The Chaplain prays:
Send down the Heavenly Wisdom from above to direct and guide us in all our consultations; and grant that we, having Thy fear always before our eyes, and laying aside all private interests, prejudices, and partial affections, the result of all our counsels may be to the Glory of Thy blessed Name, the maintenance of true religion and justice, the safety, honour and happiness of the King, the public welfare, peace and tranquillity of the realm, and the uniting and knitting together of the hearts of all persons and estates within the same in true Christian love and charity one towards another, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
Strangers are not admitted to the galleries until prayers are over. If they were present they could not fail to notice a strange thing. That is, that the Treasury Bench is always empty during the service. Ministers may be really more in need of prayers than private Members, but then their seats in the Chamber are secured to them by prescriptive right.
The first sight of the plain architectural features of the House of Commons must be disappointing to anyone swayed by the great and stirring historical associations of the place. If there be any secular institution to which something of religious solemnity should attach, it surely is the free Legislature of a Nation, where the habits, customs and institutions of the people are largely moulded, where, at any rate, the morality or ethics of the country find expression in laws. The Chamber is unadorned. The prevailing colour is dull brown, conveyed by the oak framework of galleries and panelled walls plainly carved. In the daylight a warm dimness prevails. At night the Chamber looks more impressive, when a mellow radiance streaming from the lights through its glass ceiling falls upon the crowded benches. But to the uninstructed stranger accidentally straying into it on an off-day, its stiff arrangement of tiers of benches, upholstered in dark green, on each side, and the absence of any pictorial background, would suggest an assembly-room or debating-hall, with a certain air of distinction, it is true, but lacking character and soul. Is it really in this simple Chamber of modest dimensions and severe aspect that the elected and principal House of the Imperial Parliament is content to meet? Is it here that since 1852—the year the Chamber was first occupied—so many exciting and momentous battles over political principles have been fought? Is it from this narrow hall that influences radiate which are felt to the farthest confines of the world, in the wigwams of savage tribes as well as in the Chancelleries of the Great Powers? You would do well, indeed, when you visit the House of Commons and desire to fall under its spell, to come with your historical memories refreshed, for you will there see nothing in the way of portraits of its immortal Members, or pictures from its storied past, to tell of its greatness and renown.
What emotions have there found vent! These walls, sheathed in oak, have echoed to the voices of the great Parliamentarians of three reigns—Victoria, Edward and George—Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Cobden, Disraeli, Bright, Parnell, Randolph Churchill, Gladstone, Chamberlain, Balfour, Asquith, John Redmond, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Lord Hugh Cecil—laying down beneficent truths or pernicious fallacies. Think of the groans of despair and the shouts of exultation these forcible and vibrating personages have aroused! With what volumes of sound, rising from the hearts of men and expressive of every phase of human feeling—joy and grief, pathos and humour, pity and contempt, exasperation and rage—has the Chamber reverberated. Fine things have been said here, and mean things. Great ideas have been expressed by great men who worthily served them. The storms of passion, evoked by the clash between opposing reason and thought in the political controversies that have been fought out there at close quarters, have made the atmosphere of the House of Commons humid and warm with emotion, and one with a mind at all sympathetically attuned to the spirit of places cannot be there very long before the effluence that emanates from these panelled walls is thrilling him through and through.
Yet there are objects within the Chamber, made sacred almost by history and tradition, which at once catch the eye. The visitor will notice with becoming awe the high-canopied Chair, surmounted by an oak carving of the Royal Arms, and will look with fitting reverence on Mr. Speaker in his big grey wig and black silk gown. At the head of the Table, beneath the Speaker, sits the Clerk of the House and the two assistant clerks, all in the gowns and short wigs of barristers-at-law, busily discharging their multifarious duties, such as sub-editing papers handed in by Members containing questions to be addressed to Ministers, amendments to be moved to Bills, and notices of motions to be proposed should opportunity offer, and also taking minutes of the proceedings for the Journals of the House. The Table is indeed a “substantial piece of furniture,” as Disraeli once described it when he spoke of his satisfaction that it lay between him and Gladstone, who had just concluded a fierce declamatory attack. It contains pens, ink and stationery for the use of Members, volumes of the Standing Orders and other works of reference. At the end of the Table, on either side, are two brass-bound oaken boxes. These are the famous “dispatch-boxes” on which Ministers and ex-Ministers lay their notes when addressing the House, and following the traditional example of great statesmen in the past, thump to give emphasis to an argument or, metaphorically, to bash the head of an opponent.
The Table is also made to serve a part in parliamentary procedure. Important documents, such as the reports of Committees, and Foreign Office papers have to be “laid on the Table,” or, in other words, presented to the House, before they can properly be made public; and Orders of Departments have likewise to be “laid” for specified periods preliminary to their coming into operation. Even the floor-covering of the Chamber is a chapter from history. See the red border-lines on the matting right down the floor, about two feet from the front benches below the gangways. The opposing parties must not step beyond that line while in the act of speaking. And why? Because centuries ago Members were as ready to enforce an argument with the sword as with the tongue, and, to hedge them in, these lines of demarcation were drawn down the centre of the House. But of all the objects in the House calculated to awaken historic memories the Mace, perhaps, is the most potent. Made of silver and gilt with gold, its large globular head surmounted by a cross and ball, its staff artistically embellished, it lies a prominent and luminous object, when the Speaker is in the Chair, on raised supports at the end of the Table.
2
Business begins the moment the Speaker takes the Chair. It is noted for its miscellaneous character. Private Bills—or Bills introduced on behalf of the promoters of commercial or municipal undertakings which interfere with rights of property—are first considered. But the proceedings are formal, and devoid of interest. Petitions are also presented to the House at this stage of the sitting. A Member rises in his place and, stating that he has a petition to present, reads a brief summary of its purport. It invariably ends with the phrase, “And your petitioners will ever pray, etc.” No one has ever seen the sentence completed. What, then, can “etc.” imply? It seems a slovenly and irreverent way of saying one’s prayers, reminiscent of the backwoodsman who chalked up his pious wishes at the head of his bed, and, when tumbling in at night, jerked his thumb over his shoulder saying, “Lord, them’s my sentiments.” “Will the honourable Member bring it up?” says the Speaker, referring, of course, to the petition. The Member walks up the floor and drops the roll into the yawning mouth of a big black bag, hanging at the back of the Chair. More often than not there is no public mention whatever of the petition in the House. The Member to whom it is sent contents himself with privately stowing it away into the bag, without anyone being made a bit the wiser as to its nature or signatures. Through the yawning mouth of this big black bag petitions may be said to drop out of sight and out of mind into the limbo of waste and forgotten things. Their presentation is recorded in the Journals of the House. But they make no impression whatever on the minds of Members as to the grievances they are intended to expose, and they are heard of no more, except the Committee on Petitions, before whom, in due course, they come for scrutiny, find some of the regulations have been violated—that, for instance, the prayer of a petition, instead of being in writing, is printed, or lithographed, or typewritten, or that several of the signatures are in the same handwriting, or denote persons manifestly fictitious, such as “Charles Piccadilly,” “John Trafalgar Square”—put down by jokers—when the petition is either returned for correction to the Member who presented it or its rejection is recommended. Two municipal bodies have the privilege of presenting petitions ceremoniously at the Bar of the House of Commons—the Corporation of the City of London and the Corporation of Dublin. In the early decades of the nineteenth century petitions were read in full by Members who presented them, and there were great debates arising out of them on such questions as Negro slavery within the Empire, the political emancipation of Catholic or Jew, and parliamentary reform. I have seen, in the later years of the same century, huge petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures trundled up the floor of the House like enormous cartwheels or big drums. They related usually to proposed changes in primary education or the liquor laws—the two chief subjects of controversy in the dull and happy time I speak of. But the sending of petitions is almost a thing of the past. The House has become indifferent to any form of persuasion save that of elections.
The Chamber has now rapidly filled up for “question time,” which is often the most interesting part of a sitting. One of the most precious and highly cherished privileges of a Member is the right to question Ministers—before the House proceeds to business—in relation to public affairs, matters of administration, policy or legislation. Moreover, these interrogations and replies are an unfailing source of interest and also of entertainment. The House then invariably wears an alert and animated aspect. The benches on both sides are thronged. Every Member is supplied with a copy of the official programme called the “Orders of the Day”—a white folio paper of many pages, in which the questions are printed, with other matter relating to the business arranged for the sitting—and one of the most characteristic sights which the House affords is the flutter of these papers on the crowded benches, as the questions are put and answered. The proceedings are followed with the closest attention, with, in fact, an absorbed interest which during a debate is evoked only by a really great speech on a subject of the first importance. The questions deal with all sorts of topics, illustrating at once the freedom of inquiry within the House and the jurisdiction of Parliament within the far-spreading Empire.