(I) The State Of Parliamentary Business. By Cecil Harmsworth, M.P.
There is one argument for conferring self-government on the people of Ireland that appeals with irresistible force to many ordinary members of Imperial Parliament. This is the urgent necessity for relieving Imperial Parliament of “provincial” business and setting it free to devote its best energies to the ever-increasing legislative and administrative needs of the empire.
Every year the amount of business that falls to be transacted in the House of Commons grows in volume. Every year fresh proofs are afforded that the legislative machinery of the House of Commons is not only unequal to the strain imposed by the growing volume of business, but that it is incapable even of dealing effectively with the affairs that have always been regarded as coming within its special province. For instance, the House of Commons has practically lost all control over the details of finance. It is true that a fairly generous allowance of Parliamentary time is allotted to the Estimates, but the House rarely, if ever, comes to close grips with the nation's balance sheet, or indeed with the details of any particular vote. Yet a vigilant supervision over finance is one of the primary functions of the House of Commons.
How far the recently established Select Committee on Estimates will be able to assist in promoting national economy remains to be seen. The creation of such a body has not met with universal approval in the House itself. As in the case of all parliamentary Committees, no matter how influential their personnel, the House as a whole may not be found willing to accept the decisions of the new Select Committee as authoritative.
In the sphere of Bill legislation, the condition of things is even worse. Notwithstanding the desperate shifts which have been resorted to in recent years to secure the dispatch of business, we are confronted in every succeeding session with greater congestion in the House of Commons. Big Bills are hustled through with the aid of every undesirable expedient known to parliamentary procedure, and little Bills in pathetic shoals are massacred at the end of each session. The plain fact is that we have not sufficient time in which to do anything properly. No matter what strain we impose on the physical endurance of Members, no matter how far we invade the undoubted privileges of the House of Commons as a deliberative assembly, Parliament is less and less able to fulfil its manifold duties as the paramount legislature in a world-wide state. The damage to local interests is scarcely less serious. Irish finance, for instance, and Irish legislation suffer from the disability of Imperial Parliament to give them due consideration.
Let it not be supposed that the House of Commons is unconscious of its own demerits as a legislative machine. It is nearly sixty years since Sir John Pakington's Committee was appointed to consider “whether by any alteration in the forms and proceedings of this House, the dispatch of public business would be more effectually promoted.” Committees with [pg 375] similar references were set up in 1861, in 1878, and in 1886. As a result of these inquiries two Standing Committees were established at the instance of Mr. W. H. Smith in 1888. The relegation of measures of the second rank to the two Standing Committees was expected to lighten the legislative burdens of the House of Commons very considerably, and this result was in some measure achieved. But the problem of congestion was so far from being solved that it was thought necessary to appoint yet another Committee (Sir Henry Fowler's) in 1906. This Committee recommended the setting up of four Standing Committees, and it is under this system that we are now working. With considerable diffidence I advance the opinion that an even larger use of Standing Committees might be made than has yet been attempted. Part II. of the National Insurance Bill was sent “upstairs,” and the result amply justified what was regarded by cautious Parliamentarians as a daring experiment. But this part of the Insurance Bill was in a large degree uncontroversial. The House of Commons is jealous, and naturally jealous, of its rights over controversial measures of the first class, and has never yet shown any readiness to accept as conclusive the decisions of Standing Committees. Nor should it be forgotten that attendance on a Standing Committee imposes a severe strain on members who are also keenly interested in the business of the House itself. By the time Mr. Speaker takes the chair at a quarter to three o'clock, the members of such Committees have often completed a very fair day's work.
Meanwhile, other and more questionable expedients for facilitating the dispatch of business were coming into general use. It is to Mr. Joseph Ronayne, a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the 'seventies [pg 376] of last century, that we owe the policy of organised and scientific obstruction in the House of Commons, and, as a consequence, the drastic use of the closure. Mr. Ronayne was a back-bench member of the Irish Party, of unobtrusive manners but of settled opinions. He was profoundly dissatisfied with the unaggressive tactics of Mr. Isaac Butt, the then leader of the Irish Party.
“We will never make any impression on the House,” he said, “until we interfere in English business. At present Englishmen manage their own affairs in their own way, without any interference from us. Then, when we want to get our business through, they stop us. We ought to show them that two can play at this game of obstruction. Let us interfere in English legislation; let us show them that if we are not strong enough to get our own work done, we are strong enough to prevent them from getting theirs.”[159]
Mr. Ronayne found in Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar an apt pupil. Mr. Biggar used to say: “The English stop our Bills. Why don't we stop their Bills? That's the thing to do. No Irish Bills; but stop English Bills. No legislation; that's the policy, sir, that's the policy. Butt's a fool, too gentlemanly; we're all too gentlemanly.” Mr. Biggar's oratory is happily now only a tradition. It was not good oratory of any kind, but it effected its purpose. More skilful exponents of the art of obstruction have appeared since Mr. Biggar's day, but none more successful. The expedient may have been justifiable in the case of a small minority struggling unavailingly against an overwhelming and indifferent majority. It is quite true that during the mild reign of Mr. Butt the British political parties treated legislative proposals emanating from the Irish Parliamentary Party with scant courtesy. It is equally true that obstruction in the House of Commons proved a potent incentive to the more careful consideration [pg 377] of Irish claims. We have travelled far since those days, but obstruction remains as one of the most formidable weapons in the armoury of an opposition. The British political parties have, when in opposition, made full use of a device that Mr. Butt regarded as “undignified, useless, and mischievous.” And not only is obstruction with us, but its hateful if necessary corollary, the closure, has tended every year to become more oppressive. The parliamentary historian of the future will note that it was on June 10th, 1887, that “closure by guillotine,” that monstrous variant of an accursed type, was first proposed in the House of Commons. A few days later the guillotine fell on several of the most important clauses of a new Crimes Bill. So closely associated with Ireland are the most recent and most detrimental changes in the procedure that governs the debates in our Imperial Parliament!
Obstruction or no obstruction, closure by guillotine or by compartments has come to stay as long as our Parliament attempts the otherwise impossible task of legislating for several provinces, and an empire at the same time. Nowadays almost every great Bill is subjected sooner or later to the guillotine. Let us see what this means. A debate in Committee, let us say, has been in progress for some days or weeks. Discussion has been free, and only occasionally, perhaps, has the ordinary form of closure been exercised. A bare half dozen clauses have been disposed of. There remain four or five score more clauses and a motley group of schedules. It becomes obvious that unless something is done to speed up the machinery, the Bill will never get through the House. Then it is that the leader of the House braces himself to his most unwelcome task, and, rising in his place, proposes a rigid time-table for the discussion of the remaining [pg 378] clauses and schedules. A certain number of days are allotted, and to each portion of time is allotted a section of the Bill. Thus, a whole Parliamentary day may be allotted to three clauses. The whole of this day, perhaps, is spent in debating the first line of the first of the three clauses. However this may be, the guillotine falls with remorseless severity at the end of the allotted day, and only Government amendments to the undiscussed parts of the three clauses are taken. Could anything be more clumsy? Was it possible for the ingenuity of man to invent a less businesslike remedy for the congestion of business in Parliament? Indeed, the absurdity of the system is universally acknowledged. I know of no more distressing spectacle than that of the leader of the House of Commons exerting himself to excuse a policy that he, in common with all who reverence the House of Commons, holds in detestation. On such occasions as this, the arguments advanced for what is confessedly a rude invasion of the rights of free speech are of a set pattern. It is urged that the debate has now been in progress for so many days or weeks, and that little advance has been made. Regret is expressed that resort should be had to such an unpopular device as the guillotine. But by what other means, it is asked, is a Government to carry controversial measures? After all, the time-table proposed is a generous one, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, and is certainly more generous than that allowed by the party opposite on such and such an occasion in the past. The leader of the Opposition, in rising, lays his hand on his heart and calls the House to witness that if on former occasions he has made use of the guillotine, he has done so far less frequently than the head of the present administration, and with an entire [pg 379] absence of the levity that marks the present proceedings. The guillotine resolution is carried. There are ineffectual ebullitions of wrath on the opposition side of the House, and there are sinking hearts on the Ministerial Benches. On every such occasion it is felt in all parts of the House that a deadly blow has been aimed at the dignity and the prestige of Parliament.