COUNTING-OUT AND RINGING-IN.
COUNTING-OUT is a natural and necessary law of the House of Com- mons. Members who have been victims to it grumble, and next minute practise it themselves : Mr. Husia complains of having had the House counted out while he was speaking the night before, and not long after, moves himself that it be counted, at a time when the minimum number of Members is not present. If the Member for Finsbury were to sit upon the sittings, the proportion of those
brought to an untimely end by this practice would be found to be enormous.
To counteract the tendency to count out, Members have be- thought themselves of the device of ringing-in. Having heard that ringing-in the New Year was equivalent to ringing out the Old, they have imagined the continuity of a sitting might be preserved in the same way. Bells were in the old times of superstition deemed a counter-agent to the destructive power of thunder : a bell has been had recourse to as an antidote to the dissolving power of counting-out. The rats of the House of Commons— more clever than the rats of the fabulist—have belled the Speaker, who kills by counting. The inventors of this dainty device did not bethink themselves that the bell could give warning to keep away as well as to come, or that Members might be deaf to its call. For one Member who flocks to its summons two may take the hint to get out of the way. The masticatory process appears to clog the ears of the visitants of Bellamy. At all events, whatever be the cause, the efficacy of counting-out evidently exceeds that of ringing-in.
It is a striking and somewhat tumultuous scene that is pro- duced by the conflict of the antagonist powers of counting and ringing. A Member moves that the House be counted. With the obedient start attributed by Malvolio to his imaginary attendants, sundry Members dart at once to the door, on divers errand bound—these to keep out, those to bring in. BORTHWICKS are seen fleeting, as the alarum rings out, like the Ghost of Hamlet's Father, to hide themselves in the innermost recesses of the Library ; MURPHYS are seen rushing down stairs from the Kitchen with nap- kins in hand or tucked under their chins. The rush of the ebbing and refluent human tide below, and the tintinnabulary clangour above, make the deafened spectator exclaim, " Silence that dread- ful bell! ", But the din of the eddying vortices continues unabated, till the corner of the mystic hat, pointed to the last Member, de- cides whether the House shall adjourn or continue sitting.
Members begin to believe with PYTHAGORAS in the magic might of numbers—to see the inutility of struggling against the charm of counting-out. A rather unhandsome use was made of Mr. BORTH- WICK'S confession of this truth, the other evening. " PETER " was accused of helping to count out the House, when he was merely like a lamb led to the slaughter bleating out his acquiescence in his hard fate. " Count out the House," said PETER, " since it must be so, while Hume is speakins. : do not wait for my motion." There was no malice in this towards the Member for Montrose. The Member for Evesham merely felt that the operation of count- ing-out would be more appropriately performed upon the " great arithmetician" than upon himself, who has all his life, but in vain, been striving to "cut a figure."
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