The circumstances attending the election of William Court Gully as Speaker gave both to the principle that the Chair is above the strife and the prejudices of Party, and the precedent of its occupant’s continuity of office, an accession of strength which perhaps makes them stable and decisive for all time. Gully had sat in the House as a Liberal for ten years when, on the retirement of Peel in May 1895, he was nominated for the Chair by the Liberal Government. The Unionist Opposition proposed Sir Matthew White Ridley, a highly respected member of their Party, and a man of long and varied experience in parliamentary affairs. On a division Gully was elected by the narrow majority of 11. The voting was: Gully, 285; White Ridley, 274. It was publicly declared at the time that, as the Unionists had disapproved the candidature of Gully, they held themselves free to put a nominee of their own in the Chair should they have a majority in the next new Parliament. A few weeks later the Liberal Government was defeated in the House of Commons, and a dissolution followed. It is the custom to allow the Speaker a walk-over in his constituency at the General Election. But Gully’s seat at Carlisle was on this occasion contested, and his Unionist opponent received from Arthur Balfour, then Leader of the Unionist Party, a letter warmly endorsing his candidature and wishing him success. In his address to the constituents Gully made no reference to politics. As Speaker of the House of Commons, he could have nothing to say to Party controversy. Like his predecessors, he recognized that a Speaker cannot descend into the rough strife of the electoral battle, not even to canvass the electors, without impairing the independence and the dignity of the Chair of the House of Commons. The contest ended in his re-election by a substantial majority.
The Unionists came back triumphant from the country. There was still a feeling in the Party, though not, indeed, prevailing to any wide extent, that the Speaker of the new Parliament should be chosen from its ranks. It was pointed out that for sixty years there had not been a Conservative Speaker—Manners-Sutton having been the last—and, apart altogether from the legitimate ambition of the Conservatives to have a Speaker of their own way of thinking, it was argued that in building up the body of precedents which guide, if they do not control, the duties of the Chair, Conservative opinion ought to have its proper share, if these precedents are truly to reflect the sense of the House generally. But tradition and practice in the House of Commons were too powerful to be overborne. At the meeting of the new Parliament, in August 1895, Gully was unanimously re-elected to the Chair. The aloofness and supremacy of the Speakership has one fine effect. It gives to the House, despite its Party divisions, an ennobling sense of national unity.
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The Speaker forfeits—actually, though perhaps not theoretically—his rights as the representative of a constituency in the House. He is disqualified from speaking in the debates and voting in the divisions. The constituency which he represents is, therefore, in a sense disfranchised. But there is no record of a constituency ever having objected to its representative being made Speaker. No doubt it appreciates the distinction. Formerly it was customary for the Speaker to join in the debates and divisions when the House was in Committee, he having left the Chair, and the proceedings being presided over by the Chairman. In Committee on the Bill for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, Mr. Speaker Addington, on February 12, 1799, declared that, while he was in favour of the plan, he was strongly opposed to Catholic emancipation with which Pitt was disposed to accompany it. If it were a question, he said, between the re-enactment of all the Popery laws for the repression of Ireland, or the Union, coupled with Catholic emancipation, for the pacification of Ireland, he would prefer the former. Again, during the Committee stage of the Bill introduced by Henry Grattan, in 1813, to qualify Roman Catholics for election as Members of Parliament, an amendment to omit the vital words, “to sit and vote in either House of Parliament,” was moved by Mr. Speaker Abbot (strongly opposed, like Addington, to the removal of the Catholic disabilities), and having been carried by a majority, though only a small one of four votes, proved fatal to the measure. Manners-Sutton also exercised his right to speak in Committee three times on such highly controversial questions as Catholic emancipation and the claims of Dissenters to be admitted to the Universities, to both of which he, like his predecessors in the Chair, answered an uncompromising “No.”
But so high has the Chair of the House of Commons been since lifted above the conflicts of politics, that partisanship so aggressive would not now be tolerated in the Speaker. On the last two occasions that a Speaker interested himself in proceedings in Committee, the questions at issue had no relation whatever to Party politics. In 1856 Shaw-Lefevre spoke in defence of the Board of Trustees of the British Museum, of which he was a member. In 1870 Evelyn Denison voted to exempt horses employed on farms from a licence duty which was proposed in the Budget. This was the last occasion that a Speaker in wig and gown passed through the division lobby to record his vote, and it is probable that never again will a Speaker speak or vote in Committee. Indeed, Mr. Speaker Gully directed that his name should be removed from the printed lists supplied to the clerks in the division lobbies for the purpose of recording how members voted. The only vote which a Speaker now gives is a casting vote, should the numbers on each side in a division be equal. It is the custom for the Speaker to give his casting vote in such a way as to avoid making the decision final—thus giving the House another opportunity of considering the question—and to state his reasons, which are entered in the Journals.
Occasions for the Speaker’s casting vote rarely arise. Peel was called upon to give it but once during his eleven years of office; that was on the Marriages Confirmation (Antwerp) Bill in July, 1887. The object of the measure was to confirm marriages solemnized at Antwerp by a Dr. Potts, chaplain to a British and American chapel from 1880 to 1884, the invalidity of which was caused by a technicality. The tie was a motion to adjourn the debate, and Mr. Speaker Peel gave his casting vote for the adjournment. Gully’s experience in this respect was singular. On the sole occasion he was called upon to give his casting vote no tie really existed. It was on May 11, 1899, in connection with the second reading of the Vehicles (Lights) Bill. “The tellers for the Ayes and the Noes came up to the Table almost at the same time,” said Gully, describing the incident. “One of the tellers gave his number as forty, and the teller for the Ayes was then turned to and asked his number. In point of fact the teller for the Ayes had succeeded by a majority of three. His number should have been forty-three, but he was so elated at hearing of a victory which he had not expected that at the moment he only repeated what the other Member had said, and he said ‘forty,’ whereupon there was a tie. I then gave my vote for the Ayes, doing that which a Speaker always did on such occasions, although I do not think I had formed any opinion at all upon the Bill. Still, in doing what I did I pursued the proper course, because it gave the opportunity on the third reading for the expression of a decided opinion on the Bill.”
CHAPTER XI
“ORDER, ORDER!”
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What are the qualities, then, which make a successful President of the representative Chamber? “Go and assemble yourselves together, and elect one, a discreet, wise, and learned man, to be your Speaker.” Such were the words a Lord Chancellor in the reign of Elizabeth addressed to a new House of Commons. The order in which the qualities deemed essential for the Speaker are arranged is not without its significance. Discretion comes first. It might be given the second place and the third also. Marked ability is by no means indispensable in a Speaker. Intellectually his duties are not searching. But undoubtedly in the twentieth century, as in the sixteenth, the faculty which is of the highest importance in the art of the Speakership is sagacity, prudence, circumspection—making allowances for the weaknesses and eccentricities of human nature.