Commons indulged in a painful scene "of bellowing, and roaring, and gnashing of teeth, which it was almost frightful to look at," says Cockburn.[300] In the Upper House peers behaved no less childishly. Lord Mansfield doubled up his fist, elbowed Lord Shaftesbury into the Chair, and hooted Lord Brougham as he left the House.[301] Lord Lyndhurst, meanwhile, was threatening the Duke of Richmond with physical violence, and the uproar was only quelled by the arrival of the King.[302] One must not, of course, forget the notorious modern instance of ill manners, already described,[303] when, in 1893, members exchanged blows upon the floor of the Commons. This, however, is a painful exception, little likely to recur.
Politicians have learnt to control their feelings, and the present publicity of parliamentary proceedings acts as a salutary deterrent to outbursts of the elemental passions. Neither House to-day would dream of expressing its emotion in the open fashion common to Parliaments of long ago. The sight of a Lower Chamber dissolved in tears is no longer possible. Yet, in 1626, when, by the King's command, no discussion was permitted on the question of Buckingham's impeachment, a lachrymose Speaker led the whole House of Commons in a chorus of weeping. Two years later Sir Edward Coke welcomed the introduction of the Petition of Right in a voice choked with sobs. Wingfield wept for joy when monopolies were abolished in Queen Elizabeth's reign,[304] and we have already noted the tears shed by Colonel Wanklyn when he was expelled, and by Speaker Finch when he was forcibly detained in the Chair. Fox shed frequent tears in the House of Commons; Pitt wept bitterly when his friend, Lord Melville, was impeached. Lord Chancellors, too, were not ashamed to express their feelings in loud sobs, Eldon's eyes becoming sympathetically moist, while even the "rugged Thurlow" sprinkled the Woolsack with his tears.
Members no longer weep, except perchance in the privacy of their own homes; nor do they follow their predecessors' fashion of converting the House of Commons into a smoking-room or a lounge, in which to sleep off the effects of their potations. The free and easy habits of seventeenth-century politicians made it necessary for a regulation to be framed that "No tobacco should be taken by any member in the gallery, nor at the table sitting in Committees."[305] And it was no uncommon sight, a hundred years ago, to see members stretched at full length on the benches of the Chamber, with their feet resting on the backs of the seats in front of them, punctuating the proceedings with their stertorous snores.[306]
Lord North was notorious for his gift of somnolence in the House of Commons. "Behold," said Edmund Burke, with that indifferent taste for which he was noted, as he pointed to the recumbent figure of the Prime Minister, "the Government, if not defunct, at least nods; brother Lazarus is not dead, but sleepeth." North was dozing on another occasion when a member attacked him fiercely, saying that he ought certainly to be impeached for his misdeeds. "At least," exclaimed the Minister, waking for a moment, "allow me the criminal's usual privilege—a night of rest before the execution!"[307] He felt no shame at giving way to slumber in debate, and when an opponent remarked that "Even in the midst of these perils, the noble lord is asleep!" "I wish to God I was!" he replied with heartfelt fervour.[308] He would always take the opportunity afforded by a lengthy speech to snatch forty winks. Once, when the long-winded Colonel Barré was addressing the House on the naval history of England, tracing it back to the earliest ages, North asked a friend to wake him up as soon as the speaker approached modern times. When at length he was aroused, "Where are we?" asked the Premier, anxiously. "At the battle of La Hogue, my lord." "Oh, my dear friend," said North, "you've woken me a century too soon!"[309]
A marked improvement in the conduct of modern debate is to be noticed in the comparatively inoffensive character of the epithets used by members with reference to their opponents. The decencies of debate are, as a rule, religiously observed. Recriminations are rare. Measures are attacked, not men. The secession of a statesman is considered a political but not a personal offence, and what Palmerston once called the "puerile vanity of consistency" is no longer worshipped fanatically. Gladstone rightly called the House of Commons a "school of temper," as well as a school of honour and of justice. Offensive allusions have always been deprecated there, but it is only within the last few score years that members have controlled their tongues to any appreciable extent in this direction. Hasty remarks are nowadays withdrawn at the first suggestion of the Speaker, though on occasion an apology may be as offensive as the original insult. Lord Robert Cecil (afterwards Lord Salisbury) said of a speech of Gladstone's in 1861, that it was "worthy of a pettifogging attorney." Soon afterwards he rose in the House, and said that he wished to apologise for a remark he had lately made. "I observed that the speech of the right hon. gentleman was worthy of a pettifogging attorney," he said, "and I now hasten to offer my apologies—to the attornies!"
It is usual nowadays to wrap up offensive criticisms in a more or less palatable covering, to attack by inference rather than by direct assault. "I am no party man," said Colonel Sibthorpe, member for Lincoln, after the dissolution of Sir Robert Peel's Government. "I have never acted from party feelings; but I must say I do not like the countenances of honourable gentlemen opposite, for I believe them to be the index of their minds. I can only say, in conclusion, that I earnestly hope that God will grant the country a speedy deliverance from such a band."[310] This is a good example of an unpleasant thing framed in a manner which does not lay it open to the stigma of disorderly language, and is just as effective as that oft-quoted attack made by a member of the Irish House of Commons on George Ponsonby (afterwards Irish Chancellor), whose sister was sitting in the gallery at the time. "These Ponsonbys are the curse of my country," said the member; "they are prostitutes, personally and politically—from the toothless old hag who is now grinning in the gallery to the white-livered scoundrel who is now shivering on the floor!"[311]
