he estimates any one of his colleagues as worth all the eighty-five Irish Home Rulers. It is not necessary to discuss the precise accuracy of this scale of numerical equivalents. The eighty-five Irish Home Rulers and their friends cannot be expected to share it; but it is not unnatural in Lord Salisbury. There is a parliamentary precedent for it, if a precedent is necessary, Lord Thurlow having once declared that one Hastings was worth twenty Macartneys.

It is not essential here to consider whether the waste of time which is beyond dispute was due to deliberate obstruction or to other causes. Mr. Smith and his friends say that there was deliberate and systematic obstruction on the part of the GladstoneParnell Opposition. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell reply that the Government obstructed themselves. The distribution of speeches between the two parties, and the number of divisions forced upon the Ministry, are not easily reconcilable with the latter contention; and this presumption in favour of the Government is not rebutted when we look a little more closely into the procedure of the session. The debate on the Address, which according to the old parliamentary usage is ordinarily a formal business, and on which a question of confidence, if it is raised, should be settled by a single division on a single motion, occupied sixteen days, being protracted by a number of trivial amendments, breaking it into secondary discussions on third-rate topics. On the principles on which it was conducted it might have gone on for ever, and it was brought to a close only by the declaration of the Speaker, that in his opinion it was the evident sense of the House that the address had been adequately discussed. The debate on the first Procedure resolution, the only one which the House succeeded in dealing with, occupied fourteen days. The Government thus gained possession of the Closure, though in an imperfect form, which prevented its efficient use. Ordinarily, the introduction and first reading of a Bill take place without debate. Five days were spent on the question whether precedence should be granted to the Crimes Bill, five more days were occupied on the first reading. The application of the Closure was necessary to bring to an end the discussion on this stage of the measure, Mr. Gladstone thinking it necessary to protest against what he called the extreme and unprecedented pressure applied to very large bodies of members of the House. At this period of the session the Speaker succumbed under the extreme and unprecedented pressure applied to his mind and body, and Mr. Courtney occupied his place during the four following parliamentary days. There were seven days' debate on the second reading of the Crimes Bill, and three days on the motion for going into committee. Of the twenty clauses of the measure, only six had been disposed of in discussions extending from the 29th of April to the 17th of June; and the committee stage was brought to an end by the application of the Closure, and the passing without debate of the remaining clauses. On the report of the Crimes Bill there were four

more days' debate, and the Closure was again applied. This brought Parliament down to the 4th of July ; and on that day, when more than five months of the parliamentary session, which ordinarily occupies only six, had been spent, Mr. Gladstone unsuccessfully resisted the motion of the First Lord of the Treasury for giving precedence during the remainder of the session to Government business. There remained the third reading of the Crimes Bill, on which there were two days' discussion. The Irish Land Bill had just come down from the Lords, Committees of Supply on the Navy, Army, Civil Service and Irish Estimates remained over. The House continued sitting till the 16th of September-more than a month beyond the usual date of prorogation. In virtue of the transfer to the Government of the whole time of the House, several important measuresthe Allotments Act, the Mines Act, the Crofters' Holdings Act for Scotland, the new Land Law Act for Ireland, the Margarine Act, the Merchandise Marks Act among them-became law. But others not less important, for which a session conducted in the ordinary way would have afforded ample time, were dropped; among them the Railway and Canal Traffic Bill, the Lord Chancellor's important Land Transfer Bill, the Tithe Rent Charge Bill, and the Technical Education Bill.

Whether the statement which has preceded confirms Mr. Gladstone's imputation of extreme and unprecedented pressure applied by the Government to very large bodies of members, or shows extreme and unprecedented pressure applied by very large bodies of members to the Government, is a question which may be safely left to the decision of the country, and even to the maturer and repentant second thoughts of that three-sevenths of the House which made two-thirds of the speeches, and enforced nine-tenths of the divisions. If there was deliberate obstruction, the argument is strong for taking out of the hands of a minority powers of hindrance and delay which are absolutely inconsistent with parliamentary government, and are fatal to the very principle of representative institutions. If there was no wilful obstruction the case for a reform of procedure is even stronger, for it shows that without fault attributable to any leader or any party, the whole machinery of legislation and of public business, so far as the House of Commons is concerned, is out of order, and requires to be readjusted to new conditions.

It is not necessary to discuss here the rules of procedure which the Government proposed last session. The substitution of day for night sittings would abolish the waste of time during what is now called, by a very improper and minimising use of the singular number, the dinner hour, and stop the tedious flow of the wish-wash that from five to eight '—or rather from seven to ten, for modern customs have shifted the time-lags in small Lethes through the dull debate.' The abolition of the committee and report stages on the Address will not be practicable in the approaching session. The arrangements for checking

frivolous and repeated motions of adjournment and wanton divisions, for giving priority after Whitsuntide to the measures which are most advanced, and the appointment of Grand Committees on law, trade and agriculture, might profitably be left over, after the example set by Mr. Gladstone in 1882, for a separate winter session. The reform of the clumsy and inefficient Closure rule of last session is the business to which the Government, if it wishes to be sure of doing any business at all, will do well first to address itself. The complicated arithmetical rule that in order to give effect to the Closure it must be supported by more than two hundred members, or, if opposed by less than forty members, must be supported by more than a hundred members, was found during last session inconveniently to impede its operation, and at the close of the session, when the attendance of Members is scanty it was not easy to ensure the attendance requisite for its enforcement. Closure by a bare majority is, we believe, the rule in the legislative assemblies of all countries, except Switzerland, in which Closure exists at all; and proportional majorities are a novelty in our parliamentary system which has not justified itself by its working in this particular case. The previous assent of the Chair to the motion for Closure would prevent snap divisions, by which conceivably a debate might be prematurely brought to an end. If it should be thought desirable to relieve the Speaker and the Chairman of Committees of the somewhat invidious discretion imposed upon them by the existing rule, a proviso requiring that a certain term of notice-twenty-four or even forty-eight hours beforehand-shall be given, would prevent surprises, and would ensure that the deliberate sense of the House was truly taken. The principle of the Closure by a bare majority is indeed not free from difficulty. The House of Commons is becoming more and more the one governing chamber in the country, and it is quite possible that a despotic Minister, commanding a subservient majority, might use his power to force measures through the House without adequate discussion, under circumstances in which the House of Lords might find it difficult to exercise its power of resistance and delay. But we have to meet a present difficulty and danger; and the Parliament of the morrow will deal as circumstances require with the procedure of the morrow. There is little profit in forecasting the shadows of uncertain evils, especially as political prognostics are almost invariably wrong, and the mischief seldom comes in the form in which it is foreseen. If purposed obstruction or purposeless waste of time should disappear, the Closure rule will become a dead letter or may be repealed.

Besides the dilatory habits or tactics which marked the last session of Parliament, the House of Commons cannot avoid discussing the means of checking such outrageous violations of political decorum, and indeed of ordinary social and personal decency, as those which have made the English Parliament a by-word wherever its

proceedings are known. It is possible to be too punctilious and sensitive on this matter. The House of Commons is a public meeting, and the etiquette of the drawing-room would be out of place there. A good deal of rough language may very well be borne with, and it may be occasionally desirable for the Speaker or the Chairman of Committees to have ears which hear not, and eyes which see not. A formal and ceremonious politeness has never been a characteristic of the House of Commons, and a new Parliament representing social classes not formerly included in our representative system, and consisting in a large degree of members of a type not hitherto seen there, is likely to fall into excesses of which longer experience will correct it. Sir Thomas Erskine May points out that in the sessions which immediately followed the Reform Act of 1832 the disorder and violence were extreme; but that the members soon acquired the parliamentary instinct and breeding, and the reformed Parliament between 1832 and 1868 was a great deal more orderly than any of its predecessors, or even than the House of Lords. What happened under the representative system of 1832 may happen also under the representative system of 1885. Even the worst outbreaks of last session have their precedents in what are regarded as the noblest periods of our parliamentary history. Mr. Philip Stanhope was called to order by the Speaker for describing Mr. Balfour as a man of whimsical and lackadaisical mind. But Mr. Philip Stanhope's description of Mr. Balfour's mind was politeness itself compared with Burke's description of Lord North's body, when he spoke of him as 'extending his right leg a full yard before his left, rolling his flaming eyes and moving his ponderous frame.' Mr. Harrington reproached the Speaker with being perpetually on the pounce' for him. In 1808 Mr. Tierney directly challenged Mr. Speaker Abbot's conduct to himself, charging him with improperly stopping him from proceeding, and with habitual unfairness. Sir,' said Mr. Ley, the deputy clerk, to Abbot, did you see? Mr. Tierney falls upon you like an assassin.' It was said of Lord Chatham that, like the husbandman in Virgil, he scattered his dirt with dignity and grace; but that cannot be said of many eminent members. On the 9th of March, 1769, Burke charged the Speaker of that day with partisanship, recalled the time when it was said by one of his predecessors, 'My eyes are dim, I have no tongue to speak,' and added sarcastically 'that though some gentlemen thought the Chair was in the debate, yet they were wrong; if all their senses interposed they were wrong; the Chair was not in the debate.' Fox, Lord John Cavendish, George Grenville, and other leaders of the Opposition joined in the wrangle with scarcely less intemperance. About a month later, when amid great confusion a member was whispering to the Speaker, Burke cried, 'I will be heard; I will throw open the doors and tell the people of England that when a man is addressing the Chair on their behalf, the

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Speaker is engaged.' On a motion for the attendance of a certain printer for breach of privilege, an amendment was moved that 'Thomas Evans do attend the House together with all his compositors, pressmen, correctors, blockers and devils,' which Burke supported, insisting especially on the devil, as being the most material personage the whole business. Colonel Barré, who frankly announced, We get up to spin out time,' alleged that he had been in the Speaker's eye, adding, 'How I got out of your eye, and the honourable gentleman in, I cannot conceive.' Burke denounced what he called the ' novel doctrine of the Speaker's eye now growing up into an order as improper, irregular and unparliamentary,' adding with an obvious insinuation of unfairness, 'The Speaker may have his eye on one side of the House rather than the other.' In 1795, General Tarleton, who afterwards apologised, denounced the Speaker (Mr. Addington) for calling the Opposition side to order when the other side was in a greater uproar, and exhibiting partiality. In the early years of the reformed Parliament matters were much not better. On the 6th of May, 1834, Mr. Ronayne charged Mr. Stanley (the late Lord Derby) with smiling contemptuously, and throwing his legs on the table like a man in an American coffee-house; and O'Connell accused him of habitual disregard of veracity. In the same session Lord Althorp, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, accused Mr. Sheil of publicly denouncing the Irish Coercion Bill which was then before the House, while in private conversation he expressed his conviction that it was absolutely necessary if Ireland was to be a country to live in; and matters went so far that both members, one of them the leader of the House, were committed to the custody of the sergeantat-arms, and only released on the promise that the dispute should not be carried out of doors. In the following session, Mr. Hume and Mr. Charlton told each the other that he was an impudent fellow, and that he would make him hold his tongue.

It would be easy, with a little research, to add to these instances of parliamentary bad manners. A remarkable circumstance about them is that they were exhibited, for the most part, by men of the highest parliamentary position, instead of being confined to the lower order of members; though this peculiarity may, in some degree, be accounted for by the fact that only men of some parliamentary standing usually took part in the debates at the periods in question. Even making allowance for the softening and refinement of manners within the past century, and most of all during the latter half of it, the excesses of recent sessions cannot be described as worse in their character than those which marked the unreformed Parliament before 1832, and the partially reformed Parliament since. The notable feature in the case is that what was exceptional then has become, on the part of very large bodies of members, habitual now, and is an ordinary instrument of disorder and violence. That experience