Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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example and the connivance, through party motives, of other members have been very evident.
On the other hand, the power of arbitrarily closing debates, which has been placed in the hands of majorities, has been grossly abused. It has been made use of not merely to abridge, but to prevent, discussion on matters of momentous importance. Many clauses of a Home Rule Bill which went to the very root of the British Constitution; which, in the opinion of the great majority of competent British statesmen, would have proved the inevitable prelude to the dismemberment and downfall of the Empire; which was supported by a party depending on the votes of men who were ostentatiously indifferent to the well-being of the Empire, and was strenuously opposed by a great majority of the representatives of England, and by a considerable majority of the representatives of Great Britain, were forced through the House of Commons by the application of the Closure, and without any possibility of the smallest discussion. Nothing but the veto of the House of Lords prevented a measure of the first importance, carried by such means and by a bare majority, from becoming law.
And while this change has been passing over the spirit of the House of Commons, its powers and its pretensions are constantly extending. The enormous extension of the practice of questioning ministers has immensely increased the intervention of the House in the most delicate functions of the Executive. It insists on measures and negotiations, in every stage of their inception, being brought before it, and resolutions emanating from independent sections have more than once exercised a most prejudicial influence, if not on foreign affairs, at least on the government of India. At the same time, the claim is more and more loudly put forward that it should be treated as if it were the sole power in the State. The veto of the sovereign has long since fallen into abeyance. Her constitutional right of dissolving Parliament if she believes that a minister or a majority do not truly represent the feelings of the nation, and are acting contrary to its interests, might sometimes be of the utmost value, but it is never likely to be put in force. Her slight power, in the rare cases of nearly balanced claims, of selecting the minister to whom she will entrust the government, and the slight influence she still retains over the disposition of patronage, are regarded with extreme jealousy; while every interference of the House of Lords with the proposed legislation of the Commons has been, during a considerable part of the last few years, made the signal of insolent abuse. It would be difficult to conceive a greater absurdity than a second Chamber which has no power of rejecting, altering, or revising; and this is practically the position to which a large number of members of the House of Commons, and of their supporters outside the House, would reduce the House of Lords.
We can hardly have a more grotesque exhibition of this spirit than was displayed during the discussion of the Parish Council Bill in 1894. The Bill came for the first time before Parliament. It was one on which the House of Lords, consisting of the great proprietors of the soil, could speak with pre-eminent knowledge and authority, while a vast proportion of the majority in the House of Commons had not the remotest connection with land, and were notoriously acting under mere motives of party interest. The Bill of the Commons, in its principle and main outlines, was accepted by the Lords, and they went no further than to alter it in a few of its details. But because they exercised in this manner their clearest and most indisputable constitutional right, on a subject with which they were peculiarly competent to deal, they were denounced as if they had committed an outrage on the nation. The last ministerial speech with which Mr. Gladstone closed his long political career4 was an abortive attempt to kindle a popular agitation against them on that ground.
The enormous and portentous development of parliamentary speaking, which has so greatly impeded public business, is due to many causes. In the first place, the House of Commons of 670 members is far too large for the purposes for which it is intended. It is larger than any other legislative body in the world, and the nineteenth century has added greatly both to its numbers and its speakers. At the beginning of the century it received an important addition in the Irish members who were brought in by the Union. The abolition of the small boroughs and the increasing power of the constituencies over their members greatly increased the average attendance, by making the members much more directly dependent upon their electors. The Reform Bills of 1867 and 1885 gave an opportunity for some reduction. But, as is usually the case, the interests of party and popularity prevailed, and the number of members was not diminished, but even slightly increased. The scenes of violence, anarchy, and deliberate obstruction that have been so frequent during late years have done much to destroy that respect for the House, that timidity in appearing before a fastidious audience, which once weighed heavily on nearly all new members, and imposed a useful restraint on idle speaking. At the same time, the development of the provincial papers has made it an easy and desirable thing for each member to be reported at full in his own constituency as a prominent speaker; and the vast increase of stump oratory by members of Parliament in every town and almost every village has given nearly all members a fatal facility. Something, also, has been due to the fact that the House of Commons was led or profoundly influenced during many years by a very great orator, who possessed every form of eloquence except conciseness, and who could rarely answer a question without making a speech.
This diffuseness and incontinence of speech has not been the characteristic of the deliberative assemblies that have left the greatest mark on the history of the world. Jefferson observes in his ‘Memoirs,’ ‘I served with Washington in the Legislature of Virginia, before the Revolution, and during it, with Dr. Franklin, in Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which was to decide the question.’5 In our own House of Commons, old members still remember the terse, direct character of the speeches of Russell, Palmerston, and Disraeli, and many men who have exercised great weight and influence in English politics have been singularly deficient in the power of speech. The names of Lord Althorp, Sir Charles Wood, and the Duke of Wellington in the past generation, and of W. H. Smith in our own, will at once occur to the reader. The dreary torrent of idle, diffusive, insincere talk that now drags its slow lengths through so many months at Westminster certainly does not contribute to raise the character of the House of Commons. It is a significant sign that parliamentary reporting has of late years greatly declined, and that newspapers which would once have competed for the fullest reports of parliamentary speeches now content themselves with abridgments, or summaries, or even with sketches of the speakers.
On the whole, however, it may be questioned whether, in the existing state of the British Constitution, this diffuseness is an evil. There is some weight in the contention of Bagehot, that one great advantage of government by debate is, that much talking prevents much action, and if it does little to enlighten the subject, it at least greatly checks the progress of hasty and revolutionary legislation. There are worse things than a wasted session, and, in times when the old restraints and balances of the Constitution have almost perished, the restraint of locquacity is not to be despised.
It makes the House of Commons, however, a perfectly inefficient instrument for some of the purposes it is expected to fulfil. There are large questions, such as the reform and codification of great branches of the law, which bristle with points of difficulty and difference, but which at the same time do not fall within the lines of party or affect the balance of power. To carry highly complex measures of this kind through a body like the present House of Commons is utterly impossible, and these much-needed reforms are never likely to be accomplished till the Constitution is so far changed as to give much larger powers to Committees.
The independence of Parliament has at the same time almost gone. Since the country has committed itself to democracy the caucus system—which is but another name for the American machine, and which, like the American machine, is mainly managed by a small number of active politicians—has grown with portentous rapidity. It nominates the candidates for elections. It dictates their policy in all its details. It applies a constant pressure by instructions, remonstrances, and deputations at every stage of their task. It reduces the ordinary member of Parliament to the position of a mere delegate, or puppet, though at the same time it tends, like many other democratic institutions, to aggrandise enormously the power of any single individual who is sufficiently powerful and conspicuous to enlist the favour of the nation and dominate and direct the caucus machinery. What is called ‘the one-man power’ is a very natural product of democracy. Mr. Bright once said that the greatest danger of our