MR. BRIGHT ON THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
AT the Mansion-House Banquet on Saturday, Mr. Bright, in supporting the suggestion that the House of Com- mons' machinery is thoroughly out of repair, and cannot be got into good working order again without some change much
more considerable than a mere oiling of the wheels, nevertheless seized the opportunity to pay a well-merited compliment to the present House of Commons. There is, he says," far more ability in the House of Commons than there was in those ancient days" when the speaking was practically monopolised among at most a couple of dozen Members. And to some extent, indeed, that is part of the existing difficulty. As we pointed out, when supporting Mr. Dillwyn's suggestions for the reform of the Standing Orders, three months ago,—suggestions -adopted in all their leading features by Mr. Bright,—it is not merely the Irish controversy, or the Bradlaugh controversy, or any particular controversy, which renders the pressure on the House so overwhelming, it is the vast multiplication of subjects on which really able men have much to say, as well as the still vaster multiplication of subjects on which it is at least perfectly plausible for sensible men to raise a discussion in the House of Commons, whether the discussion, when it takes place, is of value or not. The simple truth is, that there never was a House of Commons containing so many Members able to contribute real light on many subjects as the present. But then that is part and parcel of the difficulty, for the very fact that there are so many men with something of real im- portance to say makes it much more difficult to find them oppor- tunities for saying it,—especially as, of course, for every man with something of importance to say, there are half a dozen men who only think they have something important to say, and, per- haps, are excusable for so thinking. We will go a great deal far- ther than Mr. Bright, and say, that not only is the present House of Commons, perhaps, the very ablest of our time, but that it -contains more men with sufficient reticence to hold their tongues for the public service, even though they could con- tribute, and know they could contribute, elements of import- ance to many a discussion from which they deliberately re- frain themselves, than any previous House of Commons we -can remember. There are in it men of the first rank of ability who have not even let their voices be heard in -discussions in which they took the deepest interest, simply because they felt that their duty to the country demanded their reticence more than their speech. But still, as Mr. Bright says, vanity is a human failing, and it can hardly be expected that a very large number of men in so miscellaneous an assembly as the House of Commons will practise so ascetic a virtue as reticence. Still it is well to remember that it is not the exceptional character of any particular question, so much as the enormous growth of public interest in all sorts of questions, and of the ability and knowledge requisite to deal with them, which renders it more essential every year to economise the time and strength of the House of Commons, and to revise with some courage the inadequate arrangements at present designed for that purpose. Though we do not believe that vanity —to which Mr. Bright ascribes some of our difficulties—has at all increased upon the House of Commons,—on the con- trary, it has even diminished,—yet the number of tongues whom 'vanity might fairly set in motion is so much greater than it used to be, on account of the great increase of knowledge and culture among the Representatives, that such vanity as exists undoubt- edly produces a much more disastrous effect. However, the mere competition amongst the representatives for the right of ques- tioning the Executive Government, alone shows that it is not only vanity which is at work to paralyse the House. Vanity, of course, may have something to do with the number of ques- tions, but can hardly have very much to do with it. A Member does not cover himself with glory by asking an apposite question. The real reason why so many questions are asked is that Mem- bers are anxious, above everything, to show their constituents their zeal for the public interest, anxious because they believe that their constituencies will not be satisfied with Members who do not put their zeal in evidence. It is in very great measure the growing belief in the vigilance and political vivacity of con- stituencies,—in a word, the growing respect, or fear, or at all .events the growing consideration, in which the democracy is 'held,—which prompts this eagerness in Members to prove themselves to be on the look-out for grievances, and for remedies. The quiescent Member is afraid of his masters. He thinks his masters will be discontented with him, if they do not see -frequent evidences of his activity and zeal. That is not vanity ; it is rather self-distrust in combination with a growing sense of the exactingness of constituencies. And the proof that constituencies have a great deal to do with the matter is that no new eagerness of this kind is visible in the House of Lords. Especially, we think, since the introduction of the Ballot, the fear of being closely watched and rejected for inadequate services has grown rapidly on our representatives. But Mr. Bright suggests" obstinacy" and "spite " as causing needless embarrassments in the House of Commons. Well, there, again, the obstinacy and spite of Members are almost altogether, we think, due to a deep conviction of the obstinacy and spite of constituencies, so far, that is, as these qualities influence Members at all. The Irish Irreconcilables have undoubtedly been obstinate chiefly where they supposed that their constituents would not forgive them for giving way ; and they have been spiteful in that limited number of cases in which undoubtedly spite has been shown,—the virulence against Mr. Forster and against Mr. Bradlaugh's claim, for example,—solely where they really believed that their constituencies felt the spite which they displayed. It cannot be doubted that, whether truly or falsely,—probably truly,—the Electorates of the present day are given credit for watching the conduct of their Members more jealously than they used to do, and for expecting from them a more lively exposition of the popular feeling. And the existence of this belief necessarily magnifies tenfold the desire to make some sort of demonstration of their opinion in the House of Commons, whether it be one that gratifies their own vanity, or not. Members who in former days regarded themselves as merely constituent elements of a great historical body, now conceive of themselves as the sort of elements whose manoeuvres you watch in a drop of water under the solar microscope. They feel bound to wriggle and prey upon other less potent organisms, if only to discriminate themselves from the mass. We sincerely believe that it is the quickening dread of the democracy which has made the obstinacy and spite of modern Members so much more active than the obstinacy and spite of Members in times gone by.
It is clear that there is no remedy for these difficulties, except that which Mr. Dillwyn's resolutions embodied, and which Mr. Bright has now re-enforced. There must be alto- gether fewer opportunities of talking ; the number of revi- sions of legislative measures must be considerably diminished and let us add that there should be more opportunity for passing certain kinds of measures by the machinery provided for in Orders of Council, and adopted in relation to changes in the Education Code. Machinery of that kind would be perfectly fit for all codifying measures,—all new digests of the statute law affecting particular subjects,—all administrative elabora- tions of general principles. Again, such a decentralisation as the County Government Bill would effect, is of the very essence of the reform. That would relieve the House of Commons of a large number of subjects with which it is incompetent to deal. Further, there must be a prompter penalty for attempts to infringe the ruling of the Speaker or Chairman of Com- mittees, while a larger discretion ought to be entrusted to those officers of the House. Finally, the power of voting the cloture, —with the assent of the Speaker or Chairman as the guardian of the rights of the minority,—by an absolute majority, is indispens- able. In some influential quarters, it is believed that the organi- sation of Grand Committees to discuss severally the affairs of special quarters of the kingdom, and to relieve the House in great measure of what is now done in Committee of the whole House, would be a very effective remedy. We cannot think so. In the first place, there is always a very active jealousy in the House of the decision of any Committee,—a positive desire to upset a decision which a Committee not of the whole House, has arrived at. This would make it almost essential to go over a great part of the ground again in the House, and so more time might be wasted. In the second place, it would be very difficult to ensure the proper majority for the adminis- tration in such Committees. A Grand Committee representing Ireland alone, at the present time would be a Committee of Opposition, and there have been many Liberal Governments which had no Liberal majority at all in England, taken alone. We look to a new power of compressing the agencies now at work, not to quite new agencies, as the true remedy for Parliamentary disorganisation.
The reason why these great compressing agencies are so needful is that the Democracy is believed to be gain- ing, and no doubt is really gaining, in watchfulness, and, perhaps, in exactingness, and that the democracy does not and cannot think and feel as a whole. Each fragment of it, though it sees the excessive inconvenience of delay and ob- struction, is apt to think that the discussion of matters in which that fragment is specially interested, is not the cause of delay and obstruction,—that the fault rather lies with the dis- cussion of other matters, in which other fragments of the democracy are chiefly interested. In this way, it becomes absolutely essential to silence alternately first one and then another of the many mouths of the democracy, in the interest of the whole ; and no machinery for this purpose can be deemed more effectual than the resolutions brought forward by Mr. Dillwyn, which have now received the general sanction of Mr. Bright.
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