MR. DASENT'S "SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS."
[To THE EDITOR OP THY "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In thanking you for the appreciative notice of my " Speakers of the House of Commons " in the Spectator of July 29th, may I be allowed to point out that the first line of your review is calculated, no doubt unintentionally, to give your readers a somewhat poor opinion of the general historical accuracy at which I have aimed in my annals of the Chair ?
Whereas the opening sentence of my Hanoverian chapter reacts: " With the accession of George I. and the rout of the Tory Party the Speakership acquired a permanent character hitherto unknown in its annals," your reviewer, by substituting the word "government" for "rout," appears to convict me of an inexcusable historical blunder, of which I am in reality quite innocent.
Whether the period under consideration be the reign of George I. or George V., whichever of the two great political parties may be, for the moment, the dominant power in the State, "rout" and " government " cannot be regarded as synonymous terms in any conceivable aspect of the Constitu- tional question.
As a student of Parliamentary development, impartially concerned with the growth of English representative institu- tions and the relations of the two Houses during six centuries, it would be outside my province to forecast the future of the Speaker's office if and when a system, closely approximating to that form of Single-Chamber government tried and found wanting by Cromwell, should again be set up at Westminster, the immemorial home of popular liberty. Yet I may be allowed to express the hope that whatever changes in the relations of the representative Chamber towards the parent assembly may result from the conflicting counsels of the hour, the glorious traditions of the Chair of the Commons may be preserved unimpaired and unfettered by considerations of party expediency.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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