THE TORRENT OF TALK.
WE object strongly to the payment of Members, for we believe it would make of politics a profession; but if we ever felt inclined to reconsider that judgment, it would be this week. It is nearly impossible even for dishonest men to forget altogether that they ought to give some return for their money, and a paid House of Commons would therefore scarcely tolerate the present debate on the Address. It is a disgraceful waste of public time. Parliament has been sitting a week, measures of the last importance are waiting to be introduced, events that may change history are occurring all round ; and yet the British House of Commons goes on night after night drearily hearkening to third-rate speeches, poured out for the most part by fifth-rate men, upon every subject alluded to in the course of the Address. Very few of the speeches are of any merit; only two, Lord Randolph Churchill's and Lord George Hamilton's, were at all necessary ; and none, not even those two, have been of any substantial value. The machine has not been advanced by them one step. Member after Member in endless succession rises, delivers him- self of his opinion, sometimes worthless, sometimes valuable, upon some subject not before the House in any concrete shape, and sits down satisfied, having relieved his mind of his pet plan, or having abused or defended some Minister, or having, at the least, shown his constituents that they have not elected a dumb dog. There are 670 Members, of whom at least 300 can speak, while 86 can speak as long as their larynxes will hold out ; and there is, therefore, no reason why the "debate "—that is, the irresponsible talk upon al laubjects- should not go on for weeks, or, indeed, why it should ever stop. If Mr. Illingworth may discuss the propriety of an Austrian alliance, why should not sixty Members attack or defend an alliance with Italy I and if Mr. Wright may com- plain of departmental extravagance, why should not every Member assail some instance of departmental stinginess I The fact that no proposal is before the House, and that each speech is a beating of the air, is obviously no restraint, and apparently there is no other except a consciousness of public duty, which disappears in each individual Member as his turn comes for display. The forms of the House provide none. The leaders of Opposition go away. The Ministers either work at home, or endure with weary writhings the flood of impeding commonplace. The reporters do not feel justified in applying a summary closure to the whole proceeding, which, if the Members were unreported, would end in twenty minutes. And the constituencies, though irritated by the debate as a whole, do not hate their own individual Members for taking part in it. Each district thinks its own man has a right to his own half-hour, " which cannot signify," and forgets that six hundred half-hours make up the greater part of the disposable time of a Session. They are anxious that business should advance, they are eager for forthcoming measures ; but they cannot see that both are wasted by the determination of their own representatives to say their useless say. If the talk led to any result, even in the formation of opinion, it would be endurable ; but it does not, for the public, with its amazing instinct for the useful, does not read the speeches, and the wretched men who are forced to hear them pay to them no attention. The people and the Ministry alike wait on, rick with weari- ness, until the end comes, which will be probably when a third of the Session has been exhausted, and some incident either compels the Government to demand the ear of the House, or the Speaker announces that the " practice of Parlia- ment " does not compel him to tolerate such discursive chatter any longer.
Mr. Lowther proposes, we see, that when no amendment is moved, the debate on the Address shall be finished on the first day ; and that if amendments are moved, the Mem- bers shall speak on them, and them only. He hopes, no doubt, in this way to get rid of a quantity of irresponsible frivolity ; but we fear he would introduce a still worse evil. Every Member who wanted to speak, say about decimal coin- age,would introduce an amendment regretting that that scheme, "so invaluable for saving national time," had not been promised in the Queen's Speech ; all the faddists would leap at their opportunity ; and instead of a hundred useless speeches, we should have a hundred useless debates. The House must go much further than that if it proposes to cure the evil ; and as it is impossible, we suppose, for Constitutional reasons, to stop the debate `altogether, we beg to suggest a palliative of a totally different kind. Let the House pass a Standing Order de- claring that to report a debate on the Address after the first two days shall be a high contempt, and send into con- finement the first newspaper-proprietor who ventures to break the rule. That would not interfere in the least with the cherished right of free speech, it would de- light all journalists and newspaper-readers, and it would, we fully believe, bring the abominable nuisance to a sudden and happy end. The obscure men who uphold it are not talking in order to convince the House, or to advance opinion, or to carry any object, but simply and solely to re- assure their constituents as to their being alive. Compulsory silence would be an infringement of their prerogative, but compulsory inaudibility would not, and would be nearly as great a relief to Parliament and to the nation. The Member would then allow business to go on, if only in the hope that he might be heard during its course, and the House would be once more transformed into an assembly for doing work after deliberation.
We are not writing jocularly at all. We sincerely believe that the impotence of Parliament will, if protracted, kill all reverence for Parliament, and destroy the popular attachment to government by representation ; and Parliament is reduced to impotence by all this aimless talk. No one sincerely wishes to be ruled by those whom he despises ; and the toler- ance of the Commons for this torrent of infructuous and un- enlightening words makes them contemptible in the nation's eyes. There is not a public meeting, there is not a vestry session, there is not a tap-room gathering in England, in which there is not a greater desire for positive results than is now shown at Westminster, or one in which the debaters would betray such powerlessness to prevent the exhausting waste of time. If it is not ended speedily, there will be an end of respect for the House ; and in this country, at least, with the end of respect there soon comes an end of power.
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