GENERAL VIEW OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE HOUSE, AND TIIEIR

DISCHARGE.

THIS Country has now obtained the object of its wishes for many long years, the Representation of the People ill Parliament. Hither to, Representation has been a shadow, existing only in the dreams of the DE LOLIVES and other schoolboy oracles,—a fiction, devised and supported by the sophistry of Tory lawyers—and Whig lawyers too. The time is gone by, however, when the People were pre- vailed upon to receive as gospel truth. the doctrine that the member for the borough of Old Sarum, consisting of a ruined house and a tree, was a representative of the People, and that the power of the Crown and the Aristocracy to fill the Treasury benches with such members was one of the groat practical bene- fits of the Constitution. Every man who shall sit in the Re- formed Parliament will be sent there by the suffrages of a portion —and no inconsiderable portion—of popular respectability, pro- perty, and intelligence ; and thus every member of that Parlia- ment will be truly and substantially a Representative of the People.

The People are entitled to hope great things from this change. They are entitled to hope that a House of Commons, consisting of the men of their choice, will labour zealously, ably, and efficiently, for the public interest. If they are disappointed in the extent of the improvement, there had almost better have been no Reform at all. If the business of Parliament is conducted only a little better than it is at present—if profusion is only a little checked—if legisla- tion is only a little more enlightened—if only a little more ac- tivity, and a little more deliberate attention, are bestowed upon the complicated interests of this vast empire—the disappointment will be deep, and the indignation bitter. The People will either be incited to tear in pieces a constitution which does them so little good, after all the mending bestowed upon it, or will sink into indifference; and, not caring how they exercise a franchise so useless to them, will allow every abuse of the old system again to take root and flourish as rank as ever.

Now, there will, we fear, be some disappointment. Unreason- able expectations are formed, which cannot be realized; and many will grumble because the Reformed Parliament cannot cure evils which are beyond the reach of legislation. The only way to prevent this kind of disappointment, is to make it be generally understood what are, and what are not, the maladies of the State, which our legislators can mitigate or cure. Towards this we mean to lend our humble aid. But what we have to do with at present, is a source from which disappointment, reasonable as well as deep, will spring, unless it instantly receive the most serious and active attention. This is the badness of the MACHINERY of the House of Com- mons, which at present disables that body from performing its functions ; and the wasting of the powers of this machinery upon objects which do not belong to it. The ordinary functions of the House of Commons, extensive and Complicated as they are, may he comprised in two heads,—LEG is LA.- TioN and SUPPLY. The latter is its exclusive duty and privilege; the former it shares with the other Estates of Parliament. But even in Legislation it takes by far the greatest and most import- ant share. What an amount of wisdom, information, and laborious investi- gation, ought to be exercised by the members of the House of Commons in their exclusive character of Guardians of the Public Purse! They must decide upon the necessity or expediency of every article of expenditure, foreign and domestic, for which sup- plies are demanded by the Executive ; they must deeply consider the complicated relations in which .all the nations of the world stand to each other, in -order that they may guard their constitu- - eats from every war or treaty that may be productive of unneces- sary expenditure.; and they must anxiously investigate the situa- tion and circumstances of all classes of the community, so as to press most lightly on their resources in imposing the necessary burdens.

But this duty, arduous as it is, seems lost in the immensity of their field of Legislation. The House of Commons has, in the words of BLA.CKSTONE, "the making, confirming, enlarging, re- straining, abrogating, repealing, reviving, and expounding of laws, concerning matters of all possible denominations, ecclesias- tical or temporal, civil, military, maritime, or criminal."—What a load of care, toil, and responsibility, is involved in this enumera- tion, even though every duty contained in it had been well per- formed from the beginning ! However unwearied the attention of the Legislature,—however enlightened its views, and sound its decisions,—still, in the changing circumstances, extending rela- tions, and immensely increasing magnitude of the British Empire, there would be an unceasing demand for equal exertion. But when we consider what have been the doings of the Legislature for ages,—its passions, its prejudices, its worse than Gothic igno- rance,—the labours of the newly-formed Legislature become per- fectly appalling. It must first encounter a labour that will task all its youthful strength and vigour,—the labour, truly Hercu- lean, of cleansing that vast Augean stable, the Statute-book, of a mountain of noisome filth that creates a moral pestilence in the land. It must give us a new code of Criminal Law, founded not on the notions of truculent barbarians or half-savage feudal lords, but on the principles of philosophy and the precepts of Christi- anity. It must release our Commerce, Manufactures, and Agri- culture, from those misnamed protections which are now pres- sing them to the earth. It must detect and remove the thou- sand obstructions, both in our Municipal Laws and in the Consti- tution of our Courts of Judicature, which prevent the course of justice from running smooth. And to all this enormous labour must be joined the multifarious duties which will at all times furnish ample employment for a legislative assembly in such a country as this. Such being the immense amount of the functions of the House of Commons, it is of the gravest importance that the House should confine itself to these functions, and not waste its time and attention on things which do not belong to it. A vast deal of its time—the Nation's time—is at present employed in laborious trifling. A considerable part of every evening, and often many whole evenings in succession, are spent in discussions which do not forward the public business a single step. A part of these irrelevant proceedings arises from members going beyond the bounds of their duty as legislators, and intermeddling with the office of the Executive Government. Thus, for instance, a member puts a question to a Minister, founded on a rumour regarding an impending treaty, or the sailing of a squadron; and this gives rise to a conversation, which consumes a good part of an evening. Then the Opposition, by way of annoying the Government, make motions for the production of papers relating to unfinished measures; which motions, after many hours of mutual abuse, for which the Nation is not a jot the wiser, terminate for the most

part in being withdrawn. The time spent in this unprofitable way every session, may be reckoned by weeks and months. It is a great grievance, and ought to be removed. The production of

papers belonging to transactions in the hands of the Executive,

ought to be in its discretion, subject to certain fixed rules, which could easily be laid down. In the general case, a Ministry which Enjoys the confidence of the Country, and is on good terms with Parliament, will be ready, for its own comfort, to lay before Par- liament every information that the public service admits of: and in the Reformed Parliament no Ministry which wants the public confidence will be able to go on. Another monstrous waste of time and labour, is caused by the abuse—not by the People, but by the House—of the right of petitioning. The Reform Bill was fully and amply debated in its several regular stages; but, in addition to this, not only its general principles, but almost every one of its clauses, were dis- cussed scores of times, in debates raised upon the innumerable petitions presented for and against it. The insufferable way in 'which this great measure was obstructed, by this eternal and aim- less talking about it, very often put the patience and temper of the People to a greater trial than they could stand.

Every measure of any public importance gives rise to similar proceedings: and the House spends many a long evening in battling about matters brought, in this way, before them, which either do not belong to them, or which relate to mere trifles.

Besides the ordinary functions of the House, it possesses an in- quisitorial character. It has been called the Grand Inquest of the Nation; and in this capacity, it has given itself a great deal of employment. In cases of offences against the State, not of a nature to be tried by the ordinary tribunals, it has assumed the character of public accuser, in order that they may be tried by the Peers. In cases where it, as representing the sense of the Country, is of opinion that the King's Ministers are giving him pernicious advice, it has addressed him for their removal from his Councils ; and it has occupied itself in taking cognizance of' the conduct of Judges and other public functionaries.

There can be no doubt that the House may exercise, with ad- vantage, its inquisitorial power. It might otherwise be im- possible to bring great public delinquents to justice. The impeachments of WARREN II ASTI ?..TGS and Lord ME LV I L LE, and the proceedings in the case of the Duke of YORK (without re- ference to the innocence or guilt of those personages), are in- stances of the legitimate exercise of this function. It is rarely called for; and could very slightly interfere with the usual course of the House's proceedings. But this inquisitorial power is often very needlessly brought into play.

The superintendence of the conduct of Judges and Public Officers belongs to the Executive Government ; and yet how much time is spent by the House of Commons in listening to complaints on this subject! All such grievances ought to be redressed by the Executive ; which, it is to be presumed, in a well-ordered state, will do its duty. Whatever is defective in the working of the Executive Government ought to be rectified; and if, after all, a case were to happen in which a member of the Government failed in his duty, it might be held as one of those extreme cases in which the Representatives of the People might be justified in addressing a complaint to the Head of the Execu- tive Government. If things were placed on a proper footing, such cases might now and then occur, but it would be very rarely.

Other eases of emergency might be figured in which the Re- presentatives of the People might find it expedient to convey to the Throne the sentiments of their constituents respecting the conduct of Ministers, or the consequences of some measure of Government. But all such cases, and every interference with the Executive Government, should be looked upon as deviations from the ordinary functions of the House; and, if so considered, they would not occur so often as to impede the course of public business.

The functions of the House of Commons being thus brought within their due limits, the next step, in order to make its labours efficient, is to improve the Machinery of the House.

First of all, its progress is grievously obstructed by the mere physical obstacle of want of room. Two hundred members are, at all times, excluded, because the House will not hold them; and, on nights when the attendance is numerous, the heat, con- fusion, and pressure, are intolerable. There are not Committee- rooms for one half of the Committees that are constantly sitting ; a fruitful source of delay and disorder. To allow things like this to remain unremedied, session after session, argues the most culpable negligence.

As the business of the House is at present conducted, no mem- ber can possibly do justice to a twentieth part of it. Go to the Rouse at four o clock ; and you will find the Speaker working his way through a mountain of Private Bills, in all stages. Then rages the Petition-gabble. By and by comes on the great ques- tion for the evening's debate. A crack speech is delivered by a leading orator; and when he sits down, the members go off to dinner. For some hours the debate is carried on against time; and then the absentees begin to pour in, many bearing evident, signs of a much more genial employment than legislation, and all of them prepared to divide on a question, on the merits of which they have not thought it worth while to listen to a word. By this time it is late at night or early in the morning: but at this hour, when the members are dozing in their seats, some from the effects of a good dinner and good wine, and others from watching and fatigue, the House proceeds to a long list of Orders of the Day, including the disposal of measures of great difficulty and momentous import, many of which are left to the votes of twenty or thirty members, all the rest having marched off to bed.

Call next morning at the house of a member; you will find him just got lip, and lounging over a late breakfast and the Morning Newspapers, with a mountain of Bills and other Parliamentary Papers before him, belonging very likely to the business of that evening or the next. Before he has got through one Of them, he finds he must, for health's sake, take his ride in the Park, or he must hurry down to the House to attend some of the Committees. In nine cases out of ten, having gone there without knowing any thing of the matter in question, he employs himself in reading or writing his own private letters, for which the four-and-twenty hours afford no other time ; leaving the management of the busi- ness to the two or three individuals who have an interest in it, and staying to oblige one of those friends by his vote, expecting that friend to acknowledge the favour the same way on another occa- sion. By this time, the Speaker has taken the Chair; and the same round begins again.