Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893)

by T. P. O'Connor

The week before.

On Friday, July 7th, we just entered on the fringe of the ninth clause. The ninth clause had all along been held to be, perhaps, the very gravest rock ahead of the Government. This is the clause which regulates the position of the Irish members at Westminster after Home Rule has been passed. There were as many plans for settling this question as there were members of the House of Commons, and all plans were alike in being illogical, unsymmetrical, and, therefore, liable to attack from a dozen different quarters. Already within a few days of each other, there had been two divisions, on which everybody felt it to be quite possible that the Government would go down, and that we should once more go back face to face with the country and probably with a new and a stronger Tory Government than ever. The first occasion was the clause dealing with a Second Chamber. Then a certain number of irreconcilable Radicals, in their hatred of all Second Chambers, voted against the Government and reduced their majority to 15. This was a very tight squeeze; but, after all, everybody had been prepared for it, and when the hour came, we all knew pretty well where we should be. There might be one or two men more or less in the Tory lobby, but we had sized them up carefully. When, however, July 19th, and the ninth clause came we were face to face with a very different state of affairs. Then we had to face absolute uncertainty—and uncertainty not in one, but almost every part of the House. And the curious thing about it all was, that this uncertainty was aggravated by a little fact which had entered into nobody's calculations, and this was the highly technical rule with regard to the manner in which questions are put when the House is in committee.

Technicalities.

I despair of ever being able to make this matter clear to an outsider; and, indeed, to be quite honest, I am not always sure that I understand the affair myself. It will probably be sufficient for my purpose if I say that the chairman has to put an amendment in such a way that sometimes you find you are really precluded from voting on the direct question which you wish to challenge. You are within the ring-fence of a technical rule, which compels you to fight your issue there and not one inch outside of it. This often means that questions are raised in the most indirect way—that you seem to be voting for one thing while you really mean another, and that if you do not vote that way, you cannot vote any other. So it happened on this occasion. And we drifted about for the best way of raising the question of the presence of the Irish members, and the Government were for a while in a state of absolute and painful uncertainty. Then came one of those desultory conversations on points of order, in which so large a body as the House of Commons cannot shine—one man suggesting one method, one man another; half-a-dozen different methods proposed in as many minutes by half-a-dozen different members.

103 v. 80.

At last Mr. Redmond seemed to hit off the situation by a proposal to omit a couple of sub-sections in the ninth clause. But Mr. Redmond had scarcely spoken when the House found itself in an extraordinary and most embarrassing dilemma. The object of Mr. Redmond was plain enough; what he desired to do was to retain the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament in their present, that is to say, in their full, strength—103 they are now, 103 he wanted them to remain. The position of the Government was equally clear. With emphatic language—with a superabundance of argument—Mr. Gladstone stated his conviction that the Irish members should not remain in such large numbers and that the number should be 80. This was all clear enough; but what about the position of all the other parties in the House?

Tot homines, tot sententiæ.

At first sight, it would appear that this ought to be very clear. The Tories and the Unionists had several amendments on the paper. One wanted the Irish members reduced to 48, one wanted to have them reduced to 40, and several of them desired that they should be reduced still further—in fact, should reach the irreducible minimum of none at all. It was assumed, of course, that gentlemen who had thus indicated their desire for the reduction of the Irish members, or for their disappearance altogether, would vote against a proposition which asked that they should remain in full force. If this course were adopted, Mr. Redmond would be crushed under a combination of the Liberals, who wanted the numbers to be 80, and the Tories who wanted the Irish members to disappear altogether; but in these days, and with such an Opposition as we have now in the House of Commons, it is not possible to make any calculations on what course we would adopt. To the amazement of the House—above all things to the amazement of Mr. Gladstone—who has not yet entirely got over the traditions of the past, and, therefore, over-sanguine expectations as to the scruples of his opponents—Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour both announced that they were ready to go into the same lobby as Mr. Redmond. And so those who wanted all the Irish members, and those who wanted none, were both going to vote exactly the same way.

A bolt from the blue.