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Title: The pageant of Parliament, vol. 1 of 2

Author: Michael MacDonagh

Release date: August 13, 2024 [eBook #74244]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1921

Credits: deaurider, John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT, VOL. 1 OF 2 ***





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                      THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT

                                VOL. I




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                |                                   |
                | CONTEMPORARY                      |
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                | PORTRAITS:                        |
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                |                                   |
                | Men of My Day in Public Life. By  |
                | the Rt. Hon. Sir ALGERNON WEST,   |
                | Author of “Recollections,” “One   |
                | City and Many Men.” With many     |
                | Illustrations. Demy 8vo, cloth.   |
                |                                   |
                |                         18s. net. |
                |                                   |
                | Sir Algernon West, at one time    |
                | secretary to Mr. Gladstone when   |
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                | a number of important official    |
                | positions, is well qualified by   |
                | his personal experience and the   |
                | number of his acquaintances in    |
                | the upper regions of the official |
                | world to write this book, which   |
                | includes reminiscences of Sir     |
                | Louis Mallet, Lord Blachford, Lord|
                | Sandford, Sir E. May, Lord Welby, |
                | Matthew Arnold, Sir E. Bradford,  |
                | and many others. Sir Algernon     |
                | West, as his previous work shows, |
                | is a delightful raconteur, and    |
                | the present is one of the most    |
                | informing and charming he has     |
                | written.                          |
                |                                   |
                | T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.      LONDON  |
                |                                   |
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[Illustration: SPEAKER’S CHAIR AND CLERKS’ TABLE IN HOUSE OF COMMONS.

(From Sir Benjamin Stone’s pictures, British Museum.)]




                            THE PAGEANT OF
                              PARLIAMENT


                                  BY

                          MICHAEL MacDONAGH

                 AUTHOR OF “THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE”
                     AND “THE REPORTERS’ GALLERY”


                                VOL. I


                         T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
                       LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE




                      _First published in 1921_


                       (_All rights reserved_)




PREFACE


The purpose of this book, briefly stated, is to describe Parliament
doing its work, as a living organization, in the framing of laws, in
the levying of taxes and in their spending, and in the consideration
of the discontents, anxieties and necessities of the Commonwealth,
with a view to their removal or amelioration. I have embodied in
my book—if I may say so without sounding the loud timbrel too
vain-gloriously—considerable experience as a journalist of General
Elections and by-elections in all parts of Great Britain and Ireland,
and of thirty-five years’ observation of the two Houses of Parliament
from the Reporters’ Gallery, supplemented by a study of their history
and traditions, laws and procedure, the careers of leading statesmen,
and the political principles by which they guided their management of
public affairs.

There are many valuable text-books on the Constitution by learned
lawyers and philosophical writers. My book does not aspire to be
classed with these grave and profound treatises. They are of high
documentary value, but I think it is doubtful whether one can really
get to know Parliament from a study of them alone. They ignore the
human side of Parliament. Often they seem to present Parliament as a
mere abstraction—a thing of rules, principles and theories unrelated
to the human personalities who compose its membership. Parliament
cannot be divorced from life any more than Literature. Rightly to
appreciate Parliament in its strength and in its weakness you must
have an acquaintance with it in being, and an understanding of
the politicians who, whether in office or out of office, whether
in Government or Opposition, bend it, or try to bend it, to their
will. Mr. Speaker Lowther, presiding at a lecture on the House of
Commons, told a story which serves to illustrate the difference
between theory and experience. When Sir William Anson, the author, as
Mr. Lowther truly said, of “a very grave and almost classical work”
on the British Constitution, was being escorted up the floor of the
House of Commons to take the oath and his seat for the first time,
an old and witty Radical member who happened to be sitting beside
Mr. Lowther said to him: “Is this the gentleman who has written a
great work on the House of Commons?” “Yes, that is the very man,”
replied Mr. Lowther. “Well,” the other remarked, “he will find it a
very different place from what he thought it was.” It is idle for
historical writers to try to depreciate the importance of personality
in affairs. Certainly in Parliament it is personality that, even more
than opinion, is the determining factor in every great political
crisis.

I trace the progress of a Parliament, its unfolding and development,
from the General Election, when it is constituted by the votes
of the people, until the day the Sovereign, on the advice of the
Cabinet, pronounces the sentence of its dissolution. I describe
its framework and machinery, its chief officers, its ceremonies,
usages and customs, its contrasts of solemnity and gaiety; the Party
forces which move it and direct its course; how Administrations
are made; the duties of Ministers; the pleasures and woes of the
M.P.; how Public and Private Bills are passed; how Supplies are
voted; the mode in which the proceedings of both Houses are reported
for the newspapers; and the varied elements, aspects and usages
of Parliament, whether it be regarded as the historic temple of
British liberties, equally ancient and venerable with Westminster
Abbey over the way; the scene of great achievements in oratory
and statesmanship; the institution by which, as the incarnation
of the current political thought of the day, questions affecting
the well-being of the community are determined by legislators and
administrators, or the field upon which the continuous and exciting
duel between Parties is fought at close quarters, with all the whims,
oddities, weaknesses of human nature as well as with its noble
qualities. I have made some excursions into the domain of history.
That, of course, was inevitable in writing about Parliament, whose
roots lie so deep in the past. But I have avoided as much as
possible the broad beaten tracks, and have turned down unfrequented
or little-trodden by-ways in search of fresh and apt anecdotes to
enliven my descriptions, in fact and in experience, of the Pageant of
Parliament.

There is one general observation which I should like to make, and
it may not be out of place to make it here. My studies have led to
the discovery that there has hardly ever been a time when it has not
been asserted by someone or other, in writing or in speech, that
the authority of Parliament and the esteem in which it is held have
sadly declined. There is nothing surprising in that. Cynics and wits
of all ages have tried their hand at making great institutions,
as well as great men, butts at which to shoot their ridicule and
contempt. Parliament has not escaped the common fate of the mighty
and the sublime. It has been described as inefficient and corrupt.
Its downfall has often been prophesied. Yet its foundations were
never deeper or better laid than they are to-day, broad-based as they
are on electoral comprehensiveness and the people’s will. Parliament
as I have presented it—even with all reverence and admiration—may
not be perfect. It has its faults. After all, its legislators and
administrators are but human. But it is, perhaps, as fine and perfect
an instrument of democratic government as can humanly be devised.
Ancient and renowned as it is, it stands not remote and apart. On
the contrary, it is of the fabric of the life of the people. It
makes a living reality of the great principle—“Government of the
people, by the people, for the people.” It is the country’s chief
political instrument of progressive civilization. It is idle, in
the light of experience, to talk of its being clumsy, inefficient,
slow. More than ever does it make possible the closest and quickest
impact of the country’s mind upon government and administration. In
the World War it signally proved its practical and speedy utility.
Statesmen obtained quickly and surely all the measures they deemed
necessary for the national safety and the enemy’s defeat. Whenever
Parliament seems to have lost caste the cause may be traced, not
to the institution itself but to its membership, the confusion of
its Parties, the weakness of its Ministry. The remedy is not to
destroy it, and put in its place some untried mode of government
and administration; but, by changing its composition, to restore it
to the proper service of the Nation. Parliament is fully capable of
accomplishing whatever may be asked of it, in the changing thoughts
of men, probably, till the end of all time, and of doing so soberly
and slowly by process of evolution, or with revolutionary rapidity
and completeness, as the situation demands.

                                                    MICHAEL MACDONAGH.




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE
         PREFACE                                                     5

  CHAPTER

      I. THE MEMBER AND THE CONSTITUENCY                            11

     II. WOOING OF THE ELECTORS                                     20

    III. A NEW PARLIAMENT IN THE MAKING                             33

     IV. THE COUNTRY’S VERDICT                                      53

      V. TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THE M.P.                        66

     VI. THE FASCINATION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS                    80

    VII. PALACE OF WESTMINSTER                                      88

   VIII. ASSEMBLING OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT                          103

     IX. TAKING THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE                             115

      X. MR. SPEAKER                                               122

     XI. “ORDER, ORDER!”                                           130

    XII. HOW A GOVERNMENT IS MADE                                  141

   XIII. DISAPPOINTED HOPES                                        154

    XIV. THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS AND THE COUNTRY                166

     XV. OFFICE AND ITS SPOILS                                     175

    XVI. PENSIONS FOR MINISTERS                                    187

   XVII. THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE                                201

  XVIII. DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS TO THE KING                         218

    XIX. THE SERJEANT-AT-ARMS                                      225

     XX. A NIGHT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS                           235




THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT




CHAPTER I

THE MEMBER AND THE CONSTITUENCY


1

At the General Election the Party in office throws down its superb
challenge to the Party in Opposition. “We appeal,” they say, “to
the solemn judgment of the Nation on the political issues in
contention between us.” This invoking of the electors’ decision
at once raises a question of political morality as well as of
constitutional practice—the relation in which a Member of Parliament
rightly stands to his constituency. Is the M.P. a representative
or a delegate? As these capacities may be said to be in a sense
identical, it is well to put the question in a fuller and more
definite form. Is the M.P. an agent sent to the House of Commons
by the electors of a certain geographical district to state their
opinions solely and act in accordance with them, or may he exercise
his own independent judgment, even against the will of those to
whom he owes his seat in the Assembly? Edmund Burke dealt with this
question on the hustings at Bristol, during the General Election
of 1774, in a speech that is memorable in political literature as
a classic statement of the constitutional position of an M.P., in
the opinion of the representative, at least, and also, it must be
said, in the opinion of a large body of the electors. Burke said
it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live
in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most
unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought
to have great weight with him, their opinions high respect, their
business unremitted attention. “But,” Burke goes on, “his unbiased
opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought
not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living.
These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and
the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of
which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you not his
industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays instead of serves
you if he sacrifices it to your opinions.” Nevertheless, Burke was
returned to the House of Commons as Member for Bristol in 1774, for
no more exalted reason than that his political views were in accord
with those of the majority of the constituency in regard to the
matters that then divided Tories and Whigs.

In 1778 Burke supported two Bills that were presented to the House
of Commons, one relaxing some of the restrictions on Irish trade,
the other removing some of the civil disabilities of the Roman
Catholics. These votes were in conformity with Burke’s mature
judgment as a statesman as well as with his Irish prepossessions.
But they were also directly in opposition to the material interests
and the religious tenets of the people of Bristol. That being so,
Burke fell into disfavour, and, however honourably his unpopularity
was earned, it was inevitable that he should be brought to account
by his constituents on the first opportunity. This was afforded by
the General Election of 1780. In a noble speech from the hustings
in defence of his action, he exclaimed: “I did not obey your
instructions. No; I conformed to the instructions of truth and
Nature, and maintained your interests against your opinions with a
constancy that became me.” He went on, in passages of moving power
and earnestness, to declare that he did not stand before them accused
of any venality or neglect of duty. “No,” he cried, “the charges
against me are all of one kind: that I have pushed the principles
of general justice and benevolence too far, further than a cautious
policy would warrant, and further than the opinions of many would go
along with me. In every accident which may happen through life—in
pain, in sorrow, in depression, and distress, I will call to mind
this accusation and be comforted.” But the popular prejudice against
Burke—a prejudice aroused solely by the expression of his liberality
and broad-mindedness in action—was too strong to be overcome. The
great statesman and philosopher was compelled to retire early from
the contest, badly beaten.

The electors of Bristol have been put in the pillory for intolerance
and selfishness, while Burke stands, for all time, a shining
example of self-sacrificing devotion to independence of mind. Many
years have passed since then—years of steady advance in political
enlightenment, and in public duty on the part of electors as well as
of representatives—and questions, more vital and fundamental, arise
constantly for settlement. Yet where to-day is the constituency ready
to elect a man who is opposed to its political views, however great a
genius he may be, and however stainless his honour? There is nothing
more certain than that Bristol would expel Burke in the twentieth
century as it expelled him in the eighteenth, if his political
opinions were distasteful to the majority of the electors, or if his
parliamentary actions were opposed to what they conceived to be their
interests. A hundred years hence the Nation may have reason to bewail
our obtuseness, and, in resentment of the trouble we have caused
them, bitterly to cry out—“Fools, fools, fools!” The thought does
not disturb our political equanimity. We are resolved to yield our
opinions, prepossessions, prejudices to no man who would tell us to
think and act differently—aye, though he be our M.P.!

In no constituency will the plea be accepted that the Member must
be allowed to decide what is best ultimately for it against its
opinions, or even against its prejudices—if, indeed, the one can be
distinguished from the other in politics. It is not only that in this
conflict of one mind against many the wrong-headedness is just as
much likely to exist in the representative as in the constituents.
What is more, the representative system is a check, not on the
people, but for the people. The chief function of the House of
Commons is to protect the people’s rights and extend their social
well-being; and as under our democratic system the people are free to
vote as they please and for whom they please, it is inevitable that
they should constitute themselves, in each constituency, the supreme
judge as to the man best fitted faithfully to discharge a trust that
means so much to them. That is not to say that a Member of Parliament
is expected to outrage his honour and conscience by supporting
measures which he secretly abhors, or believes in his heart to be
detrimental in the long run to the true interests of the Nation,
because they find favour with a majority of his constituents, and to
oppose them would entail the loss of his seat. He votes, of course,
according to his convictions. Nor is it necessary for him to comport
himself in an attitude of servility towards the electorate. Once he
is returned he may, if he so pleases, entirely change his politics,
and cross the floor of the House of Commons without having beforehand
to go back to his constituency, as a delegate in a like situation
would be bound to refer to the body or society of which he was the
chosen spokesman. The constituency has no immediate control over the
representative. They cannot forthwith deprive him of his authority
and position, as a society or other body can recall and supersede
a delegate. But the representative who votes according to personal
convictions which are out of harmony with the political principles of
the majority of his constituency must be ready to pay the penalty of
this conflict between his opinion and their judgment—the penalty of
being summarily dismissed, like Burke, at the earliest opportunity.
In a word, such a representative is rejected by the constituency
for the very same reason that the country frequently discharges a
Government at the General Election—incompatibility of political
temper. The feeling of most electors is that they would be false to
themselves—false, at any rate, to their opinions—were they to vote
for a candidate with whom they were in disagreement on political
issues, no matter how great he might be as a man.


2

Goldsmith, in well-known lines, gently reproves Burke as one—

      Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind,
      And to Party gave up what was meant for mankind.

On the contrary, it would be truer to say that Burke was politically
undone because he gave his grand talents to what he regarded as the
service of mankind rather than to Party, particularly in relation to
the French Revolution, when the action of his Party was, in his view,
opposed to the real interests of humanity. Moreover, Goldsmith uses
the word “Party” in a disparaging sense. His idea of Party politics
seems to have been that it was a game unscrupulously played for the
stakes of mere power and influence, greater wealth and station; and
there are people even to-day who agree with him. It is a strange
notion, and one that appears to me to be entirely without foundation.
Undoubtedly the inspiring force of Party is a sincere regard for
the good of the Commonwealth. It is true there are politicians,
with little principle and less scruple, who become Party men for
the advancement of personal ambitions which are mean and unworthy
in the circumstances. But all the Party movements—Conservative,
Unionist, Liberal, Radical, Labour, Irish Nationalist, Free Trade,
Protection—are each, in the main, an honest effort, however you or I
may think it mistaken, to effect the greatest good of the greatest
number. As to the ultimate object, all Parties are agreed. It is the
methods by which this common end had best be attained that creates
the fundamental differences between Parties and excites political
antagonisms.

“Party,” says Burke, “is a body of men united for promoting by their
joint endeavour the national interest upon some particular principle
upon which they are all agreed.” No one else has written more
powerfully in support of the view that Party discipline is essential
to strong and stable parliamentary government. Yet Burke himself
was a most indifferent Party man. He had that stern independence
of judgment which, refusing to yield even in details, is fatal
to the unity of purpose and action without which efficient Party
organization is impossible. From the Party point of view, Burke, with
all his political philosophy, was just what Fox described him—“a
damned wrong-headed fellow!” The theory advanced by Burke that a
Member of Parliament ought to be returned unfettered by political
pledges because it is his bounden duty to exercise his free and
independent judgment, irrespective of the constituency’s opinions
and desires, on the public questions that arise for decision, is an
exalted counsel of perfection. Perhaps it makes a demand too stern
and unbending for human nature under any form of Constitution,
however Utopian or perfect. In a Parliament based on the Party system
it is impossible of acceptance. The power of the House of Commons
is exercised not according to any fixed rule of law, but according
to certain broad general principles—Justice, Equity, Reason—and the
current interpretation of these principles is guided by the dominant
political opinions of the day.

Members of Parliament are, in practice if not in form, Party
delegates. To them the majority of the electorate have relegated
their authority to support or oppose in the House of Commons the
controversial political questions of the time in the light of certain
Party principles. Whatever local character the M.P. possesses may be
said to disappear as soon as he presents the return of the writ to
the Clerk at the Table of the House of Commons, shakes hands with the
Speaker, and then, amid Party cheers, makes his way to the Liberal,
or Unionist, or Labour benches, according to the Party views he was
really chosen to support. By that action he stands revealed as a
Party delegate. And yet he is a representative, in a sense deeper
and wider than that which prevailed of old, before the uprise of the
powerful Party organization. He is a representative not solely of the
local views of his constituency, but of one section of the paramount
and possibly abiding opinions of the Nation as a whole.


3

The country being, in the main, divided politically into three chief
groups of thought—Conservative, Liberal and Labour—the machinery
for the promotion of political principles and Party interests is
principally supplied by three great rival organizations. These are
the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations,
controlled by the Conservative Central Office; the National Liberal
Federation, controlled by the Liberal Central Association; and the
Labour Party, controlled by the National Executive. Each of these
organizations is aided by several subsidiary but independent bodies,
which are formed for the promotion of sectional political interests
within the main movement to which they are attached.

The systems of the National Union, the Liberal Federation and the
Labour Party are much alike in methods. Those of the two ancient
political Parties may be taken for the purposes of illustration. In
most constituencies there is a branch of each organization. These
local bodies elect the council for the county or for the borough.
These councils send delegates to the annual conferences of the
Conservative Union, or the Liberal Federation, by which the programme
of each Party is considered, revised and confirmed, and a central
executive is appointed with supreme authority. The branches look
after Party interests locally. The Federation, or the Union, speak
for the Liberalism or Conservatism of the country as a whole.

But in reality Party organization is controlled, for the
Conservatives by the Conservative Central Office, and for the
Liberals by the Liberal Central Association. Both the Union and the
Federation are founded upon a popular and representative basis, and
their annual meetings, at least, are open to the Press. They each
fulfil the double functions of educating political thought in the
country, and of enabling the Party leaders in Parliament to gauge
the drift of opinion within the Party on current questions of the
day. But of the working of the Conservative Central Office and the
Liberal Central Association little or nothing is made public—nothing,
at any rate, that is really important. What is known is that each
consists of a staff of officials directed by a Chief Agent, who
is appointed by the parliamentary leaders of the Party. The Chief
Party Whip in the House of Commons is also a leading director of
the affairs of each of these central bodies. In each is vested the
expenditure of the Party fund, subscribed by wealthy supporters, and
popularly supposed to be immense. Each has a voice in the selection
of candidates. The favour of headquarters is often the best passport
to selection by the local association. Each body has an agent
permanently residing in constituencies where political opinion is
pretty evenly divided. “Give the men a smoking concert,” these Party
agents are advised in a little book called _How to Win an Election_,
“where they can obtain a reasonable quantity of good, pure, wholesome
beer, rather than a tea opened with a touch of the religious
element.” Each body also has gentlemen continually on the road—rival
political travellers, as it were, bringing round to the electors
the newest and most attractive samples of principles, Liberal or
Conservative.

Such is the British variant of the American Caucus. It was imported
from the country of its origin, in 1873, by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain—a
man who has profoundly influenced Party tactics and strategy, as
well as political opinion, in Great Britain—and was first set up
in Birmingham under the direction of Mr. Francis Schnadhorst. The
Caucus was at once attacked as a most mischievous element in public
life. It was contended by old-fashioned Liberals and Tories alike
that it would make impossible the free expression of the will of
the constituency. The electors would become an unthinking, passive
mass under the dominion of headquarters, and the destiny of the
Nation—controlled as it is by the exercise of the franchise—would
pass into the hands, perhaps, of unprincipled and artful demagogues.
But the Caucus had come to stay. It was adopted by the Conservatives
as well as by the Liberals. In fact, the idea of forming a Party
organization in this country first originated with Disraeli.

In the General Election of 1868 the Conservative Government, of which
Disraeli was Prime Minister, was hopelessly beaten at the polls.
There was practically no organization of the Conservatives at the
time, and the work of bringing it into existence was entrusted by
Disraeli to a young barrister who had been in the House of Commons
for a year or two—John Eldon Gorst. Gorst began by establishing
the “Central Conservative Office.” He then proceeded to create a
permanent system of local bodies throughout the country for the
registration of voters, linked them up in the National Union, and
kept at headquarters a register of approved candidates from which
the local bodies could make their own selection. The dissolution of
the Liberal Parliament in 1874, unexpected though it was, found the
Conservatives accordingly quite prepared, and they returned from
the polls victorious. The Liberals then set earnestly to work on the
same lines, and, improving upon the Conservative example, produced an
even more perfect electoral machine. In 1877 Schnadhorst founded the
National Liberal Federation, and, becoming the chief organizer and
electoral adviser of the Liberal Party, it was to his exertions that
the immense Gladstonian victory of 1880 was mainly due. Schnadhorst,
on his retirement in 1887, was presented with 10,000 guineas by the
Liberal Party as a slight recognition of his great services to their
cause.

In truth, the rise of the highly developed and powerful Central Party
organization was a destined stage of political development in Great
Britain as well as in the United States. An essential adjunct of a
constitutional system like the British—the two fundamental principles
of which are democracy and Party government—is the Party organization
for the education of public opinion in its tenets, and for having its
forces ready to take the field at the General Election, the outcome
of which is the supremacy of one Party or the other in the House
of Commons for a term of years, and, consequently, the paramount
influence of one set of political principles or the other in the
government of the Nation. Moreover, the effect of Party organization
has, on the whole, been beneficent. It is hardly too much to say that
to it is due the healthy political vitality of Great Britain. It has
aroused an interest in public affairs and government, and by the
propagation of ideas it has given to the democracy coherent political
convictions. If public opinion were unorganized, its aimless ebbing
and flowing—knowing not what it really desired—its tendency to
separate into numerous factions, some of them, possibly, with wild
and visionary aims, would have led in time to the instability of the
Constitution. The Party system, on the other hand, has undoubtedly
contributed to the strength and security of the State by bringing
about the convergence of the various streams of political thought
into three main channels, each with settled principles, Conservative,
Liberal and Labour in tendency, and pursuing ends that are on the
whole national as well as rational.




CHAPTER II

WOOING OF THE ELECTORS


1

Party organization reached its highest point of perfection and
influence before the outbreak of the World War in 1914. Yet even at
that period it was remarkable how small both the Conservative Union
and the Liberal Association were in actual membership. It was unusual
to find among one’s acquaintances, however wide the circle, anyone
who belonged to either organization. Their power lay in propaganda
and direction. And if millions of voters acknowledged their sway,
there were other millions, though not quite so many, perhaps, over
whom they had no influence. At many General Elections before the War
not more than 50 or 60 per cent. of the electors went to the polls.
The absentees were equally numerous in electoral contests immediately
after the War.

Who are they, these silent voters, who constitute so unknown a
quantity, so sore a puzzle, to the Party managers, and sometimes
confound their nicest calculations? A man’s politics depends upon his
individual temperament and point of view, but, like his religion, it
is largely the accident of his birth and home environment or early
education. I have seen an election address in which the candidate
said: “I was born a Conservative on August 29, 1848.” Another man
is a Liberal because of the chance that it was Liberalism and not
Conservatism which he unconsciously imbibed at his father’s knee. In
fact, the sentry in Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera was not far
wrong in singing that every little boy or girl who’s born into the
world alive—

      Is either a little Liberal,
      Or else a little Conservative.

But the silent voter seems to have disdained to adopt fixed and
settled political opinions—like the generality of mankind—either by
inheritance or by an effort of thought. It may be that he is ignorant
of the object of politics, in the general sense of the word; it
may be that he knows what it implies, but thinks it unimportant.
At any rate, the cries of Party make no appeal to him. He owes
allegiance to none of the three great political organizations, nor
to any of the many smaller groups formed for the advancement of
particular purposes. He is scornful of the mere Party man. “Hack,”
indeed, is the word he contemptuously uses. In his opinion ordinary
politicians are but gramophones which mechanically grind out echoes
of the catch cries that emanate from the Party headquarters or the
Party newspapers. Indeed, the Party system appears to him a thing
eminently absurd. He sees nothing in it but three scolding political
organizations condemning each other’s methods and belittling each
other’s achievements, bent solely on the possession of office with
its attendant prestige and benefits. In his self-righteousness he
accounts himself the ideal elector who, animated by a high sense of
public duty, refuses to espouse any side in the Party struggle, and,
taking the welfare of the Nation as his guiding light, brings free
and reasoned judgment to bear upon the rival political policies at
issue in the General Election. On the other hand, the staunch Party
adherent calls him a “wobbler”—a sort of backboneless creature who
cannot stand steadily upon his legs, much less four square to all the
winds that blow, and who, when he votes, is influenced by some petty
mood of the moment.

But whatever he may be—whether the idealistic free and enlightened
elector, or a creature of unstable mind, whether he represents a
low standard of political intelligence, or the highest form of
integrity applied to politics—undoubtedly he it is who swings the
electoral pendulum. He is the human instrument for the working out
of that curious law of electioneering by which, before the World
War, with but little irregularity, one Party succeeded the other in
office, since the first really democratic extension of the franchise
by Disraeli’s Reform Act of 1867, when the principle of household
suffrage was established. The “wobblers” are not organized. They
have no newspapers. No common consciousness of similar aims unifies
or unites them. They do not appear upon platforms nor in audiences,
nor do they feel impelled to write to the Press. They keep their
own counsel, and rarely talk politics even in their own circles.
They are, in fact, ignorant of each other’s existence. Yet their
political influence is immense. It is not that they succeed in having
themselves largely represented in Parliament. A peer who sits on the
“cross benches” in the House of Lords—right in the middle of the
floor, unattached, between the Government and the Opposition—is the
closest analogue of the “wobbler” to be found in Parliament. Nor
are they successful in having their political views considered in
legislation and administration. Indeed, it is likely that they are a
very varied lot in ideas, sentiments, and tastes. Almost invariably
non-politicians are dead against change. So long as things go on
pretty much as usual they are content to stand aside. But if it
were possible to hold a convention of “wobblers,” and they drew up
a political programme, we should have, no doubt, a fearful mixture
of Toryism, Liberalism, Socialism, of the principles of free trade
and tariff reform, of open doors and closed ports, of loaves big and
little, of nationalization and private enterprise, of the whole hog
or none.

The power which is wielded by this silent reserve of voters, as
opposed to the crowd who belong to organizations, or who go to
meetings and make their opinions known, is this—that in many
constituencies where the steadfast Liberal, Conservative, and Labour
supporters are evenly balanced, they exercise, as it were, the
casting vote. In them may be said to lie the decision of the fateful
question of the General Election—Shall the Government of the British
Empire be Conservative or Liberal or Labour for a term of years? In
the mass they may be moved by opposing sentiments and motives, they
may be pursuing widely different ends. Many of them, no doubt, are
of the kind who can only support a cause so long as it is favoured
by fortune. But, as a rule, they are friendly disposed towards the
“outs.” “Let the ‘outs’ have a turn of office,” they say, as they
place their cross on the ballot paper in the polling booth. Thus
swings the electoral pendulum to and fro.

Occasionally there is a wave of national feeling—whether it be
enthusiasm for the new cause, or absolute weariness of the old,
which, as in the extraordinary General Election of 1906 that brought
the Liberals back to power after many years in the wilderness, sweeps
over the country like a tidal wave overthrowing the barriers set up
by the Party organizations and obliterating the lines of orthodox
Party politics. Then it is that the non-political electors who do
not trouble to vote on ordinary occasions flock to the polls in
their hundreds of thousands, that numbers of voters who held their
opinions weakly go over to the other side, and that the candidates
of the Party in power are made to feel the full weight of their
combined wrath. But this rarely happens. In the periods of calm which
more often mark the public life of England, when there are no really
fundamental or vital differences between parties, and interest in
politics is, therefore, at a low ebb, when the General Election means
no more than a struggle to get one set of Ministers out and another
set of Ministers in, victory for Liberalism, Conservatism, or Labour
depends on organization and persistent urging during the actual
contest, each on their own particular supporters, to fail not, on
their Party allegiance, to go to the polling booths.


2

The contrast between elections in the nineteenth and in the twentieth
centuries is very striking and interesting. We see the good effects
of Party in sweeping away electoral corruption, and also its
drawbacks in limiting the scope of independent opinion and character.
One of the most remarkable elections ever held was that which led to
the return of John Stuart Mill for Westminster, as an independent
Member, in 1865. Mill’s views were uncommon at the time. He held that
a Member of Parliament should not have to incur one farthing of cost
for undertaking a public duty. The expenses of an election ought, in
his opinion, to be borne as a public charge, either by the State or
by the locality. Mill also contended that the M.P. should not be
expected to give any of his time or labour to the local interests.
He declared that he himself had no desire to enter Parliament. He
thought he could do more as a writer in the way of propagating
his opinions. He declined to conduct a personal canvass of the
constituency. Mill thus set at defiance all the accepted notions of
right electioneering. A well-known literary man, he relates, was
heard to say that the Almighty Himself would have no chance of being
elected on such a programme. Yet Mill was returned by a majority of
some hundreds over his “Conservative competitor,” as he calls his
opponent. And all his expenses were paid by the constituency. It was
impossible in the state of Party feeling even then existing that so
independent a Member as Mill could be allowed to remain very long in
Parliament. So Mill was thrown out at the General Election of 1868.
“That I should not have been elected at all would not have required
any explanation,” he writes in his _Autobiography_. “What excites
curiosity is that I should have been elected the first time, or,
having been elected then, should have been defeated afterwards.”
The explanation was that his writings gave as much confidence
to Conservatives as they did to the Liberals that he would be a
supporter of their cause. The reason he was rejected was that in
Parliament he pleased neither the one nor the other.

Macaulay, like Mill, was opposed to canvassing. He declared that an
elector who surrendered his vote to supplication, or to the caresses
of his baby, forgot his duty as much as if he sold it for a banknote.
In his contest for the representation of Leeds, in 1832, he refrained
from asking a single elector personally for his vote. He wrote:

  The suffrage of an elector ought not to be asked or to be given
  as a personal favour. It is as much for the interest of the
  constituents to choose well, as it can be for the interest of the
  candidate to be chosen. To request an honest man to vote against
  his conscience is an insult. The practice of canvassing is quite
  reasonable under a system in which men are sent to Parliament to
  serve themselves. It is the height of absurdity under a system in
  which men are sent to Parliament to serve the public.

Gladstone, on the other hand, nor only recognized that canvassing
was essential to successful electioneering, but also positively
enjoyed it. He, too, was a candidate in that General Election which
followed the passing of the great Reform Bill of 1832. He once said,
towards the end of his long life, that in all the stirring and
momentous political scenes in which he had been an actor—fighting
for a seat in the House of Commons, making Cabinets, taking part in
historic decisions on peace and war—there was nothing to compare for
excitement with his first contest for Newark in 1832, out of which
he came victorious. There were 2,000 houses in the borough. It was
then the custom for the candidates in all elections personally to
visit every house, whether occupied by a voter or not, to solicit the
elector for his vote and the non-elector for his or her influence.
Gladstone went five times to every house in Newark, thus making
10,000 calls in all. In the twentieth century most candidates
are disposed to dispense with canvassing altogether. It must be
repugnant to sensitive souls, or to those with a quick response to
the ridiculous, to have to go from house to house following the
traditionally seductive ways of the aspirant to a seat in the House
of Commons. Perhaps the prettiest compliments that have ever been
paid, outside those of the lover to his mistress, have been paid by
candidates canvassing electors. Kissing even played a leading part
in the art in the gallant days of old. The custom had its drawbacks.
Did not the eloquent auctioneer who offered for sale the notorious
borough of Gatton, in Surrey, with its estate and mansion as well
as the power of electing two M.P.’s, set out, among its advantages:
“No claims of insolent electors to evade; no impossible promises
to make; no tinkers’ wives to kiss”! So kissing by candidates has
fallen into disfavour, and the most candidates are expected to do is
to pinch the cheeks of babies or chuck them under the chin, in the
hope of inducing the parents to recognize the merits of the Unionist
or Liberal or Labour cause. Perhaps canvassing ought to be included
in the practices which are declared by statute to be illegal at
elections. But its effect on the issue of the contest, especially
in constituencies where the Parties are rather evenly divided, is
sometimes decisive. The feeling of many electors is that in their
votes they possess a favour to bestow. They like to be asked for it,
and the candidate who comes to their houses, hat in hand, soliciting
their support, usually gets it, at least from the non-party electors
or the “wobblers.”

In days gone by, even candidates with the highest sense of virtue
and honour, public and private, had to woo the electors by a
lavish expenditure of money. Lord Cochrane stood as a Whig for
Honiton at a by-election in the spring of 1806 against Augustus
Cavendish Bradshaw, who sought “a renewal of the confidence of the
constituency” on accepting a place in the Tory Government. Bradshaw
had paid five guineas a vote at the former election, and on this
occasion expected to get returned unopposed at the reduced rate of
two guineas; but on the appearance of Cochrane in the field he was
compelled to raise his bounty to the old figure. “You need not ask
me, my lord, who I vote for,” said a burgess to Cochrane; “I always
vote for Mister Most.” The gallant seaman, however, refused to bribe
at all, and got well beaten in consequence. How he turned his defeat
to account makes an amusing story. After the election he sent the
bellman round the town, directing those who had voted for him to go
to his agent, Mr. Townsend, and receive ten guineas. The novelty of
a defeated candidate paying double the current price of a vote—or,
indeed, paying anything at all—made a great sensation. Cochrane
states in his _Autobiography of a Seaman_ that his agent assured him
he could have secured his return for less money. As the popular voice
was in his favour a trifling judicious expenditure would have turned
the scale. “I told Mr. Townsend,” he writes, “that such payment would
have been bribery, which would not have accorded with my character as
a reformer of abuses—a declaration which seemed highly to amuse him.
Notwithstanding the explanation that the ten guineas was paid as a
reward for having withstood the influence of bribery, the impression
produced on the electoral mind by such unlooked-for liberality was
simply this—that if I gave ten guineas for being beaten, my opponent
had not paid half enough for being elected: a conclusion which, by a
similar process of reasoning, was magnified into the conviction that
each of his voters had been cheated out of five pounds five.” In the
October following there was a General Election. Cochrane was again a
candidate for Honiton, and, although he had said nothing about paying
for his votes, was returned at the head of the poll. The burgesses
were convinced that on this occasion he was “Mister Most.” Surely it
was impossible to conceive any limits to the bounty of a successful
candidate who in defeat was so generous as voluntarily to pay ten
guineas a vote! They got—not a penny! Cochrane told them that bribery
was against his principles. What the trustful electors said about
their representative would not bear repetition here. But there was
another dissolution a few months afterwards, and Cochrane did not
dare to face outraged Honiton.


3

It was not often, however, that burgesses were outwitted by a
candidate. A story that is told of the Irish borough of Cashel
shows how the voters usually scored. The electors, locally known
as “Commoners,” fourteen in number, were notoriously corrupt, and
always sold their votes to the highest bidder. It was for this
constituency, by the way, that that very prim and straight-laced
man, Sir Robert Peel, was first returned to Parliament in 1809. The
usual price of a vote in Cashel was £20. The popular candidate at one
election, anxious to win the seat honestly and not to spend a penny
in corruption, got the parish priest to preach a sermon at Mass, on
the Sunday before the polling, against the immorality of trafficking
in the franchise. The good man, indeed, went so far in the course of
his impressive sermon as to declare that those who betrayed a public
trust by selling their votes would go to hell. Next day the candidate
met one of the electors and asked what was the effect of Sunday’s
sermon. “Your honour,” said he, “votes have risen. We always got
£20 for a vote before we knew it was a sin to sell it; but as his
reverence tells us that we will be damned for selling our votes, we
can’t for the future afford to take less than £40.” The borough was
ultimately disfranchised for corruption.

Bribery did not always mean the direct purchase of votes for money
down. Many whimsical dodges were adopted to influence voters
without running any great risk from the law. Cheap articles were
bought from the voters at fancy prices, or a valuable commodity was
sold to them at a fraction of its value. At an election at Sudbury
in 1826 a candidate purchased from a greengrocer two cabbages for
£10 and a plate of gooseberries for £25. He paid the butcher, the
grocer, the baker, the tailor, the printer, the billsticker, at
equally extravagant rates. At Great Marlow an elector got a sow and
a litter of nine for a penny. Candidates also suddenly developed
hobbies for buying birds, animals, and articles of various kinds
which caught their eye during the house-to-house canvass. Some were
enthusiastic collectors of old almanacs; others were passionately
fond of children’s white mice. “Name your price,” said the candidate.
“Is a pound too much?” replied the voter. “Nonsense, man,” said
the candidate; “here are two guineas.” Rivers of beer were also
set flowing in the constituencies. The experience of the Earl of
Shaftesbury (the philanthropist and friend of the working classes)
was common. As Lord Ashley he contested Dorset in the anti-Reform
interest at the General Election of 1831, which followed the
rejection of the first Reform Bill, and was defeated. His expenses
amounted to £15,600, of which £12,525 was paid to the owners of inns
and public-houses for refreshments—“free drinks” to the people.
In those days some of the most respectable as well as renowned
of parliamentarians got their chance by means of a judicious
distribution of five-pound notes among the electors.

When bribery was thus avowed and flagrant, no limit could be placed
to the possible cost of a seat in the House of Commons. Success
was won, or defeat sustained, in many an election at the price of
bankruptcy and ruin. The most expensive contest in the annals of
electioneering was the fight in 1807 for the representation of
Yorkshire. The candidates were Lord Milton, son of Earl Fitzwilliam
(Whig); the Hon. Henry Lascelles, son of Lord Harewood (Tory); and
William Wilberforce, the famous advocate of the abolition of slavery
(Independent). The poll was taken in the Castle yard at York in
thirteen booths, which, in accordance with the existing law, were
kept open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for fifteen days. Wilberforce and
Milton were returned. The total number of electors polled was 23,007,
and the three candidates spent between them £300,000, or about £13
for each vote polled. Wilberforce’s bill ran into £58,000, which had
to be defrayed by public subscription. A good deal of this money went
into the pockets of the electors. Therefore it is hardly surprising
to read in the debates on the Reform Bill of 1832 the contention
advanced that a seat in the House was private property, that the
possession of a vote was a source of income, and consequently that
to take one or the other from a man without compensation, by the
abolition of small boroughs and fancy franchises, was as much robbery
as to deprive a fundholder of his dividends, or a landlord of his
rents.


4

All this but emphasizes the purity of the wooing of the electors
to-day. The various stringent Acts against bribery and corruption
carried in the latter half of the nineteenth century have not been
passed in vain. In 1854 bribery was made a criminal offence by the
Corrupt Practices Prevention Act. Election petitions by defeated
candidates claiming seats on the ground that there had been corrupt
practices were formerly tried by committees of the House of Commons.
Often the decisions were partisan, and directly in the teeth of the
evidence. Yet the House of Commons for centuries so jealously guarded
its own jurisdiction over all matters relating to the election of
its members that it rejected proposals of a judicial tribunal. At
length in 1868 the Parliamentary Elections Act was passed, and since
then two Judges of the King’s Bench Division try petitions, and
report the result to the Speaker. After the General Election of 1880
there were no fewer than ninety-five petitions impugning returns
on various grounds, including bribery, intimidation, personation
of dead or absent voters, and most of them were sustained. After
the General Election of 1885 there was not a single petition.
Between these electoral contests a statute was passed—the Corrupt
and Illegal Practices Prevention Act of 1883—which has done much to
make parliamentary elections pure. Its main purpose was the fixing
of a maximum scale of electioneering expenditure, varying in amount
according to the character and extent of the constituency, and each
candidate was required to make a statement of his expenses to the
returning officer within thirty-five days after the contest. The
expenditure of an election—other than the personal expenses of the
candidate and the returning officers’ charges—was limited by this
Act in England and Scotland to £350 for the first 2,000 electors
in boroughs, and £650 for the first 2,000 electors in counties,
with accretions of £30 in the case of boroughs, and £60 in the case
of counties, for every additional 1,000 electors. The personal
expenses of a candidate were confined to £100. The General Election
of 1880—the last election in which expenditure within the law was
practically unlimited, and, as the disclosures in the hearing of
the petitions showed, was most excessive—cost the candidates over
£2,000,000, or about 15s. for each vote polled. The General Election
of 1885, the first held under the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, cost
only £1,026,646, or 4s. 5d. per vote. The tendency of the expenditure
is still downwards. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1918,
the expenses of a candidate must not exceed an amount equal to 7d.
for each elector on the register, in the case of counties, and 5d. in
the case of boroughs, exclusive of personal expenses. The fee paid
to the election agent must not exceed £75 in counties and £50 in
boroughs.

Still, the question is sometimes asked in all seriousness: Is
electioneering really any purer now than it was in the days before
the first Reform Act? It is admitted that seats in the House of
Commons are no longer openly purchased, that individual voters are
no longer directly bribed. But it is said that the old blunt and
barefaced forms of corruption have simply given place to newer and
subtler methods of bribery, which are just as dishonourable to
those who give and those who take. A candidate does not now buy a
constituency; he “nurses” it. In other words, he tries to secure
the good will and support of the electors by subscriptions and
donations for various local objects. Against this practice, with
its many by-ways of expenditure, there is no law. The objects for
which money is thus spent divide themselves into two classes—religion
and philanthropy, sport and amusements. Is a peal of bells required
for the parish church? Does the chapel aspire to a steeple? Is a
billiard-table wanted by the young men’s society? Are coal and
blankets needed by the poor during the winter? The open-handed
candidate is only waiting for a hint in order to supply the necessary
cheque. Then there are football and cricket clubs to which the
candidate is expected to give financial assistance. And give it
he does gladly, for, as he says, it is the duty of public men to
encourage national sports and pastimes. If the stories one hears be
true, it would seem, indeed, as if the old tradition that a vote is a
saleable commodity, and that parliamentary elections are held, not so
much that the country may be governed in accordance with the wishes
of the people as that the constituency may profit financially in
one way or another by the return of a representative, still to some
extent survives. It is even said that impudent individual demands are
made on the purse of the candidate. They range from five shillings
for getting a voter’s clothes or tools out of pawn to a five-pound
note for sending an invalid supporter to the seaside.

But these attempts to blackmail the candidate are, when all is said
and done, exceedingly rare. According as the franchise has been
broadened, as the property qualification for the vote has been
reduced, the purer have elections become. This is due to some extent
partly to the fear of the law against corrupt and illegal practices,
and partly to the size of the constituencies, which are now so large
that the purchase of a sufficient number of votes to decide the issue
is beyond the capacity of most purses. But I think it is more due to
the sturdy pride and self-respect of the new electors, the working
classes generally, as well as their sense of public duty, which have
put an end to the old petitional extension of hands for doles in
return for votes. Happily, there is no gainsaying the seriousness
and responsibility with which, on the whole, the franchise is now
exercised. Taking them all in all, the voters go to the polling
booths animated by a fine public spirit—respect for the Constitution,
devotion to the State—which it is not too much to say is aroused and
kept purely aflame by their different political convictions, anti
without a thought of individual gain.

Moreover, Party organization makes a representative largely
independent, not only of the local whims and caprices of his
constituency, but of any section of the electors who may look
for favours in return for their support. The representative may
occasionally be hard pressed by local interests, but as a rule
these are regarded as subsidiary to Party considerations, to the
supreme purpose of each Party to obtain control of the machinery
of Government. Therefore the secret of success in the wooing
of the electors to-day is not the distribution of blankets or
billiard-tables. It might perhaps be said that it is not even wit,
wisdom and eloquence in the candidate—though, of course, these
possessions greatly count—much less complete independence of Party
in public affairs. It is adherence to one Party ticket or the
other; it is agreement with the Party opinions of the majority of
the constituency. The victorious candidate does not always owe his
election to his personal success in turning the majority of the
voters round to his side. As a rule, his election means simply that
he has had the good fortune to present himself to a constituency
which, in the main, was already in agreement with his political
opinions. And instead of five-pound notes, he is expected to
distribute only Party promises and pledges.




CHAPTER III

A NEW PARLIAMENT IN THE MAKING


1

“Register, register, register!” Such was the emphasized advice which
Sir Robert Peel gave to his Tory followers so long ago as 1837. At
that time Party organization as we now understand it was unknown, and
each elector had to see for himself that he got on the register. The
motto of all political Parties in these days of thorough organization
is more than ever, “Register, register, register!” For when the
General Election comes the fate of Parties is decided beforehand
by the extent to which their respective adherents have got on the
register of voters. The Party complexion of the successful candidate
in any constituency is always a reflection of the predominant
political colour of the register of voters.

The preparation of the register of voters, which was first provided
for by the Reform Act of 1832, is the duty of the local authorities,
and is discharged, under the Representation of the People Act,
1918, at the public expense, one-half being paid out of the local
rates and the other out of the National Exchequer. The registration
officers are the town clerk in borough divisions, and the clerk of
the county council in county divisions. The qualifications for a vote
are, for men, twenty-one years of age and six months’ residence as a
householder or lodger, or occupation of business premises; and for
women, thirty years of age, possessing herself the local government
franchise by reason of six months’ ownership or tenancy of land or
premises in her own right, or being the wife of a local government
elector. Voters’ lists are first compiled by the registration
officers from the rate-books, supplemented by a house-to-house
inquiry to get the names of householders whose rates are paid
through the landlord and of persons qualified as wives or lodgers.
Printed copies of these provisional or draft lists are exhibited
for public reference in the town or county halls, post offices,
public libraries, and at the doors of churches and chapels in each
constituency. This is done to afford all concerned an opportunity of
seeing whether they are on the lists, and, if necessary, of giving
notice to the returning officer of claims to make corrections or
additions.

It is curious what little attention is given to these huge and
unwieldy bundles of printed matter. Few voters are moved to examine
them. Small boys take a real interest in them, and that is usually
of an impish and destructive kind. Otherwise the lists are too
often left neglected. The average man apparently never troubles
himself about his vote until a contest arises in his constituency
or the General Election approaches. There seems to be in his mind
the supposition that it is the duty of some person or some body—he
frequently knows not who or what—to see that he shall be in the
position to vote when the time comes for the exercise of this
privilege of his citizenship. And in a sense the average man is
right. There is a person keenly anxious that he should get the vote
to which he is entitled—the local agent of the Conservative, Liberal,
or Labour Party.

To this most important branch of political work the central offices
of the great political organizations give the closest attention. At
one time large sums of money were spent in registration, provided
partly from the funds of the central offices, and partly by the
sitting Members, to maintain their interest, as it was called, or
by prospective candidates of other politics who were “nursing”
constituencies. No sooner did a stranger come to reside in a
constituency—especially where Parties are somewhat evenly balanced,
and where, in consequence, the rival Party organizations were highly
active—than he was waited upon by the Party canvassers to ascertain
his political opinions. The local organization of the Party to which
he gave adhesion saw that his name duly appeared on the register of
voters. That is so to some extent yet, though it is not carried to
the same degree of Party competition as formerly. The Representation
of the People Act, 1918, lifted registration above being a mere
wrangle between rival political agents over the body of the claimant
to a vote, by establishing the principle that it was the business of
the State to see that every qualified person was put on the register
of voters, despite the disfranchising activity of the Party agents
and the ignorance or apathy of the individual citizen. Each Party now
confines its operations to seeing that qualified voters of its own
political colour are put on the register and kept there. And it must
be said that as the result of their competing watchfulness a register
as complete and accurate as possible is usually obtained.

The Representation of the People Act, 1918, also reformed the
procedure of the courts for correcting and amending the voters’ lists
and passing them finally as the register of voters. Formerly these
courts were presided over by revising barristers who were lawyers of
not less than seven years’ standing appointed by the senior Judge
of the summer assizes for the constituencies within his circuit,
and were paid 200 guineas each for deciding claims and objections.
The political Parties used to be represented in the revision courts
by their agents, who left nothing undone to put on the register as
many as possible of their own supporters, and to put off as many as
possible of their opponents. Since 1918 the revision of the lists has
been done by the town clerks, or the clerks of the county councils,
as registration officers. I saw some of the reformed revision
courts at work in London for the first time in 1918. The procedure
was quite simple. The town clerk sat at the head of the table with
the voters’ lists before him, and the overseer by his side to help
him in his duties. At the table also were the agents of the local
Party organizations. The lists were gone through. Errors in the
spelling of names or the numbering of residences were corrected;
duplicate entries were struck out. It was all done smoothly and
rapidly. There was none of the old contention between the Party
agents for the insertion of this name or the omission of that which
I frequently had to listen to in the old revision courts. Claims
were numerous, and the disposition was to allow them. On the other
hand, the objections were few, and were mostly formal. When the full
register of voters for each division is printed a copy is to be
seen and consulted at the office of the registration officer of the
division—the town hall or the county council hall. The part of the
register relating to each unit of the division, ward, or district is
hung in local post offices, the public libraries and church porches.


2

Everything is now in readiness for the dissolution of Parliament. The
two Houses of Lords and Commons are dissolved by Royal Proclamation
issued by the King “by and with the advice of Our Privy Council”
(which means the Ministers) and under the Great Seal of the United
Kingdom. In order to keep the existence of Parliament as nearly
continuous as possible, a new Parliament is summoned at the same
moment that the old is dissolved. Hence in the Royal Proclamation the
Sovereign declares his desire to meet as soon as may be his people,
and to have their advice in Parliament, and accordingly requires the
Lord Chancellors of Great Britain and Ireland to issue forthwith the
writs for causing the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons who
are to serve in the said Parliament to be duly returned and give
their attendance. Thereupon the machinery of a General Election is
put into motion by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery (an officer of
the Crown in attendance upon the Lord Chancellor in Parliament, with
offices in the precincts of the House of Lords), and does not cease
working until the two Houses are again constituted and in session.

Various kinds of writs are issued from the Crown Office. There
are the writs of summons to attend in Parliament, which are sent
to the temporal and spiritual peers. There are three classes of
peerages which carry an hereditary right to a seat in the House of
Lords—peerages of England created before 1707; peerages of Great
Britain, created between the Union with Scotland in 1707 and the
Union with Ireland in 1801; and peerages of the United Kingdom
created since 1801. The twenty-six Bishops who hold peerages by right
of office and the twenty-eight Irish representative peers who are
elected for life by the peerage of Ireland also receive writs, but
sixteen Scottish representative peers elected for each Parliament
by the peerage of Scotland assembled at Holyrood House, Edinburgh,
do not. However, the writs with which we are now more particularly
concerned are those for the election of the Commons of Great Britain.
They are sent by the Clerk of the Crown to the returning officers
of the constituencies—in county areas the sheriffs, in urban areas
the mayor or chairman of the borough council—commanding them, in the
name of the King, to “cause election to be made according to law” of
Members to serve in the new Parliament; and “to cause the names of
such Members, when so elected, whether they be present or absent, to
be certified to us in Our Chancery without delay.” The writs for a
General Election are, in fact, always prepared in the Crown Office
and ready to be issued in case there might be any sudden dissolution
of Parliament before it has run its prescribed term of five years.
They are printed on parchment in imitation copper-plate handwriting,
with blanks for names and dates to be filled in by a penman, and are
oblong in shape, about 15 inches across by 12 inches in length.

Years ago the transmission of the writs was a dignified and onerous
and also a profitable duty. Messengers of the Great Seal, as they
were called, were despatched through the country post-haste with
the writs for personal delivery to the returning officers, and they
collected five guineas for a writ for a borough and ten guineas for a
writ for a city or a county. Under this system grave irregularities
prevailed. Candidates schemed to get early possession of the writs
in order to forestall, by hastening the election, any threatened
opposition; and the Messengers of the Great Seal, it was said, were
disposed to give a writ to the candidate who would pay most for it.
But an Act passed in 1813 provided for the conveyance and delivery of
the writs through the prosaic but purer agency of the Post Office.
Precautions are taken to avoid any chance of their going astray.
They are placed in envelopes of strong cartridge paper with a lining
of glazed calico, each addressed to the respective returning officer,
and are conveyed to the General Post Office, London, by one of the
clerks of the Crown Office, designated for this occasion, “Messenger
of the Great Seal,” who receives from an official appointed by
the Postmaster-General a written acknowledgment of the delivery
of his precious charge. The writs are then despatched through the
first available post as registered letters. With each there is sent
an injunction to the postmaster of the place where the returning
officer resides to have the writ safely and speedily delivered, and
to get a receipt from the returning officer. This receipt the local
postmaster transmits to the Postmaster-General, who in turn has the
particulars entered in a book which is available for inspection by
any person interested. In what is known as the London Metropolitan
area, extending into four counties—Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and
Essex—personal service of the writs to the returning officers of the
divisions by the Messenger of the Great Seal is still in vogue, the
messenger travelling in a motor-car instead of on horseback, and
demanding no fees for his services.

Nomination day is the same in all constituencies, as provided by the
Representation of the People Act, 1918. On the day appointed, the
eighth day after the date of the Royal Proclamation, the returning
officer attends at the municipal buildings, or the courthouse,
within certain fixed hours—usually from 10 a.m. till noon—to receive
nominations of candidates. The nomination paper sets out the name,
abode, profession or calling of the candidate, and the names and
addresses of two registered electors, who propose and second him,
and of eight other assenting burgesses. Each candidate provides
himself with several nomination papers, filled up by electors from
various classes or sections of the constituency, with a view to
show the representative character of his supporters, and also to
secure himself from the risk of the nomination being declared null
and void by the returning officer owing to some irregularity in
the original nomination paper. The Ballot Act requires that the
nomination paper must be handed in to the returning officer by the
candidate personally, or by his proposer or seconder. At one election
the nomination paper was given in by the agent of the candidate, and
this was held to be fatal to the nomination. It was a small technical
point, and since then it has come to be understood generally by
agents of all Parties that no advantage is to be taken of such slips
or oversights.


3

Membership of the House of Commons is remarkably free and
unrestricted. Under the American Constitution it is necessary for a
Member of Congress—whether he sits in the House of Representatives or
in the Senate—to reside in the state by which he is returned. There
is no such rule in the case of Members of Parliament. It was provided
by a statute of Henry V that “knights of the shires and citizens and
burgesses should be dwelling and resident” within the constituencies
they represented. But this residential qualification had been evaded
or fallen into disuse long before 1620, when a committee of the House
of Commons recommended its abolition. It was not formally repealed,
however, until 1774. The Act (14 Geo. III, C. 58) declared that the
laws as to residence, passed in the fifteenth century, “have been
found by long usage to be unnecessary and have become obsolete”; and
in order to “obviate all doubt that may arise upon the same” it was
ordered that the statute book should be cleared of all enactments
relating “to the residence of persons to be elected to serve in
Parliament.”

In view of the common interests of the country and its complete
coherence in social and economic life, it would be idle to limit
the electors in their choice of representatives to local residents.
Moreover, such a restriction would tend to the exclusion from
Parliament of able and distinguished men whose reputation is national
rather than local. But one regrettable result of this freedom of
selection is that the varying idiosyncrasies of the different parts
of the country are no longer reflected, distinctly and sharply, in
the House of Commons. The representatives are not, in many cases,
racy of the soil of their constituencies. Each of them is not
permeated with the spirit of the place for which he sits—thinking
its local thought, speaking its dialect, having its accent on his
tongue. A man with an Irish brogue may sit for a London constituency.
A South of England man may represent the northernmost constituency
in Scotland. This typical Yorkshireman finds a seat in the West
of England; that unmistakable Devon man speaks for a place in
Lancashire. The manufacturer is returned by an agricultural county;
the country squire by an industrial borough. It is true that in
the main the representatives of Wales and Scotland are essentially
Welsh and Scottish, though less so with respect to Scotland than
with respect to the other Celtic fringe. The English membership,
which constitutes the vast bulk of the House, is also strong in
English characteristics; but the views, feelings and interests of a
particular locality are seldom expressed in its voice and with its
manner by its representative. Though a local man is still supposed to
be, more or less, a strong candidate, in truth local representation
in Parliament is fast losing its local character and ceasing to
have any local purpose at all under the operation of the Caucus,
or the system of rigidly organized political Parties. Members of
Parliament are no longer chosen specially to safeguard the local
interests of their constituencies. Their chief purpose is to have the
country governed and administered by the light of their political
principles. This Member is said to sit for Hodgeshire, that other
for Cottonopolis. What they really represent, generally speaking, is
the Conservative Central Office, or the Liberal Central Office, or
the Labour Executive. But while membership of the House of Commons
is now thoroughly political, it is, for that very reason, also
thoroughly national. “Every Member, though chosen by one particular
district, when elected and returned serves for the whole Realm.” So
wrote Blackstone, in his _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, about
the middle of the eighteenth century. It was, then, perhaps, but a
pious aspiration. It is now undoubtedly an accomplished fact, at
least in the sense that the representative serves for the whole Realm
according to the political principles which he is returned to uphold.

The property qualifications which formerly made a seat in the House
of Commons the privilege of the rich were abolished in 1858. At no
time was it possible for any man but a man of substantial means to
gain access to the House. But it was not till 1711, in the reign of
Queen Anne, that an Act was passed providing that all Members—except
the eldest sons of peers and the representatives of the Universities
and of Scottish constituencies—must possess an income from land to
the extent of £600 a year in the case of a knight of the shire, and
of £300 a year in the case of a citizen of a city and a burgess
of a borough—the three classes into which Members of the House of
Commons were then divided. The enactment was designed to perpetuate
the ascendancy in the House of Commons of the country or Tory Party,
which they themselves feared was being threatened by the rich
manufacturers and traders who were being returned by the cities and
towns. Swift described it in the _Examiner_ as “the greatest security
that was ever contrived for preserving the Constitution, which
otherwise might in a little time be wholly at the mercy of the monied
interest.”

The law, however, was evaded frequently by fictitious conveyances
of property. Any candidate could be required to make a declaration
before the returning officer that he possessed the necessary amount
of income from land on the application of his rival or of any two
electors; and, in order to be ready for this emergency, should it
arise, it was the custom for landless men to have transferred to
them by relatives or friends on the eve of the election sufficient
landed property to qualify, which they returned again to the donors
as soon as the election was over. To put a stop to this practice an
Act was passed in 1760, during the reign of George II, by which a
Member, when he came to the Table of the House of Commons to take the
oath of allegiance and sign the roll, had not only to swear that he
possessed £600 a year or £300 a year from land—according as he was a
knight of the shire or a citizen or burgess—but to provide the Clerk
with a schedule setting out in detail the situation and extent of the
qualifying property. Even so, membership of the House of Commons was
not restricted to the genuine possessors of landed estate. Temporary
transfers of property in land notoriously went on all the same. The
only difference was that the transfer was now not for the election
only but for the life of the Parliament. Landed relatives or friends
were still accommodating. The rich but landless man could obtain
from his bank a rent-charge on some of the landed property which
it possessed in the way of business; and for the man with no great
balance at his bankers there were attorneys ready to provide him with
the qualification for a fee of 100 guineas. It was well known that
those brilliant parliamentarians, Burke, Pitt, Fox and Sheridan, were
thus fictitiously qualified one way or another.

But why should the property qualification be restricted to incomes
from real estate? Why should not incomes from personal property
also qualify? It was inevitable that these questions should be
asked insistently and urgently with the increasing rise of wealthy
merchants and manufacturers ambitious of taking part in public life.
Nevertheless, it was not until 1838—six years after the great Reform
Act, which really opened the doors of the House of Commons to the
middle classes—that it was provided by a statute passed by the Whig
Parliament that general property or professional incomes should also
serve to qualify. In all other respects the law remained unchanged.
The county Member had still to have an income of £600 a year, the
borough Member had still to have an income of £300 a year, and both
were still required to swear to their qualifications at the Table of
the House and supply particulars to the Clerk.

Twenty years elapsed before the property test for the House of
Commons was finally abolished. The year before—that is to say, in
1857—there was a painful parliamentary scandal in connection with
the property qualification. The return of Edward Auchmuty Glover for
Beverley was petitioned against, and as the result of the trial the
election was declared void on the ground that he was not possessed
of the qualifying income. Glover was, by order of the House, tried
at the Old Bailey for having made a false declaration at the Table
that he was qualified. The jury convicted, but recommended the
prisoner to mercy, as this was the first prosecution for such
an offence, and as it was notorious that declarations as to the
possession of the property qualification were loosely made by
Members of Parliament. A sentence of three-months’ imprisonment as
a first-class misdemeanant was, however, imposed. In the following
year Locke King—a private Member who cleared the statute book of many
obsolete measures—introduced a Bill for the abolition of the property
qualification, which, though it encountered considerable opposition
in both Houses, went through; and since June, 1858, the penniless
man, as well as the landless man, has been eligible for membership of
the House of Commons.

From this arises a constitutional anomaly which appears strange
indeed. A pauper without a penny in the world, homeless and voteless,
may be elected a Member of Parliament, while only a man of property
and position, to the extent at least of being a householder or a
lodger of six months’ standing, and a payer of poor rate, directly
or indirectly, is qualified to vote for a Member of Parliament.
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, in a speech on the franchise laws which I
heard him make in the House of Commons in 1895, gave a striking
illustration of the absurdity to which the law in practice led. He
said that his son, Austen Chamberlain, who gave him the pleasure of
his society by residing with him, being neither a householder nor
a lodger, was not entitled to the vote; and yet the law not only
allowed his disfranchised son to sit in the House of Commons but to
become a Member of the Government, he being at the time Civil Lord
of the Admiralty. Mr. Austin Chamberlain was subsequently appointed
Chancellor of the Exchequer, the greatest and most responsible post
in the Government next to that of the Prime Minister; and in the
years he was the head of the Department controlling the raising
and expenditure of the national taxation—being still unmarried and
residing with his father—his name was not to be found on the burgess
rolls of the Kingdom in respect of any rating qualification. I find
that in the General Election of 1906 Mr. Austen Chamberlain voted in
the City of London as a liveryman of the Cordwainers’ Company.


4

There are, however, certain disqualifications for Membership of the
House of Commons. Aliens cannot compete for a seat. The candidate
must either be a natural born British subject or a naturalized
foreigner. Colonials and native Indians are, of course, eligible.
But any British subject may not be nominated. The candidate must
be of the age of twenty-one years. Yet the production of a birth
certificate is not required by the returning officer. There are at
least two notable instances of “infants” having sat in the House of
Commons. Charles James Fox was returned for Midhurst before he was
twenty, and Lord John Russell for Tavistock before he was twenty-one.
Mental imbecility is a disqualification. It would, perhaps, be too
much to say that the candidate is required to be of sound mind and
understanding, but he must not obviously be a lunatic or idiot. If
he should lose his senses after election his case is provided for
by “An Act to amend the law in regard to the vacating of seats in
the House of Commons,” which was passed in 1886. It enacts that if a
Member is committed as a lunatic to any asylum it is the duty of the
medical doctor who made the committal and the superintendent of the
asylum to report the case without delay to the Speaker. The Speaker
then directs the Commissioners of Lunacy to examine the Member,
and if they report that the Member is of unsound mind six months
are allowed to elapse, when they again examine and report, and if
they still find the Member insane the two reports are laid on the
Table of the House, and the seat thereby becomes vacant. Blindness
is not a disqualification—not even for the Treasury Bench. There
is the remarkable case of Mr. Henry Fawcett, who, in spite of this
great physical disability, sat for Hackney, was Postmaster-General
in the Gladstone Administration of 1880, and was the originator of
the postal order, parcel post, and Post Office annuities. Are deaf
and dumb persons disqualified by reason of their physical defects?
They are said to be, but as there is no case in point, the matter is
somewhat in doubt.

English peers and peers of Great Britain and the United Kingdom are
ineligible for election to the House of Commons, being, of course,
hereditary Members of the House of Lords. The second Lord Selborne
sat as Lord Wolmer in the House of Commons for West Edinburgh, when,
on the death of his father in 1895, he succeeded to the peerage.
As he desired to remain in the House of Commons, he raised the
point that a peer, as such, was not debarred from sitting in that
House until he received his writ of summons to the other House as
a Lord of Parliament, and declared his intention to be not to make
the necessary application for such writ of summons. The House of
Commons appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the matter, and
on their report that Lord Wolmer had succeeded to a peerage of the
United Kingdom the constituency of West Edinburgh was declared to
be vacant, and a new writ was at once issued for the election of a
Member for the seat. It is the succession to a peerage, and not the
receipt of the writ of summons to the House of Lords, which is held
to disqualify for membership of the House of Commons. Scottish peers
are also precluded. Even those outside the sixteen representative
peers of Scotland—elected by the general body of the Scottish peerage
to sit for each Parliament in the House of Lords—are ineligible for
election to the House of Commons. The Irish peerage is not under this
political disability. By the Act of Union between Great Britain and
Ireland an Irish peer—providing he is not one of the twenty-eight
Irish representative peers elected by the general body of the Irish
peerage to sit for life in the House of Lords—may be returned by any
constituency in England or Scotland. But he is disqualified for an
Irish seat. The most famous instance was that of Lord Palmerston,
who was an Irish peer and sat in the House of Commons for an English
constituency for close on sixty years.

Clergymen of the Church of England, of the Church of Scotland, and
Roman Catholic priests are disqualified. The statutory exclusion of
clergymen from the House of Commons dates from the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Until then the question was involved in doubt and
uncertainty. It was first raised in a concrete form by the return of
the famous Radical parson, Horne Tooke, in 1801 for the nomination
borough of Old Sarum. He held no benefice in the Church, but as in
law he was still a clerk in Holy Orders it was contended that he
was ineligible. A Select Committee appointed to inquire into the
precedents reported that they were not sufficiently clear to warrant
the exclusion of Tooke; but though he was, accordingly, allowed to
retain his seat, an Act was immediately passed which closed the doors
of the House of Commons to clergymen of the Established Church and
ministers of the Church of Scotland. Church of England parsons who,
under the provisions of the Clerical Disabilities Act of 1870, divest
themselves of their Orders become thereby eligible for election, and
several ex-clergymen have sat in the House of Commons. Roman Catholic
priests are expressly incapacitated by a clause of the Emancipation
Act of 1829, which admitted Roman Catholic laymen to Parliament. The
Act of 1801 does not apply to ministers of dissenting Churches, and
they therefore are qualified to sit in the House of Commons.

Office of various kinds is a disqualification. Judges of the High
Court and county court judges are ineligible. In the time of the
Stuarts a resolution of the House of Commons precluded Judges of
the High Court from sitting in Parliament. During the Commonwealth,
when the House of Lords was abolished, Sir Matthew Hale and other
distinguished Judges sat in the House of Commons. It was not until
the passing of the Judicature Act, 1875, that Judges of the High
Court came under a statutory disability to sit in the House of
Commons. County court judges had already been precluded by an Act
passed in 1847. A Recorder may sit in the House of Commons, but not
for the city or borough in which he exercises his jurisdiction in
criminal matters. The civil servants on the permanent staff of the
various Departments of Government are debarred from sitting in the
House of Commons. Yet commissioned officers of the Army and Navy
are qualified. But Army officers become M.P.’s at the sacrifice of
half their pay, though they remain on the active list. Government
contractors for work to be done or goods to be supplied in the public
service are ineligible. No returning officer may stand for the place
where he is commanded by writ from the Crown Office to hold an
election. A bankrupt is disqualified. He may be nominated, but if
elected he cannot sit.

But though all property qualifications have been abolished, the
aspirant for a seat in Parliament must have money in his purse,
or raise it from some other source. The expenses of the returning
officer for the provision of polling stations and the fee for his
official services were formerly paid by the candidates. If there was
no contest, the candidate on nomination paid £25. In the event of a
contest the charges were considerably higher. They ran in boroughs
from £100 up to £700, and in counties from £150 to £1,000, according
to the number of electors on the register, and were apportioned
equally between the candidates. As provided by the Representation of
the People Act, 1918, the returning officer’s expenses are now paid
by the Treasury. But each candidate must deposit with his nomination
paper a sum of £150, which is returned to him if he wins as soon
as he has taken the oath as a Member of Parliament, and even if he
loses, provided he obtains more than one-eighth of the votes polled.
In all other cases the deposit is, as the Act says, “forfeited to
His Majesty,” save in University elections, where it is retained by
the University. This provision was designed to discourage “freak”
candidatures. It costs more to lose than to win an election.


5

Polling at a General Election is held on the one day. It is the
ninth day after nomination day, as provided by the Representation
of the People Act, 1918. Before the day of polling a group of men
wait upon the returning officer of the constituency. They are
usually rate-collectors or other officials of the local municipal
bodies. Vested by the returning officer with his authority and
responsibilities, they are to represent him in the polling booths.
Each booth is in charge of a presiding officer, and he is allowed a
poll clerk for every 500, or part of 500, electors on his section
of the register of voters. The presiding officer and their clerks
must not have been employed in any capacity by any of the candidates
during a contest.

Each presiding officer and poll clerk signs a declaration in which
he undertakes to maintain and to aid in maintaining the secrecy of
the voting. They are also told that for any breach of faith in this
respect they are liable to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
More than that, another section of the Ballot Act is read by the
returning officer which states that if they supply a ballot paper to
any unauthorized person, or fraudulently put into the ballot box any
paper but the official ballot paper, or destroy any ballot paper, or
open, or in any way tamper with the ballot box, they are liable to
imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years. “I hope none of
you gentlemen will get it,” adds the returning officer, indulging in
the time-honoured joke of the occasion.

The returning officer may use as a polling booth, free of charge, the
rooms of any school which is in receipt of a parliamentary grant, or
any building maintained out of the local rates. Failing these, he
may hire any other place, with some important exceptions, such as an
inn or beerhouse—unless by consent of all the candidates given in
writing—or a church, chapel, or other place of public worship. The
polling booth must be opened at eight o’clock in the morning on the
day of the election. It is the duty of the presiding officer and his
clerks to be there at least a quarter of an hour earlier. The ballot
box—made of steel, enamelled in black, with a slot in the lid—is
already in the booth. The presiding officer finds inside the box the
ballot papers, also pencils, pens, blotting-paper, drawing pins,
red tape and sealing-wax, and copies of the Old and New Testament
for administering the oath should occasion for it arise. There are
also copies of so much of the register of voters as applies to the
district for which the polling booth is intended. He also finds
in the box that which is guarded with the most jealous care—the
official mark for the stamping of the ballot papers. The returning
officer is bound to keep the form of this stamp absolutely secret
until the morning of the poll. It must not be a stamp that has been
used at elections for the same constituency during the preceding
seven years. This official mark may consist of any device—a letter
of the alphabet, a cross, or a circle—which can be stamped upon the
ballot paper. No ballot paper without this identification is counted.
Owing to these precautions it is absolutely impossible for ballot
papers to be surreptitiously printed, marked in favour of one of the
candidates, and slipped into the ballot box as genuine votes. Then
the presiding officer shows the empty ballot box to those present
in the station in an official capacity, so that they can testify
that when the polling began there was nothing in it, and proceeds
to lock it and seal it in such a manner that it cannot again be
opened without breaking the seal. The slit of the ballot box must be
so constructed that the voting papers dropped through it cannot be
withdrawn.

All is now ready for the polling. In the booth are those only who are
authorized to be present. Each candidate is represented by a polling
agent to look after his interest. But the complete control of the
booth lies in the presiding officer, and there are constables present
to carry out his commands. He can have removed from the booth any
person who misconducts himself or who disputes his lawful orders. He
may in certain circumstances give a disorderly person into custody.
But he must be careful that any action he may take does not prevent a
person entitled to vote from voting.

At eight o’clock sharp the doors of the polling station are opened.
Usually a number of electors are waiting outside, some to compete
for the empty distinction of recording the first vote, and some
anxious to discharge the task or duty before going about the day’s
business. The official register sets forth the name, address, number,
and qualification of every man and woman in the district entitled
to vote. When the poll clerk is satisfied with the identity of the
applicant, the white ballot paper is stamped with the official mark,
back and front, and handed to the elector, and a short horizontal
line or tick is drawn against his name on the register to show that
he has voted. The ballot papers are made up like cheque-books, each
paper having a counterfoil, and are numbered consecutively on the
back. As the poll clerk gives a ballot paper to an elector he writes
on the counterfoil the elector’s number on the register. Thus the
vote of every elector can be traced should any circumstances arise to
make this necessary.

The voter, provided with the ballot paper, retires to a compartment
where, alone and aloof and screened from observation, he or she
places his or her two pencil strokes, the simple “X,” and that only,
in the space to the right of the name of the candidate by whom he
or she wishes to be represented in Parliament. Then, folding up the
ballot paper so as to conceal the mark, but leaving the official
stamp exposed in order to satisfy the presiding officer or the poll
clerk, by a cursory glance, that it is the genuine paper, the voter
drops it into the ballot box through the slit in the lid, and with
a pleasant sense of self-importance immediately quits the polling
station.

But the polling does not always proceed with this easy and monotonous
regularity. Not infrequently a boisterous elector enters to whom the
solemnity of the booth or the secrecy of the ballot makes no appeal.
“Your name and address, please,” says the poll clerk. “My name’s
Ted Lillywhite, and no mistake, and I live at 70 Carpenter Street,
and don’t you forget it,” answers the elector stiffly. He gets the
ballot paper, and without any attempt at concealment makes a big
sprawling cross opposite the name of Smith, and, as he drops the
paper with a flourish into the ballot box, cries: “There! I’ve voted
for Smith, good man and true, and I’d like all the world to know it.”
Another man comes in only to find that despite the vigilance of the
candidates’ polling agents—or, it may be, with the connivance of one
or other of them—someone has already voted in his name. The man is
asked on oath by the presiding officer if he is the person he claims
to be, and if he swears that he is, a pink ballot paper officially
known as a “tendered vote” is given him. The vote, however, is not
put into the ballot box, but is given to the presiding officer,
who places it in an envelope specially provided for the purpose.
All particulars of the voter—name, number on the register, and any
remarks the presiding officer may have to make—are entered on what
is termed the tendered votes list, which is delivered at the close
of the poll to the returning officer. There is also the clumsy voter
who spoils his ballot paper. The presiding officer may, if it be
proved to his satisfaction that the paper was inadvertently spoiled,
cancel it and supply the voter with another. There is the elector
who is blind, or has no hands, or is incapacitated by any physical
cause from marking the ballot paper himself. There is the elector who
declares his inability to read. There is also the elector who, being
a Jew, is precluded by his religious belief from marking his vote
himself should the polling be on a Saturday, which is his Sabbath.
These are dealt with alike. The presiding officer, in the presence
of the candidates’ agents, marks the ballot paper in accordance
with the wishes of the voter and places it in the ballot box. The
greatest problem of all that confronts the presiding officer is the
recording of the vote of a deaf and dumb elector who can neither read
nor write. A list of the votes so marked, and the reasons for so
marking them, must be kept by the presiding officer and supplied to
the returning officer. The presiding officer may also put questions
to ascertain whether a person who asks for a ballot paper has already
voted in other constituencies in which he is entitled to vote. A man
may vote by reason of a residence qualification in one constituency
and give one more vote in another constituency where he is registered
for a business premises qualification, or as a University elector. A
woman can vote in only one constituency where she is registered by
virtue of her own or her husband’s local government qualification,
but she can vote also at a University, if she is on its register.

The poll closes at eight or nine o’clock. Ballot papers cannot be
given out after that time. But any voters who have received papers
before the hour has struck may put their votes into the ballot
box. The presiding officer, in the presence of the agents of the
candidates, then stops up the slot of the ballot box and seals
it, so as to prevent the insertion of any more voting papers. The
ballot box, securely locked, bound in red tape and sealed, is then
brought by the presiding officer to the place appointed for the
counting of the votes, which is usually the town hall or county
hall, and is delivered up to the returning officer, together with a
statement in writing of the number of ballot papers supplied to the
polling station, and accounting for them under the heads of “used,”
“unused,” and “spoilt,” and also the counterfoils of the used ballot
papers, the unused ballot papers, the marked copies of the register
of voters, and the list of tendered votes, all of which had been
carefully made up in separate parcels and sealed before leaving the
polling station.




CHAPTER IV

THE COUNTRY’S VERDICT


1

How simple and decorous is a parliamentary election nowadays compared
with the tumultuous polling when voting was open, before the Ballot
Act of 1872! In remote times an election was decided by a show of
hands at a public meeting of the electors. The right of a candidate
to challenge the decision on a show of hands and demand a poll was
established in the reign of James I. However, it continued to be
the practice for the sheriff or returning officer on the day of
nomination still to ask for a show of hands on behalf of each of the
candidates, and to declare for the one in whose support the larger
number of hands had been uplifted. But as the majority of the crowd
were usually non-voters, the demand for a poll by the other candidate
followed as a matter of course. Formerly the election might last for
a month, and the voting stations might be kept open until late into
the night. Early in the nineteenth century a limit of fifteen days
was fixed for the polling. The Reform Act of 1832 further reduced the
period to two days, and provided also that the voting should take
place between the hours of nine and four o’clock, with the option of
opening an hour earlier on the second day, if the candidates agreed.

But on the polling days—whether forty, fifteen, or two—disorder and
violence were common throughout the country at the General Election.
Indeed, one of the first acts of a candidate was to have organized
a mob of bludgeon men to protect himself and his adherents during
the campaign, and also, of course, to intimidate the supporters of
his opponent. Between the rival mobs the constituency was kept in a
state of excitement and uproar during the polling. The most trying
part of the contest was the ordeal of the hustings. These were
temporary platforms erected in the square, at the market cross, or
in some other open place of the borough or chief county town, where
the candidates were proposed and seconded. The speeches were usually
little better than mere dumb show. Each of the rival politicians
made determined but usually vain efforts to convince the shrieking
mob, amid showers of stones, mud, rotten eggs and dead cats, of
the sublime virtue of his opinions, or of the utter depravity of
the views of his opponent. The sort of item that was common in a
candidate’s election bill before the Ballot Act was this: “To the
employment of 200 men to obtain a hearing, 460s.” These men believed
that the best way “to obtain a hearing” for their employer was to
prevent his rival being heard; and as the hired mob on the other
side was likewise animated by the same conviction, both candidates
were equally shouted down. There is, for instance, the evidence of
Bernal Osborne, a famous wit and Member of the House of Commons.
“The honourable gentleman talked about the voice of the electors,”
he said in a debate on old open-voting ways. “As if the individual
voice of an elector was ever heard at a nomination, and as if there
was not a general agreement to roar, to hiss, and become debased with
drink! The true-born Englishman is said to delight in that day. Now,
who are the true-born Englishmen?” he asked; and answered, “Why, the
representatives of muscular Christianity—prize-fighters and people of
that sort. I have spent as much money in retaining the services of
those gentlemen as anybody in this House. One of my most efficient
supporters in Nottingham was a man who was always clothed as a
clergyman of the Church of England, but who was really an ex-champion
of England, Bendigo by name.”

As an illustration of the treatment a candidate had to expect at the
hustings, and of the style of speaking which was thought appropriate
to the occasion, listen to Disraeli addressing the Buckinghamshire
electors at Aylesbury. Received with a cry of “You look rather
white,” he thus retorted: “I can tell you that it is at least not
the white feather I show. [Laughter and cheers, mixed with howling.]
If any member of the melodious company of owls [loud laughter]
wishes to address you after me, I hope that you will give him a
fair hearing. [Interruption.] I can tell the honourable gentleman
who makes this interruption that if it were possible for him to
express the slightest common sense in decent language, I should be
ready to hear him. In the meantime I must say, from the symptoms of
intelligence which he has presented to us to-day, I hope he is not
one whom I number amongst my supporters.” (Cheers and laughter.)
Disraeli, still directing his attention to his opponents, further
said: “Your most brilliant argument is a groan, and your happiest
repartee a hiss.” A voice then exclaimed: “Speak quick, speak quick!”
for he was a slow speaker, and he retorted: “It is very easy for you
to speak quick, when you only utter a stupid monosyllable; but when I
speak I must measure my words. [Loud cheers and laughter]. I have to
open your great thick head. [Laughter]. What I speak is to enlighten
you. If I bawl like you, you will leave this place as ignorant as you
entered it.” (Cheers and laughter.)

Another picture of a scene at the hustings which I call up from my
reading on the subject is of a painful kind. It was in the year 1865,
when there was a contest for Westminster, and from the hustings
erected in Covent Garden, at the base of St. Paul’s Church, John
Stuart Mill, the Radical candidate, addressed the crowd. In his
pamphlet, _Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform_, Mill bluntly said that
the working classes, though ashamed of lying, were yet generally
liars. This statement was printed on a placard by Mill’s opponent
and aroused against Mill the animosity of the working men of the
division. At one meeting he was asked whether he had really written
such a thing. He at once answered, “I did,” and scarcely were the
words out of his mouth when, as he states in his _Autobiography_,
vehement applause burst forth. The working men present were,
according to Mill, so used to equivocation and evasion, that this
direct avowal took their fancy, and instead of being affronted, they
concluded at once that Mill was a person whom they could trust. But
Mill does not mention the hostile reception he got when he appeared
on the hustings. Before the speaking commenced a member of the crowd
asked an enthusiastic supporter of Mill which of the gentlemen on
the hustings was the candidate. “There,” exclaimed the admirer, as
he pointed at the author of the treatise _On Liberty_, “there is the
great man.” “Then,” said the other, taking a dead cat from under
his coat and flinging it at Mill, “let him take that.” When Mill
afterwards spoke he was pelted by the porters of Covent Garden with
the garbage of the market.

The mob influence exercised at elections—often the determining
influence—might be intimidatory, but it was not always venal. These
unsavoury arguments, dead cats and rotten apples, were at times the
expression of sincere political convictions on the part of people
without votes. As it was only by the use of violence in some form
or another that non-voters could have weight in public affairs,
the Chartists were opposed to the introduction of secret voting so
long as the franchise was restricted to the comparatively few. They
admitted that the ballot would be an excellent thing if universal
suffrage were established under it. Until then they avowed their
determination to see to it that the unfranchised part of public
opinion should not be deprived of the chance of influencing the
electors, under a system of open voting, by the methods of blacking
eyes and smashing windows.


2

To convince Parliament of the beneficence of secret voting at
elections took forty years of unremitting advocacy, though meanwhile
the franchise had been enlarged. Grote, the historian of Greece, who
sat as a Radical for the City of London from 1832 to 1841, annually
moved a resolution in favour of the ballot. It was always rejected.
On the retirement of Grote into private life in 1841 Henry Berkeley
continued to move the motion every year, with the same want of
success until 1851, when, despite the opposition of the then Whig
Government, headed by Lord John Russell, he carried it by a majority
of thirty-seven. Nevertheless, twenty-one years were yet to elapse
before the ballot was finally established by Act of Parliament.
A Select Committee of the House of Commons, which sat in 1868 to
inquire into corrupt practices at elections, reported in favour
of the ballot as a measure likely to conduce to the tranquillity,
purity, and freedom of contests. The undue influence which was
exercised in various forms at open elections is strikingly set forth
in the evidence taken by that committee. Its most common shape was
the direct physical terrorism exercised by hired mobs. There was also
the more subtle intimidation of tenants by landlords, of workmen by
employers, of servants by masters, of tradesmen and shop-keepers
by customers, and, more reprehensible still, the undue spiritual
influence of ministers of religion, who, in the guidance of their
flocks as to the way they should vote, did not scruple to invoke the
terrors of the world to come.

The report of the Select Committee, which appeared in 1869,
greatly helped to turn public opinion in favour of the ballot. In
the following year W. E. Forster, a Member of the then Liberal
Government, with Gladstone as Prime Minister, introduced a Bill
abolishing nominations at the hustings and introducing vote by
ballot. It passed through the House of Commons, only to be rejected
by the House of Lords by 97 votes to 48, on the motion of the Earl
of Shaftesbury. The arguments against the measure had been set
forth long before by John Stuart Mill, one of the ablest and most
distinguished opponents of secret voting. As the franchise was a
public trust, confided to a limited number of the community, the
general public, for whose benefit it was exercised, were entitled
to see how it was used, openly and in the light of day. The ballot,
therefore, meant power without responsibility. It was also cowardly
and skulking. Under its shelter the elector was likely to fall
into the temptation of casting a mean and dishonest vote for his
own benefit as an individual, or for that of the class to which he
belonged. The Bill was reintroduced in the following session of 1872.
It passed again through the Commons, was sent up to the Lords, and,
despite the renewed opposition of Lord Shaftesbury, was carried to
the Statute Book. Since then the elector has been free to vote as he
pleased, according to the dictates of his conscience, his political
convictions, his foolish whims and his wayward fancies without
anyone knowing a bit about it. The Ballot Act was not, however, made
the permanent law of the land. In the House of Lords an amendment
limiting the operation of the Bill to eight years was accepted
by the Government. Therefore, from 1880 the Ballot Act had to be
renewed every year by being included in the Expiring Laws Continuance
Act—otherwise the measure would have had to be reintroduced and
carried through all its stages in both Houses—until 1918, when a
clause of the Representation of the People Act transformed it from an
annual into a permanent statute. Yet there is one election to which
the Ballot Act does not apply—an election for the representation of
a University. During the time allowed for the polling—about five
days—electors can vote either personally or by proxy papers, which,
having been signed before a justice of the peace, are sent by post
to the University, and in either case the votes are openly declared
before the presiding officer.

In the _Life of Grote_ there is recorded an interesting conversation
between him and his wife on the subject of secret voting after the
Ballot Act had been passed. “You will feel great satisfaction at
seeing your once favourite measure triumph over all obstacles,”
said Mrs. Grote to her husband one morning at breakfast. “Since the
wide expansion of the voting element, I confess that the value of
the ballot has sunk in my estimation,” the historian replied. “I
don’t, in fact, think the electors will be affected by it one way
or another, so far as Party interests are concerned.” “Still,” said
the wife, “you will at all events get at the genuine preference of
the constituency.” “No doubt,” said Grote; “but then, again, I have
come to perceive that the choice between one man and another among
the English people signifies less than I used formerly to think it
did. The English mind is much of one pattern, take whatsoever class
you will. The same favourite prejudices, amiable and otherwise;
the same antipathies, coupled with ill-regulated though benevolent
efforts to eradicate human evils, are wellnigh universal. A House
of Commons cannot afford to be above its own constituents in
intelligence, knowledge, or patriotism.” But this must be said—thanks
to the ballot, all parties are united in eliminating from the
stock of political arguments rotten eggs, stale fish, dead cats,
over-ripe fruit and decaying vegetables, and, in agreeing that in
electioneering it is better to count heads than to break them.


3

One of the most memorable of General Elections under the Ballot Act
surely was that held in December, 1918, following the passing of the
Representation of the People Act and the close of the World War,
when women voted for the first time. The scenes I saw in London on
the polling day, that historic Saturday, made a profound impression
on me. Women in thousands flocked to the booths as well as men.
Many wives and mothers of the working class brought their babies
in perambulators. What did they think of it all? They were not
subdued in demeanour and thoughtful, in keeping with the greatness
and gravity of the occasion. On the contrary, they were joking and
laughing, as if quite elated at the notion that they should be voting
for a Member of Parliament—and a Parliament in which, as it turned
out, a representative of their own sex was to sit for the first time
in the person of Lady Astor, of the Sutton Division of Plymouth.

Even so, was not this the last word in ordered and organized
democracy? Could there be, I asked myself, a more advanced and
striking manifestation of the free citizenship in the most
perfectly planned Republic? Then I wondered what the Barons of
Magna Charta—whose statues I have so often looked upon in the House
of Lords—would have thought of it, those feudal lords who, over
600 years before, extracted from an absolute King the first great
enunciation of constitutional liberty? Nay, why go back so far and
remotely? What would the working men who, as a protest against the
denial of electoral reform in July, 1866, tore down the railings of
Hyde Park, have thought of it? What they wanted was the extension of
the franchise to male householders. They could never have imagined
that their grand-daughters would have that which they themselves
did not then possess—the vote for a Parliament the least fettered in
the world by a written Constitution and the most omnipotent in the
exercise of its legislative powers.


4

The counting of the votes takes place on the night of the polling
day, or the next day as the returning officer may appoint. In county
constituencies, where the polling stations are many miles apart, it
is impossible to commence counting the votes until the next morning;
but in boroughs, where all the ballot boxes are delivered up to the
returning officer within a quarter, or at most half an hour, of the
close of the poll at 8 or 9 p.m., the counting is got through as a
rule by eleven o’clock. No person may be present at the counting of
the votes besides the returning officer and his counting clerks, the
candidates and their agents, except by the authority of the returning
officer, and everyone present is placed under an obligation to
maintain, and aid in maintaining, the secrecy of the voting.

The first thing that is done is to check the number of votes in each
ballot box with the return furnished by the presiding officer of
the number of ballot papers issued at the polling booth, in order
to see if they tally. All the ballot papers from all the boxes are
then mixed up together in one great heap, so as to make it impossible
to find out how the voting went in any particular polling district.
The ballot papers are next placed on the table faces upward, so that
the number printed in each case on the back—the only thing which
might give a clue to the identification of a voter—shall not be
seen. Any person who attempts to obtain the number of a voting paper
in violation of the secrecy of the ballot is liable to six months’
imprisonment. The ballot papers are then distributed among the large
staff of counting clerks seated at scattered tables in the room, and
the counting of the votes recorded for the several candidates begins.
There are two ways of counting in vogue. In one—the London way—the
clerks are divided into pairs. One clerk is provided with a sheet
of foolscap containing the names of the candidates with a number
of squares under each, and the other clerk goes through the ballot
papers calling out the name of the candidate opposite to which the
voter has placed his cross. If the vote is given for “Robinson,” a
stroke is inserted in one of the squares under Robinson’s name; if
it is given for “Smith,” a stroke is put in one of the squares under
the name of Smith. Provision is made on each sheet for 250 votes to
be thus counted, and when either of the candidates has received that
number the figures for each are put at the foot—“Robinson, 250,”
“Smith, 76”—and the sheet is passed on to the returning officer.
Under the other system of counting, each clerk places on the table in
front of him the ballot papers for each candidate in separate piles,
makes them up into packets of fifty, placing an elastic band round
each, and hands them over to the returning officer.

The work of the counting clerks is closely watched by an agent
representing each of the candidates. All votes about which there is
any doubt are referred to the returning officer. Any paper which has
on it any writing or mark by which the voter could be identified is
rejected. Some electors are so vehemently partisan that, not content
with making the simple “X,” they add personal remarks about the
candidates or comments on the political issues as the strong feelings
of the moment prompt them. I remember at one election where only
Liberal and Socialist candidates stood many angry Conservatives wrote
across their ballot papers such phrases as “Betwixt the devil and
the deep sea,” and “God help England!” Every voting paper so defaced
is cast aside. Any paper which contains votes for more candidates
than the elector is entitled to vote for is also void. There are
also voting papers about which hang the element of uncertainty. On
some the “X” is made on the candidate’s name; on others it commences
in one square and ends in another. Other electors, again, impishly
desirous no doubt of puzzling everybody concerned, make their “X”
meet exactly on the line which separates the names of the candidates.
Each paper thus irregularly marked is judged on its own merits, but
the guiding rule is that the vote is given to the candidate whose
name appears within that section of the voting paper where the lines
of the voter’s cross touch each other.

The candidates are also present in the room with some of their
leading and more intimate supporters, and often with their wives,
awaiting with such composure as they can command the result which
is to realize or disappoint their hopes and ambitions. Sometimes
the candidates never get into personal touch with one another until
they meet in the counting-room. And though Party feeling usually
runs high, those contests are not without their charming amenities.
It was on such an occasion that Thackeray was paid what he thought
was the greatest compliment of his life. He contested Oxford in the
Liberal interest in 1857, and, meeting his opponent, Edward Cardwell,
he remarked: “Well, I hope the best man will win.” “I hope not,”
replied the Tory candidate. Notwithstanding all the care of the
officials, aided by the vigilance of the candidates’ agents, mistakes
are occasionally made, and, what is more annoying and perplexing, are
not discovered until after the result of the count is supposed to
have been ascertained, though not officially declared in the room. A
bundle of counted ballot papers may fall unnoticed under the table,
or may be erroneously placed in the batch of the wrong candidate.
Surely no disappointment more bitter can befall a man than that of
the candidate who within five or ten minutes of his feeling certain
of being duly returned to Parliament finds there has been an error in
the counting, and that he has really been beaten after all.

The returning officer cannot vote at the election; but should there
be a tie between the candidates he may, if a registered elector,
give a casting vote. At a by-election for South Northumberland in
April, 1878, the candidates, Albert Grey (afterwards Earl Grey) and
Edward Ridley (subsequently a Judge of the High Court), polled the
same number of votes—2,912—a thing unprecedented in the case of a big
county constituency. The sheriff declined to give a casting vote as
returning officer, although himself an elector, preferring to make a
double return by declaring both candidates elected. A few days later
Mr. Grey and Mr. Ridley presented themselves at the Table of the
House of Commons, the oaths were administered to them, both signed
the roll, and both duly took their seats. They were not, however,
allowed to vote. In the scrutiny which followed it was found that
a few of the voting papers were spoiled, and Mr. Ridley, having a
majority of the correct votes, was awarded the seat.

So, too, in 1886, Mr. Addison, Q.C., was returned in the Conservative
interest for Ashton-under-Lyne by the casting vote of the returning
officer, who was also chief magistrate of the town. Mr. Addison sat
in the House of Commons for six years, according to the jocular
description of his opponents, as “the Hon. Member for the Mayor of
Ashton-under-Lyne.” In the event of a tie, the casting vote of the
returning officer is only operative if exercised on the declaration
of the poll. In October, 1892, at a by-election for the Cirencester
division of Gloucester, Colonel Chesters Master, the Conservative
candidate, was declared Member, having defeated Mr. Harry Lawson
(afterwards Lord Burnham), the Liberal candidate, by a majority of
three. A scrutiny of votes was demanded by Mr. Lawson, and this
showed that both candidates had polled the same number of votes. The
sheriff, having ceased to be returning officer on the declaration of
the poll, could not give a casting vote, and accordingly there had
to be a new election, when Mr. Lawson was elected by a majority of
upwards of 100.

Such awkward incidents, however, are very uncommon. The returning
officer, at the conclusion of the count, has usually no other duty
to discharge than publicly to declare the candidate to whom the
majority of votes was given duly elected to Parliament, and he sends
forthwith the return to the writ of election, bearing the name of the
successful candidate, to the Clerk of the Crown at Westminster. The
voting papers, the counterfoils, the marked copies of the register of
voters, and all other official documents relating to the election,
are also made up in a bag and sealed by the returning officer and
forwarded to the Crown Office. To give an idea of the enormous amount
of official papers used at a General Election, I have been told at
the Crown Office that they weigh from 22 to 25 tons. In case there
might be a demand for a scrutiny and recount of the voting papers in
any constituency, or a petition presented to declare the return null
and void under the Corrupt Practices Act, all these documents are
stored in the cellars of the Crown Office for a year and a day before
they are destroyed. The writs are kept by the Clerk of the Crown
until the Parliament is dissolved, when they are sent to the Public
Record Office, where they are preserved.


5

A candidate declared elected by the returning officer, but whose
return is questioned by petition, takes the oath and his seat in the
House of Commons and serves in the usual course until the report of
the two Judges who tried the petition is delivered to the Speaker
and is by him communicated to the House. Jesse Collings, in January,
1886, as Member for Ipswich, while a petition against his return was
pending, which resulted in his being unseated for reasons for which
he was personally blameless, moved and carried the small holdings
resolution, the famous “three acres and a cow,” which defeated Lord
Salisbury’s Government and brought back to power again the Liberals
under Gladstone. I remember a petition arising out of a contest at
Exeter in the General Election of 1910 which had a curious result.
The Liberal candidate was declared returned by a majority of four.
The Judges who tried the petition disallowed five votes for the
Liberal given by five men who were held to have been unlawfully
employed as bill distributors during the election, and accordingly
the seat was given to the Conservative candidate by a majority of
one. On the day the decision of the Judges was announced by the
Speaker I witnessed a very uncommon incident. This was the appearance
of the wigged and gowned Clerk of the Crown, bringing the return to
the writ for the Exeter election, and at the Table, in the presence
of the Speaker and the Commons, amending the return by substituting
“H. E. Duke” for “H. St. Maur” as the Member to serve for the
borough. Immediately afterwards Mr. Duke took his seat in the House.


6

It is a long and elaborate process, this obtaining of the Verdict
of the country; and rightly so, having regard to the momentousness
of the issues that may be at stake. The philosophy expressed at
a General Election may not always be thought very high or noble.
Often it has but root in an idea of material well-being—that men and
women who labour with their hands may enjoy a little more of the
pleasures of life before the time comes for them to lie down and die.
And that is a most excellent thing, and well worth striving for.
But it is quite possible to have inaugurated at a General Election
a mighty movement towards an entirely new conception or order of
life, like the foundation of Christianity, the Reformation, or the
French Revolution, and bring it about by the peaceful processes of
parliamentary evolution. To say the least, a Nation can unitedly
rise to a height of great glory by marching to the polling booths,
and, by its votes, securing the success of a high moral cause.
Anyway, nothing should be done to detract from the importance and
impressiveness of the General Election. The one substitute for the
ballot box that remains in this age is the match-box, not only as the
symbol but as the instrument of Revolution by fire and blood, with
the aid of a tin of petrol.




CHAPTER V

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF THE M.P.


1

At every General Election there is seen the old and familiar, but
ever curious and interesting, spectacle of about twelve or thirteen
hundred men—who, though selected at random from the general mass, yet
vary so much in position, ability and temperament that they may be
said to reflect collectively the very image of the Nation—engaged in
wooing the constituencies which have at their disposal the 707 seats
in the House of Commons. What are the irresistible allurements that
compel this large body of men, the majority of them actively engaged
every day in business or professional life, to spend their money and
time, their strength and temper, in order that they may be given the
chance of making a gift of their professional capacity and business
experience to the Nation, expecting in return, as regards the mass of
them, neither fee nor reward beyond a salary of £400 a year?

Macaulay on the subject is well worth giving ear to. Writing to his
sister Hannah (subsequently Lady Trevelyan) on June 17, 1833, after a
few years’ experience of the House of Commons, he says:

  I begin to wonder what the fascination is which attracts men, who
  could sit over their tea and their book in their own cool, quiet
  room, to breathe bad air, hear bad speeches, lounge up and down the
  long gallery, and doze uneasily on the green benches till three in
  the morning. Thank God, these luxuries are not necessary for me.
  My pen is sufficient for my support, and my sister’s company is
  sufficient for my happiness. Only let me see her well and cheerful,
  and let offices in Government and seats in Parliament go to those
  who care for them. If I were to leave public life to-morrow, I
  declare that, except for the vexation which it might give you and
  one or two others, the event would not be in the slightest degree
  painful to me.

Sir George Trevelyan, in his _Life of Lord Macaulay_, not only
corroborates his uncle as to the inexplicability of the charm of
the House of Commons, but gives also from personal experience a
still more forbidding description of what he calls “the tedious and
exhaustive routine” of an M.P.’s life:

  Waiting the whole evening to vote, and then walking half a mile at
  a foot’s-pace round and round the crowded lobbies; dining amidst
  clamour and confusion, with a division twenty minutes long between
  two of the mouthfuls; trudging home at three in the morning through
  the slush of a February thaw; and sitting behind Ministers in the
  centre of a closely packed bench during the hottest week of the
  London summer.

If this were all that was to be said, it would, indeed, be hard to
understand why a seat in the House of Commons should be regarded as
an object to be sighed for, and schemed for, and fought for, and paid
for by thousands of very astute and able men. The constituencies are
not engaged at the General Election in fastening this burden upon
unwilling shoulders. How incomprehensible, then, is the action of
these who, having had experience of the hard and thankless lot of the
Member of Parliament, its mental strain, its physical discomforts,
yet labour unceasingly night and day during the weeks of the General
Election to induce the electors to send them back again to the dreary
round of routine tasks at Westminster. Indeed, Macaulay himself felt
keenly the loss of his seat for Edinburgh in 1847, though at the time
he was absorbed in his _History of England_; and in 1852, with his
great work still uncompleted, he was delighted to be returned again
to Parliament by his old constituency. But the truth is, we have been
given thus far only the dark side of the picture. There is a silver
lining also to the cloud. The life of a representative of the people
has of course its compensations.

Still, the tribulations of an M.P. are undoubtedly many. There are,
to begin with, the torments of the post. Cobden, in a letter to a
friend early in 1846, when his name as the leader of the agitation
for the repeal of the Corn Laws was in all men’s mouths, gives a
glimpse into the contents, half laughable and half pathetic, of the
letter-bag of an M.P. He says:

  First, half the mad people in the country who are still at large,
  and they are legion, address their incoherent ravings to the most
  notorious man of the hour. Next, the kindred tribe who think
  themselves poets, who are more difficult than the mad people to
  deal with, send their doggerel and solicit subscriptions to their
  volumes, with occasional requests to be allowed to dedicate them.
  Then there are the Jeremy Diddlers, who begin their epistles with
  high-flown compliments upon my services to the millions, and
  always wind up with a request that I will bestow a trifle upon
  the individual who ventures to lay his distressing case before
  me. To add to my miseries, people have now got an idea that I am
  influential with the Government, and the small place-hunters are at
  me.

Cobden supplied a specimen of the begging letters he was accustomed
to receive. It was from a lady asking him to become her “generous and
noble-minded benefactor.” As she desired to begin to do something
for herself, she hoped he would procure her a loan of £5,000 “to
enable her to rear poultry for London and other large market towns.”
In another letter, written July 14, 1846, after the taxes on
bread-stuffs had been repealed and the Corn Law League disbanded,
Cobden says:

  I thought I should be allowed to be forgotten after my address
  to my constituents. But every post brings me twenty or thirty
  letters—and such letters! I am teased to death by place-hunters of
  every degree, who wish me to procure them Government appointments.
  Brothers of peers—aye, “honourables”—are amongst the number. I have
  but one answer for all: “I would not ask a favour of the Ministry
  to serve my own brother.” I often think what must be the fate of
  Lord John, or Peel, with half the needy aristocracy knocking at the
  Treasury doors.


2

Happily, things have greatly improved since the time of Cobden. It
is probable that the average elector still fails to see that his
representative deserves any gratitude or thanks for his services in
Parliament. On the contrary, the elector may think that it is he
who is entitled to some return for having helped his representative
to a seat in the House of Commons in preference to another who was
equally eager for the honour. The spectacle of so many men competing
for the voluntary service of the State in the capacity of a Member
of Parliament cannot but tend to convince the ordinary elector that
he is conferring a favour on the particular candidate for whom he
votes. Constituents, certainly, are often very exacting. And as the
representative desires to retain his seat, he cannot afford to ignore
a letter from even the humblest and obscurest of the electors. The
General Election may come round again with unexpected suddenness,
bringing with it the day of reckoning for the Member who has been
neglectful of communications from his constituents. Then it is that
the voter, however humble, however obscure, can help to make or mar
the prospect of the Member’s return to Westminster. The worst of
it is that some constituents will unreasonably persist in asking
for things impossible. In the post-bag of the M.P. appointments
used to be greatly in demand. There was a time when the M.P. had
some patronage to distribute in the way of nominations to posts
in the Customs and the Inland Revenue, for which no examination
was required, should the Party he supported be in power. But that
good time, or bad, is gone and for ever. The throwing open of the
Civil Service to competition deprived the M.P. of this sort of
small change, which he once was able to scatter among the electors
so as to reward past services and secure future support. Now he
has absolutely nothing in his gift, except, perhaps, a nomination
for any vacant sub-post office in his constituency. Yet numbers of
the electors still imagine there are many comfortable posts in the
public service which are to be had merely for the saying of a word by
their representatives to the Minister of the Department concerned.
An example of what the M.P. has occasionally to put up with may be
seen in the terms of a blunt and abusive epistle—admittedly a very
rare one—sent by a disappointed office-seeker to the man he says “he
carried in on his own shoulders” at the last election. It opened:
“You’re a fraud, and you know it. I don’t care a rap for the billet
or the money either, but you could hev got it for me if you wasn’t
so mean. Two pound a week ain’t any more to me than 40 shillin’s is
to you, but I objekt to bein’ maid a fool of.” It went on: “Soon
after you was elected by my hard workin’, a feller here wanted to
bet me that You wouldn’t be in the House more than a week before you
made a ass of yourself. I bet him a Cow on that as I thort you was
worth it then. After I got Your Note sayin’ you deklined to ackt in
the matter I driv the Cow over to the Feller’s place an’ told him he
had won her.” And thus concluded: “That’s orl I got by howlin’ meself
Hoarse for you on pole day, an’ months befoar. I believe you think
you’ll get in agen. I don’t. Yure no man. An’ I doant think yure much
of a demercrat either. I lowers meself ritin to so low a feller, even
tho I med him a member of parlerment.”

Other electors argue that as M.P.’s are law-makers they should
consequently be able to rescue law-breakers from the clutches of the
police and gaolers. Accordingly there are appeals for the remission
of fines imposed on children for breaking windows, and even to get
sentences of penal servitude revoked. The respectable tradesman on
the verge of bankruptcy, who could be restored to a sound financial
position by the loan of £100, is perhaps the worst pest of all
the cadging letter-writers. He usually declares that he not only
voted for his representative, but also attended every meeting that
gentleman addressed in the course of the election. The best reply the
M.P. could make to such an attempt to fleece him is to advise his
correspondent to attend more to business and less to politics; but he
probably never makes it, for he can rarely afford to speak out his
mind to a constituent. An Irish Member who was elected for an Ulster
constituency after a close contest showed me a letter he got from
one of his supporters asking for some favour. “I voted for you under
thirteen different names,” said the writer, “and could I do more for
you than that?” No Member would think of offending so invaluable a
supporter. Inventors are also of the plagues from which the M.P.
suffers. The man who knows how to make soap out of sawdust writes
glowing letters about the fortune awaiting a company which would work
the process. Almost every post brings samples of tonics and boxes of
lozenges calculated to transform the harshest croak into the clearest
and mellowest of voices. “I shall be thankful for a testimonial,”
said the maker of one mixture, “that after you had used my specific
the House was spellbound by the music of your tones, and I guarantee
to extend your fame by publishing it, with your portrait, broadcast.”
Tradesmen are very importunate. For instance, the Labour Members
receive circulars from too enterprising firms soliciting their custom
for things which, it was declared, were most requisite for the
maintenance of the state and dignity becoming a Member of Parliament.
From one firm a Member, fresh from working in the coalmines, had a
tender for a Court dress of black velvet, to cost, with sword, only
£50. A company of wine merchants offered to stock with the choicest
brands the wine-cellar of the establishment they presumed he was
about to set up in London.

The day after the announcement of a birth in a Member’s family a van
pulled up at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament containing
three different sorts of perambulators. The tradesman who brought
them was extremely indignant because the police refused him admission
to the House to display their good points and conveniences to the
happy father! Poets ask for subscriptions to publish their works,
or, enclosing some doggerel verses as samples, appeal for orders for
odes for the next General Election. “If you would quote in the House
a verse from my volume, _Twitterings in the Twilight_, what a grand
advertisement I’d get!” wrote one rhymester to his representative.
“You might say something like this: ‘One of the most delightful
collections of poems it has ever been my good fortune to come across
is Mr. Socrates Wilkin’s _Twitterings in the Twilight_. Could the
situation in which the Empire finds itself be more happily touched
off than in the following verse of that eminent poet?’ and then
go on to quote some lines from my book, which I enclose.” Members
who are lawyers and doctors are expected by a large section of
their constituents to give professional advice for nothing. If one
of these unreasonable persons has a dispute with his landlord as
to the amount of rent due, or finds it impossible to recover a
debt, he expects, as a matter of course, his representative, if a
gentleman learned in the law, to help him out of his difficulty; or,
if a doctor, he favours him with long and incoherent accounts of
mysterious complaints from which he has suffered for years. The M.P.
is also expected to throw oil on disturbed domestic waters. Here is a
specimen of a communication which is by no means uncommon:

  DEAR SIR,

  Me and the wife had a bit of a tiff last Saturday night, and she
  won’t make it up. If you just send her a line saying Bill’s all
  right, she will come round. She thinks the hell of a lot of you
  since you kissed the nipper the day you called for our votes.

But pity the poor M.P. who receives from a female voter so
embarrassing a letter as the following:

  HONOURED SIR,

  I hear that Mr. Balfour is not a married man. Something tells me
  that I would make the right sort of wife for him. I am coming to
  London to-morrow, and will call at the House of Commons to see you,
  hoping you will get me an introduction to the honourable gentleman.
  I am only thirty years of age, and can do cooking and washing.

                                                         AGNES MERTON.

  P.S.—Perhaps if Mr. Balfour would not have me, you would say a word
  for me to one of the policemen at the House.

During the evening the Member who received this strange epistle
cautiously ventured into the Central Hall, and, sure enough, espied
an eccentric-looking woman in angry controversy with a constable, who
was trying to induce her to go away. But she refused to leave, and
ultimately found sympathetic companions in the crazy old party who
has haunted the place for years in the hope that some day she will
induce the Government to restore the £5,000,000 of which she declares
they have robbed her, and the other lady, younger, but just as mad,
who is convinced that some M.P. has married her secretly and left her
to starve, and has come to Westminster to claim him “before all the
world.”


3

The Member of Parliament is liable to receive other communications
of even less flattering and more exasperating character. Bribes are
occasionally dangled before him through the post. Will he allow his
name to be used in the floating of a company, or in the advertising
of some article of common use or a patent medicine? Will he use his
influence in obtaining a Government contract for a certain firm? If
he will, there is a cheque for so-and-so at his disposal. In the
course of a debate in the House of Commons on the payment of Members,
John Burns, for many years a well-known Liberal Minister, evoked
both laughter and applause by reading his reply to an offer of £50
received during his previous service as a Labour representative if
he obtained for a person in Belfast a vacant collectorship of taxes.
“Sir,” he wrote, “you are a scoundrel. I wish you were within reach
of my boot.”

But the sane and the righteous give the M.P. more annoyance
than the knavish and the crazy. Think of the numerous local
functions—religious, social, and political—to which the Member of
Parliament is invited! When a meeting is being organized in the
constituency, naturally the first thought of its promoters is to
try to get the Member to attend. The more conspicuous he is in
Parliament, and therefore the more likely to attract an audience,
the greater is the number of these invitations; and if he fails to
respond, the more widespread is the dissatisfaction among his baulked
constituents. He is expected to preside at the inaugural meetings of
local amateur dramatic societies and local naturalists’ field clubs,
and “to honour with his presence” the beanfeasts of local friendly
societies. The literary institution, designed to keep young men of
the constituency out of the public-houses, must be opened by him. He
must attend entertainments of a mixed political and musical sort, at
which his speech is sandwiched between a sentimental song and a comic.

But perhaps the Member of Parliament is most worried by the appeals
to his generosity and charity which pour in upon him in aid of
churches, chapels, mission-halls, schools, working men’s institutes,
hospitals, asylums, cricket and football clubs, and in fact societies
and institutions of all sorts and sundry. It is only proper that if
money be needed for an excellent local purpose, the representative
of the district in Parliament should be included in the appeal. Many
wealthy Members of Parliament spend from £1,000 to £4,000 a year on
local charities, and they spend it willingly when the objects appear
to them to be deserving. But of the 707 M.P.’s there are never a
great many who can be described as wealthy.

Besides that, many representatives—among them being some of the
most charitable of men—always refuse to send contributions to local
objects, influenced by a sense of honour and the fear that it might
be regarded as bribing the electors. In so doing they run a grave
risk of being misunderstood by their constituents. If a Member of
Parliament should refuse to help in providing them with coals,
blankets, footballs, cricket-bats, big drums, billiard-tables, church
steeples, sewing-machines, he is set down as mean, and numbers of
his constituents vow that he shall not have their votes again at the
General Election. There is a story told that when John Morley was
seeking re-election for Newcastle-on-Tyne an elector who was asked to
vote for this statesman of the highest and purest ideals indignantly
exclaimed: “Not me! What has John Morley ever done for the Rugger
Football Club?”

The representative is to be commended by all means in resisting these
illegitimate demands. Macaulay, when Member for Edinburgh, was asked
to subscribe to a local football club. “Those were not the conditions
upon which I undertook to represent Edinburgh,” he answered. “In
return for your generous confidence I offer parliamentary service,
and nothing else. The call that is now made is one so objectionable
that I must plainly say I would rather take the Chiltern Hundreds
than comply with it. If our friends want a Member who will find
them in public diversions, they can be at no loss. I know twenty
people who, if you elect them to Parliament, would gladly treat
you to a race and a race-ball each month. But I shall not be very
easily induced to believe that Edinburgh is disposed to select
her representatives on such a principle.” On the other hand, there
is something to be said for the constituents. Surely they may very
properly ask: “From whom can we more reasonably seek aid for our
deserving local charities than from our Member of Parliament?” They
recall to mind his accessibility and graciousness while he was
“nursing” the constituency. Was he not ever ready to preside at the
smoking concerts of the Sons of Benevolence, to sing songs or recite
at the mothers’ meetings, to hand round the cake at the children’s
tea parties, to kick off at the football contests?

His speeches are also remembered. Did he not regard service in the
House of Commons while he was seeking it more as a distinction and
privilege than as a public duty? Did he not tell the electors from
a hundred platforms that for all time he was absolutely at their
service? Did he not come to them literally hat in hand begging the
favour—mind you, the “favour”—of their vote and influence? Yet to
this cynical end has it all come, that, badgered by requests for
subscriptions to this, that or the other, he replies—to quote the
prompt, emphatic and printed answer which one representative has sent
to all such appeals: “I was elected for —— as Member of Parliament,
not as Relieving Officer.”


4

In the House of Commons itself some disappointments also await the
M.P. The motives which induce men to seek for a seat in Parliament
are many and diverse; but there is hardly a doubt whatever that the
main reason is a genuine desire to serve the State and promote the
well-being and happiness of the community. Accordingly, in the first
flush of enthusiasm after election our representatives zealously set
about informing themselves of the subjects which are likely to engage
their attention in Parliament. But soon comes a rude awakening,
bringing with it the first of the disappointments that await them.
They find that to instruct themselves properly in questions that are
ripening for legislation would leave them very little time for the
calls of business and social life.

The breakfast table of the M.P. is heaped almost every morning during
the session with parliamentary papers of one kind or another—Blue
Books, Bills, reports and returns. Blue Books are popularly supposed
to be unattractive reading. This is a mistake. They may look
ominously ponderous in outward appearance, but their matter is not
therefore portentously dull. With a little delving, illuminating
facts for the serious student of the condition of the people—the
supreme and all-embracing question of politics—come to light. There
are, however, not only too much of them, but too many. On an average,
eighty are issued every year, making an impossible demand on the
attention of even the most conscientious representative. The Bills
are more inviting than the Blue Books, for, embodying as they do
the fads and hobbies of the 707 Members of the House of Commons,
they bring one into touch with curious manifestations of common
human nature and individual political ideals. About 300 of them are
introduced every session. After the formality of a first reading,
they are printed and circulated among the representatives, who are
expected to make themselves acquainted with their provisions.

It is to be feared that many M.P.’s give up this task in despair.
Instead of attempting to arrive at independent conclusions by
personal investigation and study, they are content to rely upon
their Party leaders to direct them on the right path in regard to
Government measures dealing with the main public questions of the
day, and upon their Whips as to whether they should oppose or support
the Bills of private Members. Yet it is not always plain sailing,
even when the lazy course is pursued of just giving one’s ear to the
leaders on both sides attacking and defending. “The worst effect
on myself resulting from listening to the debates in Parliament,”
writes Monckton Milnes, “is that it prevents me from forming any
clear political opinion on any subject.” Of the 300 Bills brought
in every session, very few are passed. So supreme is the command of
the Ministry over the time of the House of Commons that the private
Members have little chance of carrying legislation. Only the Bills
of the Government set out on their course through both Houses of
Parliament with a fair prospect of reaching the Statute Book.

Furthermore, the M.P. who is ambitious “the listening Senate to
command,” also soon discovers that the opportunities for talking are
flagrantly restricted in the interest of the Government. He may have
devoted many days to the making and colouring of artificial flowers
of rhetoric with which to decorate his speech in a great debate.
Sometimes he may get the chance to deliver it in a House almost
empty, and containing but two interested listeners—one the hon.
Member who hopes to follow, and is impatient of his prolixity, and
the other his wife in the Ladies’ Gallery, fuming at the indifference
with which his eloquent periods are being received. That is bad
enough; but there is a worse fate still. He may sit night after night
on the pounce to “catch the Speaker’s eye” and yet fail to fix the
attention of that wandering orb. Meanwhile he may hear his arguments
and his epigrams made use of by luckier men, who probably got them
in the Library from the same shelf, the same book, the same page as
himself. Finally, the debate may be brought to an end, leaving him
baulked in his design, with a mind further oppressed by the burden
of a weighty unspoken speech. Then his constituents say unpleasant
things of him because they do not see his name in the newspaper
reports. He is neglecting his duty, or he is an empty-minded “silent
Member,” who, having nothing to say, says it.

There is an old proverb at Westminster which declares that “they are
the wisest part of Parliament who use the greatest silence.” Again,
in the opinion of the leaders of the Party in office he is the most
useful of Members who never consumes valuable time by speaking, but
is ever at hand to vote when the bells ring out the summons to the
division. The man who always votes at his Party’s call and never
dreams of thinking for himself at all is to be found by the score
in the House of Commons. But to many another M.P. it must be a sore
trial to find his opinions often dictated by his leaders and his
movements in and out of the House controlled by the Whips. Party
discipline is strict in all the political groups, and violations of
it are rarely condoned. The speech of the Member who is sincere and
courageous enough to take up an attitude independent of his Party
in regard to some question of the day is received with jeers by his
colleagues, and, what is perhaps more disconcerting, with cheers by
the fellows on the other side. There are, to be sure, representatives
to whom the House of Commons is but a vastly agreeable diversion
from other pleasures and pursuits. Imagine the feelings of such an
easy-going Member when, on a dull night off, an urgently worded
and heavily underscored communication from the Whips demanding his
immediate attendance is delivered by special messenger at some most
inopportune moment, perhaps as he is just sitting down to a pleasant
dinner or is leaving his house for the Frivolity Theatre. If, prone
as he is to yield to the temptation of the flesh, he should ignore
this peremptory call of Party duty, he is held guilty, like the crank
and the faddist, of a grave breach of discipline. His past services
in the division lobbies—on nights when the proceedings in the House
were to him a most enjoyable lark—are forgotten. He gets a solemn
lecture from the Chief Whip on the enormity of his offence. Worse
still, his name is published in an official black list of defaulters,
or a nasty paragraph exposing his neglect of duty appears in the
newspaper which most widely circulates in his constituency.

And yet what model M.P., Liberal or Unionist or Labour, with all his
sincere attention to the desires, the whims, the caprices of his
constituents, with all his willing surrender of private judgment to
his leaders, of personal pleasures to the Whips, can confidently feel
that his seat is safe? It is hard to get into Parliament. To remain
there is just as difficult. The insecurity of the tenure of a seat in
the House of Commons is perhaps the greatest drawback of public life.
Many a man with ambition and talent for office does years of splendid
service for his Party in Opposition. The General Election comes. His
Party is victorious at the polls. But he himself has been worsted in
the fight, and he has the mortification of seeing another receive the
office which would have been his in happier circumstances. To such
a man with his capacity for public life, with his keen enjoyment of
the Party fights in Parliament, existence outside must be barren and
dreary indeed. Yet never again may he cross the charmed portals of
the House of Commons.




CHAPTER VI

THE FASCINATION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.


1

But now that the litany of the cares and disappointments of a Member
of Parliament is exhausted, there remain many compensations which
make a seat in the House of Commons an object greatly to be coveted,
and well worth the physical labour, the mental worry, the demands
on the purse, which are involved in its attainment. Its rewards are
chiefly moral and social. The gratification of having won the trust
of a large body of the public comes first, perhaps. Then there is
the sense of the power and influence of the legislator. The House of
Commons is the greatest and most renowned of national assemblies.
To be a Member of it is a great honour. The letters “M.P.” add
distinction to a name. That is a proper source of pride on the part
of the Member himself. It is also a mark for the deference of others.
The “M.P.” is lifted out of the common run of humanity. Most of us
would look a second time at a man casually encountered in the street
if we were told he was an “M.P.”

The House of Commons has been called, as everyone knows, “the best
club in London.” The phrase, by the way, was used for the first
time in a novel called _Friends of Bohemia, or Phases of London
Life_, written in the mid-Victorian era by E. M. Whitty, then a
sketch-writer in the Reporters’ Gallery. Some say the House has lost
its proud pre-eminence in that respect. There is an entire absence of
class feelings and social distinctions in the House. That the cook’s
son is the equal of the duke’s son is, perhaps, more unreservedly
admitted by the duke’s son than by the cook’s son. On the other hand,
the Members will tell you that they differ too widely in class,
wealth, avocations, business pursuits, and, above all, in political
ideas and principles, for them to be clubbable in the mass by reason
of mental affinity or association of interests. Yet there is no doubt
whatever that in regard to one of the objects of a club, ministering
to the personal needs and comforts of its members, the House is far
better equipped now than ever it was in its most socially select
period, before the Reform Act of 1832.

At that time hungry Members were able to obtain but a steak or a
chop, or a pork pie, at Bellamy’s famous restaurant, which stood in
Old Palace Yard immediately adjoining the old Houses of Parliament.
Now they have an elaborate restaurant, very properly subsidized out
of the public funds, and managed by a Kitchen Committee elected by
themselves. Before the World War an excellent meal of three courses
could be had for a shilling; and to realize what might then have
been obtained for five shillings would stagger the imagination of a
gourmand. Prices still remain below those charged for similar meals
in a first-class restaurant. Even the secrets of the cellars have
been recklessly disclosed to the electors. There is the “Valentia
Vat,” holding 1,000 gallons of the rarest Scotch whisky. But our
representatives are not stimulated by whisky alone, whether Scotch or
Irish. We are also told that the cellars are always well stocked with
wines.

In the old House of Commons, which was swept away by the great fire
of 1834, there was but one smoking-room. What it was like Macaulay
describes in a letter to his sister, dated July 23, 1832. “I am
writing here at eleven o’clock at night,” he said, “in the filthiest
of filthy atmospheres, in the vilest of all vile company, and with
the smell of tobacco in my nostrils.” In the Palace of Westminster
to-day there are several rooms devoted to the enjoyment of tobacco.
The engaging spectacle to be witnessed, by all accounts, in the
chief smoking-room any night of a session suggests the question: Is
there any reality in Party conflicts? If half what M.P.’s say of
each other be true, a man who is not a politician and is careful
of his reputation would not like to be discovered associating with
them. Yet opponents who have just been raging furiously against
each other in the Chamber, are, we are told, to be seen exchanging
opinions of politics, questions and personalities, with mutual good
humour, frankness and confidence over coffee and cigarettes, in the
delightful companionship of the smoking-rooms. Political controversy
has there its fangs drawn. The only emulation between Members of
opposite political parties when they foregather in clouds of tobacco
smoke is as to who will say the cheeriest word and tell the most
amusing story, with the result that many fast friendships between
them are formed.

Chess is also played. It is the only game permitted at Westminster.
One year there was a great match played over the telegraph wires
between the House of Commons and the United States Congress, and
though at one time the defeat of America seemed imminent, the match
ended in a draw. In 1920 the introduction of billiards and cards was
again suggested. “It is contrary to the traditions of the House that
cards and billiards should be played within the precincts,” said Sir
Alfred Mond, First Commissioner of Works, in reply. Then there is
that most agreeable of all the adjuncts of the House, the Library. It
consists of five pleasant rooms overlooking the river. The bookcases
are of carved oak; the volumes are beautifully bound; Members move
about silently, for all sound is deadened by the thick carpets, and
the atmosphere is delightfully pervaded with the aroma of Russian
leather. The books are about 50,000 in number, mainly historical,
constitutional, legal, and political—just the works, in fact, where
Members are certain to find the necessary material for confuting each
other’s arguments.

The Ladies’ Gallery, and the development of the Terrace from a
lounge for Members, which was its original purpose, into a society
resort, have added greatly to the attractiveness of the House of
Commons. They explain the remarkable expansion, within recent years,
of what may be called the fashionable side of Parliament. It must
not be supposed that this admission of ladies into Parliament by a
side-door—unknown to the Constitution long before they were made
eligible for election by statute—has had the result of making Members
neglectful of their duties. On the contrary, the social functions at
Westminster during the session have the effect of keeping members,
and the young members especially, more regular in their attendance,
or, at least, more within hearing of the division bells.


2

Besides that, many Members of Parliament derive pleasure even from
experiences which by others are regarded as worries and vexations.
Their correspondence, with all its manifestations of strange
phases of human nature, is a source of entertainment to some, and
it ministers to the sense of self-importance of others. There are
Members who give an ear of affable condescension to eccentric
frequenters of the Central Hall, such as the mad engineer with
his scheme for uniting Ireland with Great Britain by a bridge
thrown across the Channel, via the Isle of Man, thus consummating
a real tangible union between the two countries. They have a smile
of welcome and a hearty handshake for all and sundry from their
constituencies who call upon them at St. Stephen’s. There are Members
to whom the pressing invitations to attend bazaars, flower shows,
tea meetings, smoking concerts, cricket and football matches, are
flattering evidence of their popularity, and they are accepted
accordingly with a rare delight.

The House of Commons affords a splendid field—no better in the whole
wide world—for the vain and ambitious who yearn for applause or
crave for power. Any Member can easily emerge from the obscurity of
the back benches into the full glare of the limelight. Let him but
flagrantly break one of the rules of order, and his name will appear
as a headline in a thousand newspapers. Then there are the material
rewards. The young and ambitious are offered the dazzling prospect
of office. The possession of any post in the Administration, even
the humblest, carries with it a seat on the Treasury Bench, side
by side with eminent statesmen whose names are household words. It
carries also the right, when addressing the House, to stand at the
Table before the famous despatch box, to lean elbow on it, and even
to thump it, as an added emphasis in the very passion of argument, as
was done by all the renowned parliamentarians of the past. It is true
that keen and fierce is the competition for the higher offices in the
Administration. The House of Commons, with all its constitutional
supremacy as an institution, is composed of human beings. That being
so, it is not free from the unamiable characteristics of intrigue
and envy; and the qualities of resolute will and tenacity of purpose
are, indeed, necessary in the ambitious young Member if he is to
escape from being pushed aside or being trampled upon in the race
for office. Once on the Treasury Bench, however, he has won half
the battle for a post in the very hierarchy of the Government—the
exclusive ring of Cabinet Ministers.

Yet the number of men in the House of Commons without social or
political ambition is remarkably large; men, too, who are absolutely
unknown outside their constituencies. They are in Parliament
literally for their health. During the day they are engaged in the
direction of great industrial and commercial undertakings, and in the
evening they go down to Westminster for that rest and recuperation
which comes with change of scene and occupation. They find the duties
of an M.P. very agreeable, on the whole. The responsibilities of the
position sit lightly upon them. They find a joy in all the details of
parliamentary life.

Many old men, who have spent themselves in trade or finance, take to
politics in the evening of their days as a mild relaxation or hobby,
and a means of prolonging life. There was once a great merchant who,
when he left for ever his desk in the city, after an association of
half a century, found the separation a terrible strain, and seemed
likely to pine and mope his way quickly to the grave. His medical
adviser recommended him to find a seat in the House of Commons as a
distraction to relieve the monotony of his existence. But the old man
did not like the suggestion. He knew nothing of public questions.
The financial intelligence was the only portion of his morning paper
which he had carefully studied for fifty years. “If you do not go
into the House of Commons, you will have to go to Paradise,” said the
doctor; “it is the only alternative.” “Then I will choose the House
of Commons,” said the old City man, with a sigh of resignation. And
how glad he was when he became a Member! At last, something of the
joy of life had really come to him.

To sit silently on the green benches during a debate, save when they
cheer a supporter, or roar at an opponent, and to walk through the
division lobbies, voting as directed by the Whips, amply satisfy
the desire of not a few Members for political thought and labour.
It is an existence that excites and soothes by turns. Disraeli once
said to a friend who had just entered the House of Commons: “You
have chosen the only career in which a man is never old. A statesman
can feel and inspire interest longer than any other man.” A seat
in the House does not, of course, make one a statesman. But, as a
general proposition, there is much force in Disraeli’s saying. Old
men find the fountain of youth in the halls of Westminster. It is
all nonsense what one sometimes reads about the weary and trying
round of parliamentary life. There are men in the House of Commons
who, after twenty, thirty, forty years of service, show no symptoms
of physical exhaustion, and who will tell you that Parliament is
the most interesting and most entertaining place in the world. John
Morley once spoke of the daily round of an M.P. as “business without
work and idleness without rest.” During the years he was engaged
in writing his _Life of Gladstone_ he took no active part in the
controversies of the House of Commons. But he could not keep entirely
away from the place. How often had I seen that fine philosophical
writer at this particular period of his career sitting on the front
Opposition Bench, at the gangway corner, his arms folded, his legs
crossed, listening, like an ordinary mortal, for hours to Members
venturing to say this, not hesitating to say that, going one step
further, adding another word, on subjects that must have had no
interest for him. The spell of the House of Commons was upon him.
He could not keep away. He had to come down, even as a distraction,
just to see if anything was going on. Nothing was going on, but he
remained for hours.


3

Parliamentary life has a fascination which few men, having once
breathed its intoxicating atmosphere, can successfully withstand. Its
call is irresistible. Cobden thus wrote from a retreat in Wales, in
July, 1846, after the object of his parliamentary career, the repeal
of the Corn Laws, had been achieved:

  I am going into the wilderness to pray for a return of the taste I
  once possessed for nature, and simple, quiet life. Here I am, one
  day from Manchester, in the loveliest valley out of Paradise. Ten
  years ago, before I was an agitator, I spent a day or two in this
  house. Comparing my sensations now with those I then experienced,
  I feel how much I have lost in winning public fame. The rough
  tempest has spoiled for me a quiet haven. I feel I shall never be
  able to cast anchor again. It seems as if some mesmeric hand were
  on my brain, or that I was possessed by an unquiet fiend urging me
  forward in spite of myself.

However disappointed a Member may be in failing to realize his dreams
of political ambition and social success, there remains for him the
consoling thought—indeed, the great reward—that he has the honour of
serving the State, of helping in the management of national affairs,
of guiding the destinies of a mighty Commonwealth. No wonder that
most Members quit this exalted and historic scene reluctantly, with
the deepest regret—aye, with breaking hearts. Should so great a
misfortune befall them of being rejected from further service by
their constituents at the General Election, they long to return again
to the green benches. Complacently to settle down to the humdrum of
private life is for many of them impossible.

Even the old and worn agitators who have voluntarily resigned
pine to be in the thick of the shoutings of the rival Parties,
and the trampings through the division lobbies. There was William
Wilberforce, the emancipator of the slaves. Sir Samuel Romilly, who
sat in the House of Commons in 1807, when slavery within the British
Empire was finally abolished, said of Wilberforce: “He can lay his
head upon his pillow and remember that the slave trade was no more.”
But was Wilberforce content to be out of Parliament even in his
extreme old age? Hannah Macaulay relates that in 1830, while staying
at Highwood Hill, the guest of Wilberforce, she got a letter from
her brother, enclosing an offer to him from Lord Lansdowne of the
seat for the pocket borough of Calne. She showed the communication to
Wilberforce. “He was silent for a moment,” she writes, “and then his
mobile face lighted up, and he slapped his hand to his ear and cried:
‘Ah! I hear that shout again! Hear, hear! What a life it was!’”




CHAPTER VII

PALACE OF WESTMINSTER


1

The Palace of Westminster, in which Lords and Commons meet—the
largest and most imposing Gothic building in the world—may be
regarded, rising so nobly on the left bank of the Thames, as
an expression in architecture of the dignity and stability of
Parliament, and the honour in which it is held by the Nation. Most
visitors to the Palace reach it by Whitehall or Victoria Street. On
that side are the entrances to both Houses. It is more picturesque,
but less imposing, than the river front. The inclusion of Westminster
Hall—the only overground portion of the old Palace saved from the
fire of 1834—enforced the breaking up of the western or land front
of the new Palace into a variety of façades. The light and shade
produced by the massive grey masonry of the ancient Hall, mingling
with the Gothic gracefulness of the new Palace, is very beautiful,
and also pregnant with historic meaning. It reminds one of the
survival of tradition in the forms and ceremonies of Parliament.
The effect of this blending of the past and present is heightened
by the close contiguity of the venerable Abbey, and the open grassy
space, known as Parliament Square, with its effigies of great
Victorian statesmen—Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, the Earl of
Derby, and Lord Beaconsfield—which front the forecourt of the Palace;
and the striking figure of Oliver Cromwell, with sword and Bible,
on the sunken grass plot by the side of Westminster Hall. To the
contemplative mind the long history of government and administration
is presented—its struggles, its controversies, its failures, its
successes.

But the most impressive view of the Palace to the eye is obtained
from the opposite bank of the Thames. Standing beneath the aged and
hoary Lambeth Palace on the Surrey side—town house of the Archbishop
of Canterbury—and looking across the river, especially when the
mighty waterway is at its full tide, one realizes more completely
the Gothic stateliness of this temple of legislation, the outcome of
the constructive genius of Sir Charles Barry, and the graceful fancy
of Augustus Welby Pugin. The long façade above the river wall and
terrace, its uniform symmetry, the lightness and grace of its stone
carving, the many steeples and pinnacles—beginning with the delicate
tracery of the lofty Clock Tower, close to Westminster Bridge, and
terminating with the solid massiveness of the colossal Victoria
Tower—form altogether a most imposing masterpiece in architecture,
worthy of the ancient and august National Assembly which deliberates
within its walls, that mother of representative institutions which
perhaps is the greatest gift of the English race to mankind. So it is
that something of the secret of the high place which Parliament holds
in popular esteem and pride may be found in the grandeur of its home.
At any rate, the spectacle presented by the Palace of Westminster
does impress the mind with the glory of the purpose of Parliament and
its might. Here we see the apotheosis of politics, the science of the
progress and well-being of humanity, and the temple in which it is
fittingly served.

Thus at Westminster we have not only the flower or the fruit of the
national life in the guidance of the State aright, but its roots
and fibres going deep down to the very bedrock of the past. For
more than six centuries the grand inquest of the Nation has sat at
Westminster. At first it was a council of the great and wise summoned
by the King personally. When Edward I, “the great law-giver,”
sent to the sheriffs writs for the election of two knights for
each shire, two citizens for each city, two burgesses for each
borough, in addition to himself calling together the prelates and
the nobles, the principle of popular election came into operation.
The Parliament thus elected and known as the “Model Parliament” was
really representative of the Nation at large. It met in the Palace
of Westminster so long ago as November, 1295. For over a century
the three estates of the realm—the Prelates, the Nobles, and the
Commons—deliberated together. The division of Parliament into two
Houses—one for the Peers, spiritual and temporal, and the other for
the Commons—took place in 1377, the last year of the reign of Edward
III. The Lords have always met in the Palace of Westminster. The
Commons for the best part of two centuries assembled in the Chapter
House, or the Refectory, of Westminster Abbey. They held their last
sitting there on the day that Henry VIII died.

Henry’s son and successor, Edward VI, gave St. Stephen’s
Chapel—within the Palace of Westminster—to the Commons for their
meeting place in 1547, the first year of his reign, and there the
representatives of the people regularly met and deliberated until
the place was destroyed by fire in 1834. This Chapel, built by
Edward III in 1327, the first year of his reign, on the ruins of the
original St. Stephen’s Chapel (which was provided by King Stephen
in 1147 for the use of the inhabitants of the Palace, and dedicated
by him to the first Christian martyr) was in the beautiful Gothic
of the period, and Italian artists were brought to London to adorn
its walls with religious frescoes. After the Reformation, when the
Chapel was transferred from the Crown to the House of Commons, these
mural paintings were covered over with a plain, decorous wainscot,
which in the gay times of Charles II was in turn hidden behind rich
tapestry hangings. These tapestries disappeared in the alterations
made by Sir Christopher Wren in 1707, after the Union of England and
Scotland, so as to provide accommodation for the forty-five Members
from Scotland. The Chamber underwent a final transformation in 1800,
when, as a result of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, seats
for 100 additional Members had to be found. The old wainscot was
then taken down; and although the paintings of the Italian artists
of the fourteenth century were found to be in a perfect state of
preservation, they were demolished likewise to make room for the
required two extra lines of benches on each side. There were now five
rows of benches on either side, divided, as in the present Chamber,
by a gangway. The Speaker’s Chair was at the top of the Chamber,
where the altar originally stood. It was a carved oak armchair,
surmounted with the Royal Arms of England. Below it, as now, was the
Clerk’s table.

The old House of Lords, like the old House of Commons, was an oblong
chamber with rows of benches on each side running up from the floor
to the walls. On the walls hung tapestries, divided into compartments
by oak frames, illustrating scenes from the defeat of the Spanish
Armada in 1588, and with medallion portraits of the principal English
naval captains woven in the borders. They were the gifts of the
States of Holland to Queen Elizabeth in commemoration of England’s
great deliverance and the ruined dream of Spain. The Throne on which
all the Sovereigns of England from 1550 to 1834—from Edward VI to
William IV—sat on the assembling of Parliament was at the top of the
Chamber. It was a carved gilt armchair standing on a dais. The seat
was lined with crimson velvet. Two gilt Corinthian pillars supported
a canopy, also of crimson velvet, and the whole was surmounted by a
crown.

Between the two Houses lay the Painted Chamber, a survival of the
original Palace, erected by Edward the Confessor, who indeed used
this particular room as a sleeping apartment and died in it. Its
walls were painted with battle scenes by direction of Henry III in
the middle of the thirteenth century, and hence its name. Here the
Court, before which Charles I was arraigned, sat for the concluding
days of the trial. Here Oliver Cromwell and Henry Martin blacked each
other’s faces in fun, like giddy young schoolboys, as they signed the
warrant which condemned the King to the headsman’s axe. The Chamber
was also used for conferences between representatives of both Houses
when they differed in regard to a Bill. At these meetings the Peers
were seated and wore their hats, while the Commons had humbly to
stand uncovered.


2

Thus the old Palace of Westminster was historically of great
interest. But it had no pretensions to beauty. It was just an
architectural patchwork, added to from time to time without any sense
of order or unity of design. Interiorily, it was also confined and
uncommodious. Yet the idea of pulling it down to give place to a
building of nobler proportions and one more suitable to its great
purpose was not relished. In the very last session of the Commons
that was held in St. Stephen’s Chapel Joseph Hume proposed that new
Houses of Parliament should be built in the Green Park. The motion
was rejected. Four or five months later, as the buildings were
enveloped in flames, one of the spectators wittily cried out: “There
is Joe Hume’s motion being carried without a division.”

The great conflagration which destroyed the Palace was on the night
of Thursday, October 16, 1834. The Whig Ministry, under Earl Grey,
that carried the Reform Act of 1832, broke up in July on the question
of appropriating a portion of the revenues of the Church in Ireland
to secular purposes, and was succeeded by another Whig Administration
with Lord Melbourne as Prime Minister. Parliament was prorogued on
August 15th by King William IV in person. It was to meet again on
October 23rd. When that day came the ancient Palace of Westminster
was a thing of the past. At first it was thought the fire was
the work of political incendiaries. But a Committee of the Privy
Council found, after a long and searching investigation, that it was
due solely to human stupidity. An immense quantity of old wooden
“tallies” or notched sticks, originally used as receipts for sums
paid into the Exchequer, had accumulated at Westminster, and, after
the abolition of this barbaric mode of keeping the national accounts
and the substitution of pens, ink and paper, in 1826, the sticks were
used as firewood in the Government offices. As the room in which
the remaining “tallies” were stored at Westminster was required for
another purpose, two men were employed all day, on October 16, 1834,
in getting rid of the sticks by burning them in the stove under the
House of Lords by which that Chamber was heated. At five o’clock they
went home. At half-past six the House of Lords was found to be on
fire. The heat from the over-charged flues had ignited the panelling
of the Chamber. The progress of the flames could not be stayed, and
gradually the conflagration swept over the whole mass of buildings.
Thus did the ancient Palace of Westminster disappear through an act
of almost incredible carelessness. All that remained of the historic
fabric were the cloisters of the old St. Stephen’s Chapel (or House
of Commons), the crypt beneath the Chapel, in which the Speaker used
to entertain Members at dinners and other social functions, and,
happily, Westminster Hall, with its centuried associations of great
men and historic deeds. Practically everything else was destroyed,
including the Throne in the House of Lords and the Chair in the House
of Commons.

On October 23, 1834, the day appointed for the reassembling of
Parliament, the two Houses met for a brief and formal sitting amid
acres of still smouldering ruins, the Lords within the charred walls
of their library, and the Commons in an adjoining committee-room.
It was decided temporarily to fit up the House of Lords for the use
of the Commons, and the Painted Chamber for the use of the Lords,
and a sum of £30,000 was voted for the purpose. A Royal Commission
was also appointed to superintend the construction of a new Palace
of Westminster. Parliament then adjourned. On November 14th King
William dismissed the Melbourne Ministry, and Sir Robert Peel was
commanded to form a new Administration. On the advice of the Prime
Minister, the King dissolved Parliament on December 29th, and the
new Parliament met on February 19, 1835, in the temporary buildings,
which continued to be used till the completion of the present Palace
of Westminster.


3

Among the immense crowd which witnessed the grand and terrible
spectacle of the burning of the old Houses of Parliament on that
night in October 1834 was an architect named Charles Barry. He had
known and loved the ancient and historic pile from his earliest
years, for, born in 1795, the son of a stationer who had a shop in
Bridge Street, opposite the Houses of Parliament, he had grown to
manhood under its very shadow. Parliament decided to have an open
competition for designs of the new legislative buildings. The only
condition imposed was that the style should be either Gothic or
Elizabethan. As many as ninety-seven architects entered the lists.
The successful competitor was Barry for his Gothic plan. He was
forty years old at the time. In superintending the building and
internal decoration of the Palace—subject to the control of the
Royal Commission—Barry was assisted by Augustus Welby Pugin, another
architect and an authority on the Gothic style. Hume’s idea of
removing the Houses of Parliament to the Green Park was revived, but
the historic associations of Westminster made too great an appeal.
Moreover, was not the Duke of Wellington of opinion—far-seeing man
that he was—that the site by the river was the best, as it would be
fool-hardy to have the Houses of Parliament accessible on all sides
to an attacking mob?

The river wall was begun in 1837. The buildings were not commenced
until three years later. The selection of the stone received the
anxious consideration of the Commissioners. Finally the hard
magnesian limestone from Anston, in Yorkshire, was selected for the
exterior of the buildings, and French Caen stone for the interior.
Then, on April 27, 1840, the first stone—it may be seen from
Westminster Bridge in the south-east angle of the plinth of the
Speaker’s House—was laid without any public ceremony by the wife of
the architect, and the vast edifice was raised on a bed of concrete,
12 feet thick. Exactly seven years later—April 15, 1847—the Lords
first occupied their House; and at the opening of the session of
1852, on November 4th, the Commons assembled in their new Chamber.

The progress of the building was beset with many difficulties and
vexations for the designer. The Palace was originally expected to be
finished in six years, at a cost of £800,000, exclusive of furniture
and fittings. Twenty years passed before it was fully completed, and
over £2,000,000 was expended upon it. The Treasury refused to pay
Barry an architect’s professional fees of 5 per cent. upon the outlay
on the works executed under his direction, and fixed his remuneration
at £25,000, or £23,000 less than he held he was entitled to. His
designs were also subjected to continuous criticism and attack by
other architects. However, he was knighted on the completion of his
splendid work. Dying suddenly at Clapham Common on May 12, 1860, his
remains were honoured by a grave in Westminster Abbey. His statue by
John Henry Foley stands at the foot of the great staircase leading to
the committee-rooms of the Houses of Parliament.


4

Probably no feature of London is so familiar in the metropolis, or
so widely known by name in the provinces, as the famous clock of the
Houses of Parliament. No visitor to London would think of returning
home without having seen “Big Ben” and heard him chiming the quarters
and booming out the hour. During the summer season hundreds of
thousands of strangers, not only from the provinces, but from far-off
lands, gaze up at his massive, honest face, proud and delighted to
have made the acquaintance of so great a London celebrity. It is the
largest clock in the world. Each of the four dials, there being one
for each point of the compass, is of white enamelled glass and 23
feet in diameter. The minute marks on the dial look as if they were
close together. They are 14 inches apart. The numerals are two feet
long. The minute hand is 14 feet, and the hour hand six feet. To wind
the clock takes about five hours. The time is regulated by electric
communication with Greenwich Observatory.

The clock has a large bell to toll the hours and four smaller ones
to chime the quarters. The large bell is called “Big Ben,” after Sir
Benjamin Hall, who was First Commissioner of Works when the Clock
Tower was erected. It weighs 13½ tons. Twenty men could stand under
it. For a clapper it has a piece of iron 2 feet long, 12 inches in
diameter, and weighing 12 cwt. No wonder, then, that there are few
things more impressive than “Big Ben” tolling the hour of twelve, in
his slow, measured and solemn tones, especially at midnight, when
the roar of London is hushed in slumber. And what is said by the
full chime of bells before the striking of each hour? Here is the
verse, simple and beautiful, to which the chime—a run of notes from
the accompaniment to “I know that my Redeemer liveth” in Handel’s
_Messiah_—is set:

      Lord, through this hour
        Be Thou our guide,
      That by Thy Power
        No foot may slide.

During the session of Parliament a brilliant steady light, blazing
from a lantern over “Big Ben,” may be seen at night from most parts
of London. It indicates that the House of Commons is sitting. So
long as the representatives of the people are in conclave, the light
flashes its white flame through the darkness. It vanishes the moment
the House rises. A wire runs from the lantern down to a room under
the floor of the House of Commons, and when the question, “That this
House do now adjourn” is agreed to, a man stationed below pulls a
switch, which instantly extinguishes the light. When this beacon was
first set on high, and for many years after, it shone only towards
the west, for it was thought unlikely than an M.P. would dwell in, or
even visit, any other quarter of the town. But with the extension of
the franchise Parliament became democratized, and a new lantern was
provided which sheds its beams in the direction of Peckham as well
as of Pall Mall. The light should be regarded by all who see it as a
sacred symbol of the fire of liberty, law and justice ever burning in
the House of Commons. Another comparatively recent innovation is the
flying of the Union Jack from the iron flagstaff, 64 feet high, which
tops the 336 feet of the Victoria Tower, on days that Parliament is
sitting. Only the Royal Standard was seen, before that, on the rare
occasions that Queen Victoria came to open Parliament in person.
Small as the Union Jack seems to the upturned gaze of persons in the
streets, it is of remarkable dimensions, being 60 feet long and 45
feet wide. I saw one day the flag of another country flying for the
first time side by side with the Union Jack over the Victoria Tower.
It was the Stars and Stripes. The day was April 20, 1917—the day on
which the United States joined France, Italy and England in the War
against Germany.


5

The Palace of Westminster covers an area of nine acres. Eleven courts
or quadrangles give light and air to its 1,200 or 1,300 rooms, its
hundred staircases, and its two miles of corridors. In the very heart
of the Palace is the great Central Hall, above which rises a tower
terminating in a spire, and right and left of the Hall are the two
Houses of Parliament—the Commons’ Chamber nearer to the Clock Tower,
the Lords’ Chamber nearer to the Victoria Tower—while about them lie
the retiring rooms of their respective Members and the homes of their
principal officers. There, used to be twenty official residences in
the Palace. They have been considerably reduced in order to provide
more accommodation for Members. Still, on the Commons side, the
Speaker, the Clerk and the Sergeant-at-Arms are commodiously housed.
In the old Palace a Minister had no escape from the House of Commons
except the Library or smoking-room, which were available to all
Members, and one gathers from the published recollections of old
parliamentarians that it was not seemly for a Cabinet Minister to be
seen there. “The place for a Minister,” it used to be said, “if _at_
the House, is _in_ the House.” In the new Palace every Minister has
a private room in the corridors at the back of the Speaker’s Chair,
in which he may transact departmental business and receive visitors,
when his presence in the House is not particularly required.

The principal entrance to the Palace of Westminster is by St.
Stephen’s Porch, in Old Palace Yard. Immediately to the left
extends the wonderful and impressive Westminster Hall, the
thrilling associations of which must quicken the pulses of the
least imaginative. Straight ahead lies St. Stephen’s Hall, leading
to the Central Hall of the Houses of Parliament. This noble hall
is traversed daily, during the session, by thousands of the public
on their way to or from the Legislative Chambers. How many pay
heed to its strange vicissitudes? It occupies the site of old St.
Stephen’s Chapel (originally the Chapel Royal of the ancient Palace
of Westminster), in which, as I have said, the Commons sat regularly
from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. In the building of the
new Palace, St. Stephen’s Hall was raised on the vaulted foundations
of St. Stephen’s Chapel. The positions of the Speaker’s Chair and the
Table are marked by brass plates set in the floor of St. Stephen’s
Hall. Here it was that one of the most historic of parliamentary
incidents took place. On this very spot stood Charles I and Mr.
Speaker Lenthal when the King demanded whether there were then
present in the House the five Members, including Pym and Hampden,
who had promoted the Grand Remonstrance against his unconstitutional
action, and the Speaker made his famous reply: “I have neither eyes
to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased
to direct me, whose servant I am,” and when the angry cries of
“Privilege, Privilege!” raised by Members were the presage of civil
war. St. Stephen’s Hall fittingly contains statues of twelve of the
greatest and wisest statesmen whose voices so often rang through
the old House of Commons. The statesmen thus honoured are Selden,
Hampden, Falkland, Clarendon, Somers, Walpole, Chatham, Mansfield,
Burke, Fox, Pitt and Grattan; and the selection was made by the
historians Macaulay and Hallam.

Beneath St. Stephen’s Hall is the old crypt of St. Stephen’s Chapel.
Like the Chapel, it was originally used for religious services. For
centuries after the Reformation it was used as a place for shooting
rubbish. About a quarter of a century before the fire of 1834 it
was converted into a dining-room in which the dinners given by the
Speaker to Members took place. After the fire the crypt was restored
to its original purpose, and for a time was a place of worship for
the numerous residents within the area of the Palace of Westminster.
It is the most beautiful place in the Palace, with its altar, inlaid
marble floor, walls of mosaic and groined ceiling. It is also a place
of solitude and silence. Not for years has it been used as a place of
worship. The only sound to which it now re-echoes is the cry of the
infant as the water of baptism is poured on its head. One of the few
privileges of an M.P. is that a child born to him may be christened
in St. Stephen’s Crypt.

A new Member is not many hours in the Palace of Westminster before he
has secured the special peg for his hat and overcoat in the beautiful
cloisters of old St. Stephen’s, which has been turned into a
cloak-room for the Commons; obtained one of the long rows of lockers,
or presses, in the corridors, immediately surrounding the Chamber,
to which each Member is entitled, for storing books and papers;
enjoyed a pipe or cigar in the smoking-room; had a meal in one of
the several dining-rooms; read the newspapers in the news-room, or
made himself acquainted with some of the contents of the extensive
Library; strolled on the Terrace; had tea in the tea-room, and
dispatched numbers of letters on the official stationery of the House
to relatives and friends giving his first impressions of the scene
where glory or obscurity awaits him as a representative of the people.


6

One of the most pleasant adjuncts of the House of Commons is the
large and lofty suite of rooms overlooking the Thames, which is
devoted to the Library. But there is more in these apartments than
books. They also contain some rare and most interesting historical
relics, parliamentary and political. Here in a glass case is shown
a manuscript volume, stained and mouldered, of the old Journals of
the House of Commons. The writing on the pages that are open is not
easily decipherable. But it is well worth while endeavouring to
peruse it, for it is the official chronicle of the raid of Charles I
on the House of Commons. The shaky handwriting tells of the agitation
of the Clerk when he made the record.

In the Library is also to be seen a memento of a curious privilege
enjoyed of old by Members of Parliament. This is a collection of
envelopes franked by eminent Members of both Houses. It comprises
about 10,000 signatures, and covers the period from 1784 to 1840,
when franking was abolished. By the system of franking, Peers and
Commons had the free delivery of letters posted by themselves and
their friends. It was introduced in 1660 to relieve Members of some
of the expenses incurred in the discharge of their national duties.
But this freedom of the Post Office was not confined to letters.
Household furniture and even a pack of hounds were sent free through
the post by M.P.’s in England, and in Ireland an M.P. franked his
wife and children from Galway to Dublin and back on a holiday trip.
Members also signed packets of letters wholesale and gave them away
to friends. One noble lord thereby franked the tidings of his own
death. He died suddenly at his desk after addressing some covers to
friends, and the family economically used the covers to tell those
friends that he had passed away. Ultimately, in the last decade of
the eighteenth century, the daily allowance to each Member of both
Houses was limited to ten sent by himself and fifteen received by
him. All such letters had to bear on their covers the signatures of
those who franked them. In the House of Commons collection are to
be seen the autographs of archbishops and bishops, of Peers and of
Commoners, including such celebrities as Nelson, Byron, Canning, Fox,
Peel, Palmerston, Wellington, Clive, Cobbett, Grattan, O’Connell and
Gladstone. In the year 1837 as many as 7,400,000 franked letters
were posted, at an estimated loss to the revenue of the Post Office
of over £1,000,000. At the same time all sorts of devices had to be
resorted to by the poor to evade the heavy postage, from 10d. to 1s.
6d., which was then charged for letters. Rowland Hill, the author of
the penny postal system, used to underline words in newspapers which
he sent home—a Whig politician’s name to indicate that he was well,
and a Tory’s that he was ill. Franking was abolished in 1840, on the
establishment of the penny post. Members, however, are still entitled
to the privilege of sending free through the post a limited number
of copies of a Bill to their constituents, by endorsing the covering
wrapper with their signatures.

The table of the old House of Commons, which was designed by Sir
Christopher Wren in 1706, and at which Burke, Pitt, Fox, Canning
and Peel stood while addressing the House, was found in the ruins,
after the fire of 1834, almost uninjured. It is now preserved
in the tea-room. In one of the smoking-rooms is to be seen an
interesting memorial of Henry Broadhurst, one of the first of the
Labour members. In a glass case are the mallet and chisels used by
him as a stonemason employed on the buildings of the new Palace of
Westminster, which he was afterwards to enter, not only as a Member,
but as a Minister, for he served as Under-Secretary of the Home
Department in 1886.


7

The old Houses of Parliament had no such pleasant lounge as the
Terrace, which extends the whole length of the river front. On
summer nights Members who desired a blow of fresh air promenaded old
Westminster Bridge. “It was a beautiful, rosy, dead calm morning when
we broke up a little before five to-day,” wrote Francis Jeffrey, M.P.
and editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, to a friend on April 20, 1831,
in reference to a late and stormy sitting over the first Reform Bill,
“and I took three pensive turns along the solitude of Westminster
Bridge, admiring the sharp clearness of St. Paul’s, and all the city
spires soaring up in a cloudless sky, the orange-red light that was
beginning to play on the trees of the Abbey and the old windows of
the Speaker’s house, and the flat green mist of the river floating
upon a few lazy hulks on the tide and moving low under the arches.
It was a curious contrast with the long previous imprisonment in
the stifling, roaring House, amid dying candles, and every sort of
exhalation.” If Jeffrey could return from the Shades and see the
Terrace, especially on a fine afternoon in June or July, when “five
o’clock tea” is being served, how amazed he would be, and how he
would curse his fate that he should have been born a century or so
too soon! Perhaps? For there are legislators who think that “Tea on
the Terrace” is a function lowering to the dignity of Parliament.
A part of the Terrace is reserved for their sole use by a notice,
“For Members Only,” where they may ruminate in gloomy aloofness
undisturbed by the smiles of beauty and the rustle of her skirts.

As the new Member explores the corridors and rooms, he will see
the walls hung with portraits of all the Prime Ministers, all the
Speakers, and a long line of Chancellors of the Exchequer, besides
those of other distinguished politicians who never attained to
office. Apart from their innate interest as counterfeit presentments
of great statesmen, in mezzotints or line engravings, these pictures
should stimulate the ambition of the new Member to make a name
for himself. There is one way in which the new Member may employ
his leisure at Westminster with profit to the tax-payer. That
is to follow the excellent example set by Passmore Edwards, the
philanthropist, who sat in Parliament for a number of years in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century. Writing in his autobiography,
_A Few Footprints_, he says:

  I would write the words “Waste not, want not” over the doors of
  parliament houses, palaces, cottages, workshops and kitchens; and
  if the spirit and meaning of the motto were put in practice the
  world would spin through space with a double joy. While a Member
  of Parliament I always, when opportunity offered, lowered the gas
  within reach that was burning to waste. I did so for a double
  reason—to prevent waste and to preserve the purity of the air of
  the House; but I never saw or heard of any other Member or servant
  of the House doing a similar thing.

“True political economy,” Edwards adds, “is in reality true moral
economy. I hate waste anywhere and everywhere.”




CHAPTER VIII

ASSEMBLING OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT


1

The procedure of Parliament is very ancient. An old-world spirit
animates especially the quaint and curious ceremonies that mark the
assembling of a new Parliament. The House of Commons is crowded.
What a number of strange faces are in the throng! It is easy to
distinguish the new Members by the eager looks of curiosity and
wonder, not unmixed with triumph, with which they gaze on every
feature of the historic Chamber and follow every movement of the
officials, and the shyness with which they cheer, or indulge in
forms of applause unfamiliar to the House, such as the clapping of
hands, as their leaders appear and take their places on the two front
benches—the Treasury Bench on one side and the Opposition Bench on
the other. But this shyness soon disappears. There is a story told
that an old Member was thus addressed by a new Member at the opening
of a new Parliament: “If you please, sir, where do the Members for
boroughs sit?” The incident was told to Disraeli, who was much
diverted. “Yes,” said he, “and in three months we shall have that
Member bawling and bellowing and making such a row there will be no
holding him!” At one time county Members and borough Members were
distinct not only in class, but in manners and dress. The ancient
distinction between “Knight of the Shire,” “Citizen of the City,”
“Burgess of the Borough,” was removed by the Ballot Act of 1872, all
representatives being grouped as “Members of the House of Commons.”

As yet they are without a head. They have no Speaker. In fact, the
House of Commons has not yet been constituted. It is only when the
Speaker is elected and the Members have taken the oath of allegiance
and signed the Roll that the House really begins its corporate
existence. The first thing to be done, therefore, is for this throng
to obtain that coherency, that solidarity, which is given to an
assembly by the appointment of a president. Until the Speaker is
elected, the Clerk, sitting in wig and gown at the Table, assumes the
direction of affairs. But before the Commons can appoint a Speaker
they must have the consent of the Sovereign, and that is given them
at the Bar of the House of Lords.

Suddenly the buzz of conversation, the interchange of jokes, and the
laughter which follows, are stilled by a stentorian cry of “Black
Rod.” It comes from the door-keeper in the lobby outside. Presently
“Black Rod,” the messenger of the House of Lords, appears. He is
never allowed free access to the House of Commons. The doors are
closed in his face by the Serjeant-at-Arms, and he has to knock for
admission before it is granted to him. He walks slowly up the floor,
carrying in his right hand a short ebony rod tipped with gold, the
emblem of his office. On reaching the Table “Black Rod” delivers
his message, which is an invitation to the Commons to come to the
House of Lords. Then, retreating backwards down the floor to the
Bar, he waits until joined by the Clerk, when the two officials walk
across the intervening lobbies to the House of Lords, followed by a
struggling crowd of new Members, determined not to miss anything,
shoving and jostling each other in their eagerness to secure good
places in the “Gilded Chamber.”

“Gilded Chamber,” indeed! Gladstone’s most appropriate description of
the House of Lords springs at once to the mind, such is its gorgeous
colouring in which gold predominates, and its glow and sparkle,
especially when the electric lights are on. The first thing that
arrests the eye of the spectator is the Throne, provided with two
chairs for the King and Queen, and emblazoned with the Royal Arms,
on a dais at the top of the Chamber. It is unoccupied, but seated on
a bench beneath it, all in a row, are five Lords, arrayed in ample
red robes, slashed with ermine or white fur, and three-cornered hats.
These are the Lords Commissioners, to whom the King delegates his
authority in matters parliamentary when his Majesty is not present in
person.

When the Commons, headed by the Clerk, stand huddled together at
the Bar, the Lord Chancellor—the central personage among the Lords
Commissioners—without rising from his seat or even lifting his hat
by way of salutation, informs them that his Majesty has been pleased
to issue Letters Patent under the Great Seal constituting a Royal
Commission to do all things in his Majesty’s name necessary to the
holding of the Parliament. He then addresses the Members of the two
Houses of the Legislature in the following words:

  My Lords and Gentlemen,—We have it in command from his Majesty
  to let you know that his Majesty will, as soon as the Members of
  both Houses shall be sworn, declare the causes of his calling this
  Parliament; and it being necessary that a Speaker of the House of
  Commons shall be first chosen, it is his Majesty’s pleasure that
  you, gentlemen of the House of Commons, repair to the place where
  you are to sit and there proceed to the choice of some proper
  person to be your Speaker, and that you present such person whom
  you shall so choose here to-morrow at twelve o’clock for his
  Majesty’s Royal approbation.

Then the Clerk and the Members of the House of Commons, without a
word having been spoken on their side, return to their Chamber.


2

The election of Speaker is at once proceeded with in the House
of Commons. There is no ceremony at Westminster more novel and
interesting, and none that illustrates more strikingly the continuity
through the centuries of parliamentary customs. The Clerk of the
House of Commons presides. He sits in his own seat at the Table.
Immediately behind him is the untenanted high-canopied Chair of the
Speaker. The Mace, that glittering emblem of the Speaker’s authority,
is invisible. The Clerk may not speak a word in the discharge of
his duties on this great occasion. All he is permitted to do is to
rise and silently point with outstretched finger at the Member who,
according to previous arrangement, is to propose the candidate for
the Chair, and later on to indicate in the same dumb way the Member
who is to second the motion. If there is to be no contest, and at
the assembling of a new Parliament the former Speaker is invariably
re-elected unanimously, the motion that he “do take the Chair of this
House as Speaker” is made by a leading unofficial Ministerialist,
and seconded by an old and respected Member of the Opposition. The
Government take no part in the ceremony so far, in accordance with
an old-established tradition that the election or re-election of a
Speaker is the independent and unfettered action of the House. The
motion is not put to the House in the customary manner. The Clerk
does not say, “The question is that James William Lowther do take the
Chair of this House as Speaker.” The Speaker-designate rises in his
place on one of the back benches and humbly submits himself to the
will of the House. The Commons express their unanimous approval of
the motion by cheers without question put. Thus the Speaker-Elect is
literally “called” to the Chair by the House.

In one respect only has time altered the symbolic details of the
ceremony. In the long, long ago it was the custom for the Member
chosen for the Chair humbly to protest that of all the House he was
the least suited for the exalted position. An amusing instance of
this modest declaration of unfitness comes down to us from the days
of Queen Elizabeth. The House of Commons having met for the choice
of a Speaker, Mr. Serjeant Yelverton was proposed by Sir William
Knowles. “I know him,” said Knowles, “to be a man wise and learned,
secret and circumspect, religious and faithful, every way able to
fill the place.” “Aye, aye, aye,” cried the whole House; “let him be
Speaker.” Then rose the modest, blushing Yelverton. He said he was at
a loss to account for his selection for the Chair, lacking as he did
every quality that was necessary in a Speaker. He had no merit and no
ability. He was moreover a poor man with a large family. Nor was he
of a sufficiently imposing presence. The Speaker ought to be a big
man, stately and comely, well-spoken, his voice great, his carriage
majestical, his nature haughty, and his purse plentiful and heavy.
But, contrarily, he was of a small body, he spoke indifferently, his
voice was low, his carriage of the commonest fashion, his nature soft
and yielding, and his purse light. He adjured the House to consider
well before it made the grievous mistake of appointing to the Chair
a man so totally unfitted for the post. But the House, mightily
impressed by these humble expostulations, so becoming in a candidate
for the Speakership, persisted in unanimously electing Mr. Serjeant
Yelverton; as, indeed, Mr. Serjeant Yelverton, despite all his
protestations of unworthiness, well and gladly knew they would do.

It is not so long since another amusing piece of comedy used to be
enacted on this otherwise serious and solemn occasion. The proposer
and seconder of the Speaker-designate were required in the prescribed
parliamentary phrase to “take him out of his place” and conduct
him to the Chair; while he was obliged to wriggle his shoulders as
if he were struggling to free himself from their hands and escape
from the House. Surely they were not serious—he meant to convey—in
conferring upon one so lowly and unworthy an office so dignified
and exalted? This display of mock modesty is now a thing of the
past. The only part of it that survives is that the proposer and
seconder approach the Speaker-designate, and when they are within
a few paces of him, the Speaker-designate rises and walks to the
Chair, his sponsors following close behind. The Speaker-designate
does not, however, immediately go into the Chair. Standing on the
dais, he again thanks the House for the high honour conferred on him,
and then takes his seat as “Speaker-Elect,” as he is called at this
stage of his evolution. The glittering Mace, which all the time lay
hidden under the Table, is now placed by the Serjeant-at-Arms in its
usual position within sight of all eyes to indicate that the House
is sitting. Then follow congratulations generally offered by the
Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition, after which the
House adjourns. The first day’s ceremony of the opening of the new
Parliament is over.


3

But although the Commons have chosen one of their number “to take
the Chair of this House as Speaker,” the Constitution requires that
before he can enter upon the duties of his office he must submit
himself in the House of Lords for the Sovereign’s ratification of
his election. Until the approval of the Crown has been signified
he continues to be styled “Mr. Speaker-Elect.” Next day sees the
completion of the ceremony of Mr. Speaker’s election. He enters the
Chamber, by way of the lobby, heralded by the ushers who preceded
him, crying “Way for the Speaker-Elect” with an emphasis on “elect,”
and attended by the Serjeant-at-Arms. It is also evident from the
dress of the choice of the Commons, that his evolution as Mr. Speaker
is not yet complete. He is still, as it were, in the chrysalis or
transition state. He is seen to be only half-made up, wearing, it is
true, the customary Court dress—cutaway coat, knee-breeches, silk
stockings, and shoes—but not the customary full-flowing silk gown,
and with only a small bob-wig—that is, the short wig of counsel when
practising in courts of law—instead of the customary full-bottomed
wig with wings, which fall over his shoulders. Further, it is
noticeable that the Serjeant-at-Arms does not carry the Mace on his
shoulder—as he usually does—but holds it reclining in the hollow of
his left arm, his right hand grasping its end.

The Lords assemble on the second day of the new Parliament at the
same hour as the Commons, and once more is “Black Rod” despatched
to invite the attendance of Members of the Lower House to the House
of Peers, to hear the Royal will in regard to the election of
the Speaker. On arriving at the Upper Chamber, the Speaker-Elect
stands at the centre of the Bar, with “Black Rod” to his right, the
Serjeant-at-Arms (who has left the Mace outside) to his left, and
his proposer and seconder immediately behind in the forefront of the
crowd of Commons who have followed him across the lobbies. He bows
to the Lords Commissioners, who, in all the glory of scarlet robes
and cocked hats, are again seated on the form in front of the Throne,
and they who yesterday encountered the Commons without lifting a
hat, now acknowledge the salutation of the Speaker-Elect by thrice
respectfully bending their uncovered heads. Then the Speaker-Elect
addresses them as follows:

  I have to acquaint your Lordships that, in obedience to his Royal
  commands, his Majesty’s faithful Commons have, in the exercise of
  their undoubted right and privilege, proceeded to the choice of
  a Speaker. Their choice has fallen upon myself, and I therefore
  present myself at your Lordship’s Bar humbly submitting myself for
  his Majesty’s gracious approbation.

To this the Lord Chancellor, addressing the Speaker-Elect by name,
replies:

  We are commanded to assure you that his Majesty is so fully
  sensible of your zeal for the public service, and your undoubted
  efficiency to execute all the arduous duties of the position which
  his faithful Commons have selected you to discharge, that he does
  most readily approve and confirm your election as Speaker.

His election having thus been ratified by the Sovereign, Mr. Speaker
“submits himself in all humility to his Majesty’s royal will and
pleasure”; and if, says he, in the discharge of his duties, and
in maintaining the rights and privileges of the Commons’ House of
Parliament, he should fall inadvertently into error, he “entreats
that the blame may be imputed to him alone, and not to his Majesty’s
faithful Commons.” Assertions of the rights and privileges of the
House of Commons follow fast on expressions of loyalty to the
Throne during the ten minutes that the Speaker, surrounded by “the
faithful Commons,” stands at the Bar of the House of Lords, and
holds this significant historical colloquy—which has been repeated
at every election of Speaker on the assembling of a new Parliament
for many centuries—with the Lord Chancellor, not as the President
of the House of Lords, but as the representative of the Sovereign;
for the next duty of the Speaker is to request from the Sovereign
recognition of all the ancient rights and privileges of Members of
Parliament, which are “readily granted” by the Sovereign, speaking
through the Lord Chancellor. This ends the ceremonial. The Speaker
and the Commons return to their Chamber as they came. But, see, the
Mace is now borne high on the shoulder of the Serjeant-at-Arms, and
hear the usher announcing “Mr. Speaker” and “Way for Mr. Speaker.”
The Speaker passes through the Chamber to his rooms, and in a few
minutes comes back arrayed in the complete robes of his office. Then,
standing on the dais of the Chair, he reports what took place in
the House of Lords. It is one of the curious customs of Parliament
that the Speaker always assumes that he has been to the House of
Lords alone, and that the Commons are in absolute ignorance of what
has happened there. Without the slightest tremor of emotion, or the
faintest indication of satisfaction, the Commoners learn that their
“ancient rights and undoubted privileges” have been fully confirmed,
particularly freedom from arrest and molestation, liberty of speech
in their debates, and free access to the Sovereign. They know full
well that if they do anything criminal they may feel the dread touch
of the policeman on their shoulders—freedom from arrest for debt was
abolished long ago—and they know also that even if they would they
could not disturb the domestic privacy of the King. So the solemn
announcement evokes not a solitary cheer. But there is loud applause
upon the Speaker thus finally concluding: “I have now again to make
my grateful acknowledgments to the House for the honour done to me
in placing me again in the Chair, and to assure it of my complete
devotion to its service.” The ancient and picturesque ceremony of the
election of Speaker of the House of Commons is completed.


4

At the assembling of every new Parliament the Members for the City
of London, in accordance with an ancient custom, have the privilege
of sitting on the Treasury Bench with the Ministers, though for the
opening day only. I have frequently read in the newspapers that this
privilege was given to the City of London by way of commemorating the
protection afforded to the Five Members on that historic day, January
4, 1642, when Charles I came down to the House of Commons to arrest
them for their opposition to his will, and found to his discomfiture
that “the birds had flown,” to use his own words. The statement
is not well established. It is a singular thing that no written
record of the origin or existence of the custom is to be found at
the Guildhall any more than at the House of Commons. But there is
authority for saying that the right was exercised in the time of
Elizabeth, and over seventy years before the conflict between Charles
I and the Parliament.

The earliest reference to it is contained in a Report on the
Procedure of the English Parliament prepared in 1568 at the request
of the then Speaker of the Irish Parliament by Hooker, a well-known
antiquarian of the time, who was a Member both of the English and
Irish Parliaments. This report was printed and presented to the Irish
Parliament, and was reprinted in London about 1575 under the title
of “The Order and Usuage of the Keeping of a Parliament in England.”
It is set out fully in Lord Mountmorres’s _History of the Principal
Transactions in the Irish Parliament from 1634 to 1666_, published
in 1792. Hooker, describing the seating of Members in the House of
Commons, says:

  Upon the lower row on both sides the Speaker, sit such personages
  as be of the King’s Privy Counsel, or of his Chief Officers; but as
  for any other, none claimeth, or can claim, any place, but sitteth
  as he cometh, saving that on the right hand of the Speaker next
  beneath the said Counsels, the Londoners and the citizens of York
  do sit, and so in order should sit all the citizens accordingly.

It will be noticed that the representatives of York as well as those
of London sat, according to Hooker, on the Front Bench to the right
of the Speaker. Probably the privilege was conferred upon London
and York as being the first and second cities of the Kingdom. But
it seems clear that the privilege was not at first confined merely
to the opening day of a new Parliament, but was exercised at every
sitting of the House of Commons. The only other authoritative
statement on this subject which I have found is in Oldfield’s
_Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland_, published in
1816. The passage is as follows: “It (York City) sends two Members to
Parliament, who are chosen by the freemen in general, and who enjoy
the privilege of sitting in their scarlet gowns next the Members
for London on the Privy Councillors’ bench on the first day of the
meeting of every new Parliament.” In 1910, the then representatives
of York, A. Rowntree and John Butcher, with a view to asserting this
privilege in the same manner as it is asserted by the representatives
of the City of London, laid the facts before Mr. Speaker Lowther.
After a full consideration of the matter he gave it as his opinion
that, assuming the right to have once existed, it must be considered,
in the absence of any evidence of having been used in modern times,
to have lapsed, and could not now be properly claimed or exercised.


5

On the morning of the day that the new Parliament meets for
business—the day on which the King’s Speech is read—the corridors,
vaults and cellars of the Palace of Westminster are searched to see
that all is well with the building and safe for the King, Lords and
Commons to assemble within it—a ceremony (for it is now only that)
which is repeated on the opening day of every session. It recalls the
Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes to blow up the Parliament in 1605.

The Commons possess but one memento of Guy, that most notorious of
all anti-parliamentarians. In a glass case in the Members’ Library
may be seen a long, narrow key with a hinge in the centre for
folding it up—so that it might be carried more conveniently in the
pocket—which was found on Fawkes when he was captured. It was the key
to the cellar of gunpowder extending under the House of Lords, though
it was really part of an adjoining empty house which the conspirators
had taken for their purpose. The custom of searching the Houses of
Parliament is popularly supposed to date from the Gunpowder Plot,
but it did not commence until eighty-five years later. According to
a document preserved in the House of Lords, an anonymous warning
received in 1690 by the Marquess of Carmarthen, setting forth, “There
is great cause to judge that there is a second Gunpowder Plot, or
some other such great mischief, designing against the King and
Parliament by a frequent and great resort of notorious ill-willers at
most private hours to the house of one Hutchinson in the Old Palace
Yard, Westminster, situate very dangerous for such purpose,” led
to a thorough examination of the buildings, and though nothing was
then found, from that time to this the search appears to have been
regularly made year after year.

The search party consists of twelve Yeomen of the Guard from
the Tower in all the picturesque glory of their Tudor uniforms,
accompanied by representatives of the Lord Great Chamberlain and the
Office of Works, and the two police inspectors of the Houses of Lords
and Commons. They tramp through the miles of corridors and lobbies,
looking carefully into every nook and corner, and down in the
equally extensive basements they examine everything with the utmost
minuteness, going among gas pipes, steam pipes, hot-water pipes,
electric-light conductors, to make sure that no explosives have
been deposited there. When the search was first ordered, years and
years ago, the Yeomen of the Guard were directed to carry lanterns
to light their way through the dark passages. The corridors and
cellars are now flooded with electric light. But the search party,
still obeying the old order, march along swinging their lanterns. And
still the solemn function ends up with service of cake and wine to
the old Beefeaters, and the drinking of long life to the King, with
a hip-hip hurrah! Only in one respect is there a departure from the
old procedure. At one time it was customary, when the inspection was
over, for the Lord Great Chamberlain to send a mounted soldier with
the message “All’s well” to the Sovereign. The mounted soldier no
longer rides post-haste to the King at Buckingham Palace; but every
year the Vice-Chamberlain lets his Majesty know, by private wire,
that everything is ready for his coming to meet the Lords and Commons
in the House of Lords to announce from the Throne the business for
which he has summoned Parliament to meet.




CHAPTER IX

TAKING THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE


1

Let us linger awhile in the Upper Chamber to note what happens when,
on the second day of the opening of a new Parliament, the Commons
return to their own House, having at their head no longer a mere
“Speaker-Elect,” but a fully-fledged “Mr. Speaker,” who has been
completely evolved from the chrysalis state by the magic influence
of the Royal approbation. As the noise of the retreating feet of the
exultant Commons irreverently breaks for a minute or so the solemn
stillness of the House of Lords, the five Lords Commissioners rise
from their bench, and with slow, toilsome footsteps, as if the weight
of their ample scarlet robes trailing on the ground behind them
impede their progress, disappear behind the Throne. After a brief
interval the Lord Chancellor reappears, attired in his customary
robes—which, like the Speaker’s, consist of a full-bottomed wig and
a flowing black gown worn over levee dress—and takes his seat on the
Woolsack. The junior bishop among the Lords Spiritual present reads
the prayers, while the peers stand with bowed and reverent heads.
Then the process of swearing-in begins. The Lord Chancellor is the
first to come to the table; and, with a copy of the New Testament
in his right hand, and a large paste-board card containing the
words of the oath, in his left, he repeats, after the Clerk of the
Parliaments, the declaration that he will be faithful and bear true
allegiance to his Majesty; after which he kisses the book, and writes
his name on the Roll of Parliament. It is the first signature on the
virgin sheet. The roll is of a different kind in each House. In the
Upper Chamber it is really a roll. It consists of one long sheet of
paper, about 16 inches in width, which winds round a roller. The
peers simply write their ordinary signatures, such as “Birkenhead,”
“Morley,” “Rosebery,” “Salisbury,” or “Lansdowne.”

As the Lord Chancellor returns to the Woolsack, Garter King of
Arms (the head of The Heralds’ College), appears, in his gorgeous
tabard, emblazoned back and front with the Royal Arms and many quaint
devices, and delivers to the Clerk the Roll of the Lords. The Clerk
of the Crown in Chancery, wearing wig and gown, also enters and
presents a certificate of the return of the sixteen representative
Scottish peers, who are elected for every new Parliament by the
peerage of Scotland. Then the peers come to the table without any
order or precedence being observed, and each, having first handed
over his writ of summons, a small piece of limp parchment, to the
Clerk, takes the oath, and subscribes the Roll.

“Once a peer, a peer for life,” it is said, truly enough, and yet
every Lord of Parliament must receive, at the dissolution, a fresh
summons from the Crown, and must take a fresh oath of allegiance,
before he can resume his legislative duties in the new Parliament.
The writs are issued from the Crown Office at Westminster to “the
Lords spiritual and temporal” individually. The mediæval quaintness
of the summons—it has been in use for over six centuries—is shown in
its principal passage:

  We strictly enjoining, command you upon the faith and allegiance by
  which you are bound to Us, that the weightiness of the said affairs
  and imminent perils considered (waiving all excuses), you be at the
  said day and place personally present with Us, and with the said
  Prelates, Great Men, and Peers, to treat and give your council upon
  the affairs aforesaid. And this, as you regard Us and Our honour
  and the safety and defence of the said United Kingdom and Church
  and dispatch of the said affairs, in no wise do you omit.

The writ sent to the spiritual peers is the same, save that they are
commanded to attend upon their “faith and love” instead of their
“faith and allegiance,” as in the case of the peers temporal. The
Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of London, Durham
and Winchester, become Lords of Parliament immediately on their
consecration, but the other prelates of the Church Establishment
must await, in the order of seniority of consecration, writs of
summons to the House of Lords, according as vacancies arise by death
or resignation in the estate of the Lords spiritual. The number of
spiritual peers is limited to twenty-six, and as there are thirty-six
dioceses in the Established Church, ten of the prelates are therefore
not Lords of Parliament, but all of them—save the Bishop of Sodor
and Man—may hope, in time, to have seats in the House of Lords
by succession. It is an interesting fact that the making of an
affirmation instead of taking the oath—a not infrequent occurrence
in the Commons—is rarely to be seen in the Lords. The only time I
have witnessed it was when Viscount Morley of Blackburn (better known
in literature and politics as John Morley) came to the table on his
first introduction to the House of Lords in May 1908, and the Clerk
produced, in the usual course, the New Testament and the copy of
the oath. Lord Morley refused to be sworn, and insisted on making
affirmation instead. As there was no precedent for such a demand in
the House of Lords, no form of affirmation was available; but after a
hurried consultation between the Lord Chancellor and the Clerk, the
terms of the oath, with the appeal to the Almighty, “So help me, God”
omitted, were made to serve the purpose.


2

In the House of Commons the procedure of swearing-in members is
somewhat different. The Speaker is the first to take the oath. As
soon as he returns to the Chair, in the full garb of his office,
he stands on the dais, and repeats the words of the oath after the
Clerk. It is a very simple declaration, and is the same in both
Houses:

  I, —— ——, swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and
  bear true allegiance to his Majesty King George, his heirs and
  successors, according to law. So help me, God.

The Speaker then signs the Test Roll, which, differing in form from
the Roll of Parliament in the Upper House, is a large book strongly
bound in leather, with brass clasps, opening at the bottom instead of
at the sides, and with a sheet of blotting-paper between every two
leaves. A new Test Roll is provided for each new Parliament.

After the Speaker, Members are sworn in in batches. To expedite
matters, two tables are brought into the Chamber, and, being placed
in line with the Clerk’s Table, are each supplied with copies of
the New Testament and five large paste-boards, on which the oath
is printed in bold type. At each table one of the clerks-assistant
stands, and administers the oath to the Members, as they present
themselves in groups of five, two or three holding between them a
Testament, and each having in his left hand one of the oath-cards,
the words of which they repeat, and then kiss the book. The first to
take the oath and sign the roll after the Speaker are the Leader of
the House and the Leader of the Opposition. Members of “his Majesty’s
most honourable Privy Council,” and the Ministers, past and present,
next have precedence, and take the oath separately from the other
Members.

In the Lords, as we have seen, each peer, before taking the oath and
subscribing the Roll, gives the Clerk his writ of summons. But in the
Commons no proof of identity—no evidence that they are duly elected
M.P.’s—is required from the gentlemen that present themselves at
the Table to take the oath and subscribe the Test Roll. It is true
that the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery receives at his office at
Westminster from the returning officer of every constituency what is
called the return of the writ—that is, actually the writ of election,
with the name of the elected representative certified on the back—and
that the names of the Members, with the constituency each represents,
are inscribed in a book, called the “Return Book,” which is delivered
by the Clerk of the Crown to the Clerk of the House of Commons on the
day the new Parliament opens.

But though ordinarily all the approaches to the Chamber are guarded
by vigilant policemen and door-keepers, who know every Member of
the House, it is obviously impossible at the opening of a new
Parliament—when there is a large influx of new Members—for the
officials on duty to be able to discriminate between those who say
they are representatives and those who may be strangers. It would
not be difficult, therefore, for an impostor of nerve and audacity,
with some knowledge of the House and its ways, to enter the House
by personating some Member whom he knew could not be in attendance,
to vote in a division on the Speakership, should there be a contest
for the Chair, and even to take the oath and subscribe the Roll.
There is no case of personation on record, but it is possible in the
circumstances. The Return Book is a conspicuous object on the Table
during the swearing-in of Members. It is there for reference by the
Clerk, in the event of a question arising as to the identity of any
person who may present himself. However, as it contains merely the
name of each Member and his constituency, and not his portrait and
description, it is hardly an insuperable bar to personation, and
accordingly, in the case of new Members, the question of identity
has to be taken on trust by the Clerk. But there is no doubt that a
Member who for any reason did not want to take the oath could quite
easily evade the obligation.


3

In the case of a contested election for the Speakership, Members
would of course have to vote without having been sworn. What, it may
be asked, would happen in the event of a Member, after the election
of the Speaker, sitting and voting without having taken the oath and
signed the Roll? The penalties provided by an Act passed in 1866 are
a fine of £500 for each commission of the offence of voting, and
the immediate deprivation of the seat, which, _ipso facto_, becomes
vacant. The payment of the fines, when the offence has been committed
through mistake, ignorance, or inadvertence, can be remitted by an
Act of Indemnity, but it is contended that nothing can avoid the
instant vacating of the seat. I remember hearing it persistently
whispered that one Member elected at a certain General Election
had never taken the oath or signed the Roll. The matter, however,
was never brought to the notice of the House. A peer who takes his
seat and votes without having previously subscribed to the oath
is likewise liable for every such vote to a penalty of £500. Peers
have so inadvertently violated the law. Each explained that having
taken the oath and signed the Roll on his accession to the peerage
he thought he was not obliged to do so again when a new Parliament
assembled. This excuse was accepted in the case of four peers in
1906. Bills of Indemnity were then said to be no longer necessary.

The swearing-in of Members returned to the House of Commons at the
General Election of 1918—the first after the World War—had one new
feature. It was introduced owing to changes in the law of election
made by the Reform Act of 1918. It is provided by that Act that
a candidate must lodge £150 with the returning officer at his
nomination, which sum is not given back until the returning officer
is officially informed that the candidate, if elected, has taken the
oath and signed the Roll. Accordingly, to provide a means of ready
discovery as to whether a particular Member had or had not subscribed
to the oath, two clerks sat at the Table, with printed lists of the
names and constituencies, which they ticked off as the name and the
constituency of each Member was announced by the Clerk of the House
in the course of the introduction of the Member to the Speaker.


4

As Members take the oath, they proceed, in single file, to subscribe
the Test Roll, over which the Clerk stands sentinel. Each Member
writes his full name and that of his constituency. He is then
introduced by the Clerk to the Speaker, who shakes hands with him.
So the process of swearing-in goes on for two or three days. It is
slow and tedious work, and the House is not a lively place while it
is in progress. Occasionally a special incident relieves the tedium
of the proceedings. Some Members claim to make an affirmation instead
of being sworn, on the ground that he has no religious belief, or
that the taking of an oath is contrary to his religious belief. The
affirmation is in the same form as the oath, except that the words
“Solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm” are substituted
for the word “swear,” and the words, “So help me, God” are omitted.
These have to sign their names on a different part of the Test Roll.
It is no unusual thing either to see a Member, wearing his hat, sworn
on a book provided by himself. He belongs to the Jewish persuasion,
which requires the oath to be taken with covered head on a copy of
the Pentateuch, or first five books of the Old Testament. Others
prefer to swear with uplifted hand instead of by kissing the New
Testament. The oath is administered in about a minute to each batch.
It is in signing the Test Roll that time is consumed. The Member who
has not his glasses adjusted, or who searches on the Table for the
pen that suits him best, with which to inscribe his name on the roll
of fame in bold and lasting caligraphy, may block a group anxious
to get to the lunch-rooms or smoking-rooms, and may prove the same
kind of nuisance to his fellows as the man who wants to change a
five-pound note at the railway booking-office, though there is a
long and impatient queue behind, and the train is on the point of
starting.




CHAPTER X

MR. SPEAKER


1

As “Mr. Speaker” does not speak in the debates, the title of
the President of the House of Commons appears, at first sight,
paradoxical. The original function of the office was to sum up, like
the Judge at a trial, the arguments of both sides at the close of
a debate. “If any doubt arise upon a Bill,” says an Order passed
in 1604, “the Speaker to explain, but not to sway the House with
argument or dispute.” Mr. Speaker had also to “speak” the views of
the House in its contentions with the Crown, about supplies and
taxes, before the Revolution of 1688.

The duties of the Speaker to-day are not so anxious or troublesome.
The occasions on which he conveys the views or desires of the Commons
to the Sovereign, or his representatives, the Lords Commissioners
in the House of Lords, are rare, and always formal or ceremonious.
He has been relieved long since of the invidious task of summing
up a debate in which the contending parties had argued out their
differences. His duties are now more appropriate to his office, as
controller and guide of a deliberative Assembly. He keeps the talk
strictly to the subject of discussion. He decides points of order.
He interprets the rules of the House. He is ever ready to assist
Members in doubt or difficulty about a question, a motion or a Bill.
He guards with jealous care the authority, honour and dignity of
the House. He is most concerned with the maintenance of its great
traditions of good order, decorum, and freedom of opinion.

Above all, Mr. Speaker must be scrupulously fair, absolutely just,
in rulings which may affect any of the political sections of the
Assembly. For the most precious attribute of the Chair of the
House of Commons is impartiality. The Speaker, like the King, is
supposed to have no politics. That has become almost a recognized
constitutional principle. Of course, he is returned to the House
originally as a supporter of one or other of the political parties.
It follows also that on his first appointment to the Chair he is
necessarily the choice, or the nominee, of the political Party
which at the time is supreme. The Chair of the House of Commons,
when vacated by resignation or death, has always been considered
the legitimate prize of the Party then in office or in power.
Accordingly the Speaker has invariably been chosen from the ranks of
the Ministerialists. All the Speakers of the nineteenth century—Sir
Henry Addington, Sir John Freeman-Mitford, Charles Abbot, Charles
Manners-Sutton, James Abercromby, Charles Shaw-Lefevre, John Evelyn
Denison, Henry Bouverie Brand, Arthur Wellesley Peel and William
Court Gully—were so chosen and appointed, and so was James William
Lowther, the first Speaker elected in the twentieth century. But
whether the Speaker is first designated by the Government, or, in
case of a division, is carried by the majority of the Government,
when he is being conducted by his proposer and seconder from his
place on the benches to the Chair, he, as it were, doffs his Party
colours, be they buff or blue, and wears, instead, the white flower
of a neutral political life; and, once in the Chair, he is regarded
as the choice of the whole House, from which his authority is
derived and of which, to use the ancient phrase, he is “the mouth.”
Henceforth he sits above all Parties. As Speaker he has no political
opinions. So he remains Speaker—being re-elected unanimously at the
first meeting of each new Parliament—until he decides to resign or is
removed by death. This concurrence of both sides in the appointment
of Mr. Speaker adds immensely to his judicial independence in
presiding over the Party conflicts which are waged on the floor of
the House of Commons.

Once only has a Speaker been dismissed on the assembling of a new
Parliament because he was supposed to be hostile to the Party
which came back from the country in a majority. This was Charles
Manners-Sutton. A Tory himself, he was the nominee of the Tory
Administration in office at the resignation of Charles Abbot in 1817.
The moderate Conservatives and Whigs put forward Charles William
Wynn. His brother, Sir Watkin Wynn, who was also in the House, and
he were known as “Bubble and Squeak,” on account of the peculiarity
of their voices. Indeed, Canning thought the only objection to Wynn
as a candidate for the Chair was that Members might be tempted to
address him as “Mr. Squeaker.” However, Manners-Sutton was elected
by the large majority of 160; and in accordance with precedent he
was reappointed to the position after General Elections in 1819,
1820, 1826, 1830 and 1831. In July 1832, during the struggle over
the great Reform Bill, he intimated his wish to retire at the close
of the Parliament. A vote of thanks for his services was unanimously
passed, on the motion of Lord Althorp, the Whig Leader of the House,
an annuity of £4,000 was granted to him, and one of £3,000, after
his death, to his heir male. But the Whig Ministers, returned again
to power at the General Election which followed the passing of the
Reform Act, were apprehensive that a new and inexperienced Speaker
would be unable to control the first reformed Parliament in which, it
was feared, there might be discordant and unruly elements, and they
induced Manners-Sutton to consent to occupy the Chair for some time
longer. The Radicals, however, decided to oppose his re-election.
Accordingly, at the meeting of the new Parliament on January 29,
1833, after Manners-Sutton had been proposed by Lord Morpeth and
seconded by Sir Francis Burdett, both Whigs, Edward John Littleton
was put up in opposition to him by Joseph Hume and Daniel O’Connell.
A division was taken, and Littleton was rejected by 241 votes to 31,
or the enormous majority of 210. Thereupon Charles Manners-Sutton was
declared elected Speaker unanimously.

When a new Parliament next assembled, on February 19, 1835, the
Tories were in office, the Whigs having been summarily dismissed
by William IV; but, as the result of the General Election which
followed, a majority of Whigs confronted Sir Robert Peel, Prime
Minister, in the House of Commons, determined to fight him on every
issue. Charles Manners-Sutton was again nominated for the Chair,
this time his proposer and seconder being Tories. That he was a
staunch Tory everybody was well aware. But he was charged with overt
acts of partisanship, in breach of the principle that as Speaker
he was bound to be absolutely impartial. It was said that he had
been concerned in the Tory opposition to the reform of Parliament,
and had, in fact, tried to constitute an anti-Reform Administration
himself. It was further said that he had helped in the overthrow of
the late Whig Government, and that, had the Tories been successful
at the polls, he would have been appointed to high office in Peel’s
Cabinet. Though he denied these charges, the Whigs as a Party opposed
his re-election to the Chair; and their nominee, James Abercromby,
was carried in a most exciting contest by the narrow majority of
10, or by 316 votes to 306. “Such a division was never known before
in the House of Commons,” writes Charles Greville in his _Memoirs_.
“Much money was won and lost. Everybody betted. I won £55.”


2

Lord John Russell, speaking in the 1835 debate, said the House of
Commons was under no obligation in a new Parliament to re-elect the
Speaker, unless he had won for himself the confidence and esteem not
of his own Party alone, but of the general body of Members. Even so,
no attempt has since been made to depose a Speaker on Party grounds,
even when a General Election has upset the balance of Parties in the
House of Commons. On the retirement of Abercromby in May 1839, the
Whigs, being still in office, nominated Charles Shaw-Lefevre; the
Tories ran Henry Goulburn, and the former was elected by a majority
of 18, or by 317 votes against 299. The General Election of 1841
resulted in a change of Government. The Melbourne Administration,
which elected Shaw-Lefevre to the Chair, was overthrown at the
polls, and the Tories came back with a large majority. Many of
the victors in the electoral contest were disposed to follow the
example set by their opponents in 1835, and make a Party question
of the Speakership of the new Parliament. But their leader and
Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, refused to countenance this line
of action. “I do not think it necessary,” said he, in a speech
supporting the re-election of Shaw-Lefevre in August 1841, “that
the person elected to the Chair, who has ably and conscientiously
performed his duty, should be displaced because his political
opinions are not consonant with those of the majority of the House.”
The re-election of Shaw-Lefevre was, accordingly, unanimous. Peel’s
wise view of the Speakership has since prevailed. The continuity of
the office has not been broken since the dismissal of Manners-Sutton
in 1835. John Evelyn Denison was unanimously chosen to succeed
Shaw-Lefevre in 1857, Henry Bouverie Brand to succeed Denison in
1872, and Arthur Wellesley Peel to succeed Brand in 1884. The Whigs,
or Liberals, were in office on each occasion that the Speakership
became vacant by resignation in those years. And the Conservatives,
on their return to power, reappointed Denison in 1866, Brand in 1874,
and Peel in 1886.

The circumstances attending the election of William Court Gully
as Speaker gave both to the principle that the Chair is above
the strife and the prejudices of Party, and the precedent of its
occupant’s continuity of office, an accession of strength which
perhaps makes them stable and decisive for all time. Gully had sat
in the House as a Liberal for ten years when, on the retirement of
Peel in May 1895, he was nominated for the Chair by the Liberal
Government. The Unionist Opposition proposed Sir Matthew White
Ridley, a highly respected member of their Party, and a man of long
and varied experience in parliamentary affairs. On a division Gully
was elected by the narrow majority of 11. The voting was: Gully,
285; White Ridley, 274. It was publicly declared at the time that,
as the Unionists had disapproved the candidature of Gully, they held
themselves free to put a nominee of their own in the Chair should
they have a majority in the next new Parliament. A few weeks later
the Liberal Government was defeated in the House of Commons, and
a dissolution followed. It is the custom to allow the Speaker a
walk-over in his constituency at the General Election. But Gully’s
seat at Carlisle was on this occasion contested, and his Unionist
opponent received from Arthur Balfour, then Leader of the Unionist
Party, a letter warmly endorsing his candidature and wishing him
success. In his address to the constituents Gully made no reference
to politics. As Speaker of the House of Commons, he could have
nothing to say to Party controversy. Like his predecessors, he
recognized that a Speaker cannot descend into the rough strife of
the electoral battle, not even to canvass the electors, without
impairing the independence and the dignity of the Chair of the House
of Commons. The contest ended in his re-election by a substantial
majority.

The Unionists came back triumphant from the country. There was still
a feeling in the Party, though not, indeed, prevailing to any wide
extent, that the Speaker of the new Parliament should be chosen from
its ranks. It was pointed out that for sixty years there had not
been a Conservative Speaker—Manners-Sutton having been the last—and,
apart altogether from the legitimate ambition of the Conservatives
to have a Speaker of their own way of thinking, it was argued that
in building up the body of precedents which guide, if they do not
control, the duties of the Chair, Conservative opinion ought to have
its proper share, if these precedents are truly to reflect the sense
of the House generally. But tradition and practice in the House of
Commons were too powerful to be overborne. At the meeting of the
new Parliament, in August 1895, Gully was unanimously re-elected to
the Chair. The aloofness and supremacy of the Speakership has one
fine effect. It gives to the House, despite its Party divisions, an
ennobling sense of national unity.


3

The Speaker forfeits—actually, though perhaps not theoretically—his
rights as the representative of a constituency in the House. He
is disqualified from speaking in the debates and voting in the
divisions. The constituency which he represents is, therefore, in
a sense disfranchised. But there is no record of a constituency
ever having objected to its representative being made Speaker. No
doubt it appreciates the distinction. Formerly it was customary
for the Speaker to join in the debates and divisions when the House
was in Committee, he having left the Chair, and the proceedings
being presided over by the Chairman. In Committee on the Bill for
the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, Mr. Speaker Addington, on
February 12, 1799, declared that, while he was in favour of the
plan, he was strongly opposed to Catholic emancipation with which
Pitt was disposed to accompany it. If it were a question, he said,
between the re-enactment of all the Popery laws for the repression of
Ireland, or the Union, coupled with Catholic emancipation, for the
pacification of Ireland, he would prefer the former. Again, during
the Committee stage of the Bill introduced by Henry Grattan, in 1813,
to qualify Roman Catholics for election as Members of Parliament, an
amendment to omit the vital words, “to sit and vote in either House
of Parliament,” was moved by Mr. Speaker Abbot (strongly opposed,
like Addington, to the removal of the Catholic disabilities), and
having been carried by a majority, though only a small one of four
votes, proved fatal to the measure. Manners-Sutton also exercised his
right to speak in Committee three times on such highly controversial
questions as Catholic emancipation and the claims of Dissenters
to be admitted to the Universities, to both of which he, like his
predecessors in the Chair, answered an uncompromising “No.”

But so high has the Chair of the House of Commons been since lifted
above the conflicts of politics, that partisanship so aggressive
would not now be tolerated in the Speaker. On the last two occasions
that a Speaker interested himself in proceedings in Committee, the
questions at issue had no relation whatever to Party politics. In
1856 Shaw-Lefevre spoke in defence of the Board of Trustees of the
British Museum, of which he was a member. In 1870 Evelyn Denison
voted to exempt horses employed on farms from a licence duty which
was proposed in the Budget. This was the last occasion that a Speaker
in wig and gown passed through the division lobby to record his vote,
and it is probable that never again will a Speaker speak or vote in
Committee. Indeed, Mr. Speaker Gully directed that his name should
be removed from the printed lists supplied to the clerks in the
division lobbies for the purpose of recording how members voted. The
only vote which a Speaker now gives is a casting vote, should the
numbers on each side in a division be equal. It is the custom for the
Speaker to give his casting vote in such a way as to avoid making
the decision final—thus giving the House another opportunity of
considering the question—and to state his reasons, which are entered
in the _Journals_.

Occasions for the Speaker’s casting vote rarely arise. Peel was
called upon to give it but once during his eleven years of office;
that was on the Marriages Confirmation (Antwerp) Bill in July,
1887. The object of the measure was to confirm marriages solemnized
at Antwerp by a Dr. Potts, chaplain to a British and American
chapel from 1880 to 1884, the invalidity of which was caused by a
technicality. The tie was a motion to adjourn the debate, and Mr.
Speaker Peel gave his casting vote for the adjournment. Gully’s
experience in this respect was singular. On the sole occasion he was
called upon to give his casting vote no tie really existed. It was on
May 11, 1899, in connection with the second reading of the Vehicles
(Lights) Bill. “The tellers for the Ayes and the Noes came up to the
Table almost at the same time,” said Gully, describing the incident.
“One of the tellers gave his number as forty, and the teller for the
Ayes was then turned to and asked his number. In point of fact the
teller for the Ayes had succeeded by a majority of three. His number
should have been forty-three, but he was so elated at hearing of a
victory which he had not expected that at the moment he only repeated
what the other Member had said, and he said ‘forty,’ whereupon there
was a tie. I then gave my vote for the Ayes, doing that which a
Speaker always did on such occasions, although I do not think I had
formed any opinion at all upon the Bill. Still, in doing what I did
I pursued the proper course, because it gave the opportunity on the
third reading for the expression of a decided opinion on the Bill.”




CHAPTER XI

“ORDER, ORDER!”


1

What are the qualities, then, which make a successful President of
the representative Chamber? “Go and assemble yourselves together, and
elect one, a discreet, wise, and learned man, to be your Speaker.”
Such were the words a Lord Chancellor in the reign of Elizabeth
addressed to a new House of Commons. The order in which the qualities
deemed essential for the Speaker are arranged is not without its
significance. Discretion comes first. It might be given the second
place and the third also. Marked ability is by no means indispensable
in a Speaker. Intellectually his duties are not searching. But
undoubtedly in the twentieth century, as in the sixteenth, the
faculty which is of the highest importance in the art of the
Speakership is sagacity, prudence, circumspection—making allowances
for the weaknesses and eccentricities of human nature.

John Evelyn Denison had sat in the House for more than thirty years
when, in 1857, he was chosen Speaker. Nevertheless, he was awed by
the responsibilities of the Chair. In such a position timorousness
or irresolution would be fatal. To Denison the prospect was not made
less formidable by the reply which he got from his predecessor on
inquiring whether there was anyone to whom he could go for advice
and assistance on trying occasions. “No one,” said Shaw-Lefevre;
“you must learn to rely entirely upon yourself.” “And,” proceeds
Denison in his _Diary_, “I found this to be very true. Sometimes a
friend would hasten to the Chair and offer advice. I must say, it
was for the most part lucky I did not follow the advice. I spent the
first few years of my Speakership like the captain of a steamer on
the Thames, standing on the paddle-box, ever on the look-out for
shocks and collisions.” But these “shocks and collisions” are rarely
uncommon or unfamiliar. The House of Commons has not had a life
and growth of several centuries without providing an abundance of
precepts and examples for the guidance of its Speaker. Very little
happens in the House of Commons that has not happened there often
before. Almost every contingency that can possibly arise is covered
by a precedent, and if a Speaker be but acquainted with the forms
and procedure of the House and the rulings of his predecessors, both
of which hedge his course, he cannot go far astray. Nor is it the
fact that there is no one to whom he can go for advice. It is the
custom for Members to give the Speaker private notice of questions on
points of order; unless, of course, such as spring up unexpectedly in
debate; and for aid in the decision of these questions the Speaker
has not only the clerks who sit at the Table below him to refer to,
if necessary, as to custom and procedure, but also a counsel outside
to direct him on points of law. “I used to study the business of
the day carefully every morning,” says Denison, “and consider what
questions could arise upon it. Upon these questions I prepared myself
by referring to the rules, or, if needful, to precedents.” It is also
the practice for the clerks to have an audience with the Speaker
every day before the House meets, to draw his attention to points of
order that are likely to arise, and to confer with him generally on
the business of the day. Therefore it is a rare experience for the
Speaker to be brought suddenly face to face with an unprecedented
situation. And in such a difficulty he has the advantage of being
able, as the supreme authority in the House, to impose his ruling
unquestioned on all concerned, even should he have gone beyond his
exact functions and powers as the director of debate, the preserver
of order, the guardian of the rights of Members. Mr. Speaker Lowther
was asked, May 14, 1920, how a mistake he might make could be
redressed. His reply, greeted with loud laughter, was “The Chair,
like the Pope, is infallible.”

It must not be supposed, however, that smooth and easy is the way
of the President of the House of Commons. The whole art of the
Speakership does not consist in presenting a dignified, ceremonial
figure, in wig and gown, on a carved and canopied Chair, and having a
mastery of the technicalities of procedure. The situation that tests
most severely the mettle of the Speaker is one that not infrequently
arises in the House of Commons, when there is what the newspapers
call “a scene,” and he is expected to stand forth on the dais of
the Chair the one calm, serious, stern and impartial personality,
looming above the noise and recrimination which arises from the
benches below. It is not cleverness that is then the indispensable
quality in a Speaker. More to the purpose, for the controlling
and the moderating of the passions of a popular assembly, are the
superficial gifts of an impressive presence, an air of authority, a
ready tongue, and a resonant voice. Still, the control of the House
in such an emergency will depend not so much upon the appearance, the
temperament, the elocution of Mr. Speaker, as upon the measure of the
confidence and respect of Members which he has previously won by more
sterling qualities; and the qualities upon which the trust of the
House of Commons in its Speaker reposes most securely and abidingly
are strength of character, fairness of mind, urbanity of temper, or a
combination of tactful firmness with strict impartiality.

No doubt it is difficult for the Speaker to appear impartial at all
moments and to all sections of the House. Some passing feeling of
soreness will inevitably be felt by Members censured, or placed at a
disadvantage in Party engagements, by decisions of the Chair. But if
the Speaker has not impressed the House generally with his discretion
and judgment, with confidence in the impartiality of his rulings,
with the conviction that he regards himself as the guardian of the
House, and not the auxiliary of the Government in getting business
done, that feeling of soreness will not be, as it ought to be, brief
and transient, and the Speaker will find on a crucial occasion that
the Assembly has passed from his control.

Even so, the Speaker must not be too stern in action or demeanour.
I have witnessed many violent scenes in the House of Commons, and I
have invariably noticed that, in a clash of will and tempers, genial
expostulation by the Chair is most potent in the restoration of
order. Disraeli said of Denison that even “the rustle of his robes,”
as he rose to rebuke a breach of order, was sufficient to awe the
unruly Member into submission. But Members are not disposed to forget
that, after all, the Speaker is but the servant of the House. There
was once a very proud and haughty Speaker, Sir Edward Seymour by
name, in the reign of Charles II. “You are too big for the Chair and
for us,” said a Member smarting under a reprimand or a ruling. “For
you, that think yourself one of the governors of the world, to be
our servant is incongruous.” The Speaker must not be too fastidious
or impatient with the commonplace or the eccentric. He should have
a genial tolerance of the extravagant in personality and character,
which is certain to appear in company of 707 men, chosen from all
classes and all parts of the kingdom, and which, indeed, makes the
House of Commons a place of infinite interest, abounding in humour
and comedy. Moreover, the House will not tolerate the despot or the
master in an officer of its own creation. Indeed, it is a mistake
to suppose that the Speaker wields unfettered authority, that his
individual will is law in the House of Commons. It is true that his
controlling powers are great, and that his rulings on points of order
and procedure are final. But the will which he imposes upon the House
is not his own: it is the law of the House itself, for everything he
does must be in accordance with rule and precedent.


2

But suppose a Speaker, who, of course, puts his own interpretation
on precedents and Standing Orders, ultimately finds that he has made
a wrong ruling, what ought he to do in the way of rectifying it?
Thomas Moore relates in his _Diary_ an extraordinary discussion on
this point with Manners-Sutton after dinner one evening in 1829 at
the Speaker’s house. “Dwelt much on the advantages of humbug,” writes
Moore, in reference to Manners-Sutton; “of a man knowing how to take
care of his reputation, and to keep from being _found out_, so as
always to pass for cleverer than he is.” Moore says he himself argued
that this denoted a wise man, not a humbug. If by that line of policy
a man induced his fellow-men to give him credit for being cleverer
than he really was, the fault could not be his, so long as he did not
himself advance any claim to it as his due. The moment he _pretended_
to be what he was not, then began humbug, but not sooner. The poet
then goes on:

  He still pushed his point, playfully, but pertinaciously, and in
  illustration of what he meant put the following case: “Suppose
  a Speaker rather new to his office, and a question brought into
  discussion before him which Parties are equally divided upon,
  and which he sees will run to very inconvenient lengths if not
  instantly decided. Well, though ignorant entirely on the subject,
  he assumes an air of authority, and gives his decision, which sets
  the matter at rest. On going home he finds that he has decided
  quite wrongly; and then, without making any further fuss about the
  business, he quietly goes and _alters_ the _entry_ on the Journals.”

Moore again insisted that wisdom, and not humbug, was the
characteristic of such an action. “To his _supposed_ case all I had
to answer,” the poet writes, “was that I still thought the man a
wise one, and no humbug; by his resolution in a moment of difficulty
he prevented a _present_ mischief, and by his withdrawal of a wrong
precedent averted a _future_ one.”

There are only two instances of the action of a Speaker being made
the subject of a motion of censure, followed by a division. In
neither case, however, was the motion carried. On July 11, 1879,
Charles Stewart Parnell moved a vote of censure on Mr. Speaker
Brand on the ground that he had exceeded his duty in directing
the clerks at the Table to take notes of the speeches of the
Nationalist Members, then inaugurating their policy of obstructing
the proceedings of the House. The motion was lost by 421 votes to 29,
or a majority of 392—one of the largest recorded in the history of
Parliament. The Irish Members were also the movers of the other vote
of censure on the Speaker. On March 20, 1902, Joseph Chamberlain,
then Colonial Secretary, speaking on the concluding stages of the
South African War, quoted a saying of Vilonel, the Boer General,
that the enemies of South Africa were those who were continuing a
hopeless struggle. “He is a traitor,” interjected John Dillon, the
Irish Nationalist, and Chamberlain retorted; “The hon. gentleman
is a good judge of traitors.” Dillon appealed to the Chair whether
the expression of the Colonial Secretary was not unparliamentary.
“I deprecate interruptions and retorts,” replied Mr. Speaker Gully,
“and if the hon. gentleman had not himself interrupted the right
hon. gentleman, he would not have been subjected to a retort.” “Then
I desire to say that the right hon. gentleman is a damned liar!”
exclaimed Dillon. He was thereupon “named” by the Speaker, and, on
the motion of Arthur Balfour, was suspended from the service of the
House. On May 7th J. J. Mooney, a Member of the Irish Party, moved
that the Speaker ought to have ruled that the words applied by the
Colonial Secretary to Dillon were unparliamentary, and accordingly
have directed Chamberlain to withdraw them. On a division the action
of the Chair was supported by 398 votes to 63, or a majority of 335.


3

If the duties of the Speakership are arduous, its dignity is high
and its emoluments handsome. In former times the Speaker was paid
a salary of £5 a day, and a fee of £5 on every Private Bill. This
fluctuating income was replaced by a fixed salary of £6,000 a year
on the election of Henry Addington to the Chair in 1789. It was also
decided at the same time that a sum of £1,000 equipment money was
to be given to the Speaker on his first appointment. In the reign
of William IV the salary was reduced to £5,000 to be paid, free
of all taxes, out of the Consolidated Fund direct, without having
to be voted every year by the House of Commons. At the same time
an official secretary, with a salary of £500, was attached to the
office. The Speaker also has a residence, furnished by the State
and free of rent, rates and taxes, with coal and light supplied.
The Speaker’s house is in that conspicuous wing of the Palace of
Westminster, with its carved stonework and gothic windows, extending
from the Clock Tower to the river. It was first occupied by John
Evelyn Denison in 1857. Here the Speaker gives several official
entertainments during session. There are dinners to the Ministers,
to the leader Members of the Opposition, and to private Members.
According to long-established custom, a Member who accepts an
invitation to dine with Mr. Speaker is required to appear either in
uniform or Court dress, ordinary evening dress being debarred. As
a result, many eminent parliamentarians, such as William Cobbett,
Joseph Hume, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Joseph Cowen, all sturdy
democrats and Radicals, who could not bring themselves to wear Court
dress, never had the pleasure of dining as guests of Mr. Speaker.
The rule is still enforced. The only departure from it was made by
Mr. Speaker Peel during the short Liberal Parliament of 1895, when
he had a separate dinner party of the Labour Members of the House,
and told them they might come in any dress they pleased. But that
precedent, at least, has not once been followed at Westminster,
though subsequent Speakers have in such cases given luncheons instead
of dinners. The Speaker is attired at these dinners in a black velvet
Court suit, knee-breeches with silk stockings, a steel-handled
sword by his side, and lace ruffles round his neck and wrists. The
table and huge sideboards in the oak-panelled rooms are spread with
magnificent old plate, and the walls are hung with portraits of many
famous “First Commoners.”

The Speaker is the First Commoner of the Realm, according to an Act
of Parliament passed in 1688 (1 William and Mary, c. 21) after the
Revolution. It provided that the Speaker’s place in the order of
precedence is next after the peers of the Realm. In 1919 the Speaker
was raised a great many steps in the scale. By an Order in Council
issued by King George V it was ordained that he “shall have, hold and
enjoy place, pre-eminence and precedence, immediately after the Lord
President of the Council,” which makes him the seventh subject of
the Realm. The order is: Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor,
Archbishop of York, Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lord
President of the Council, the Speaker.

The Speakership is one of the highest prizes of political ambition.
In dignity and importance it is next, perhaps, to the office of
Prime Minister. Four Speakers have resigned in order to become
Prime Ministers. One of them, Henry Addington, after being Speaker
for twelve years, was summoned by George III, in 1801, to form an
Administration in succession to Pitt’s, which failed to complete its
Irish policy at the Union, owing to the King’s rooted objection to
Catholic emancipation. The only position for which the Speakership
would be relinquished is certainly that of Prime Minister. Sir John
Freeman-Mitford, who followed Addington in the Chair, resigned after
a year’s service in order to become Lord Chancellor of Ireland;
but he did so only at the earnest solicitation of the King and
the solatium of a salary of £10,000 per year and a peerage as
Lord Redesdale. The Lord Chancellorship of Ireland is a high and
honourable position, but it is unlikely that anyone would now give
up the Speakership of the House of Commons for it. Charles Abbot
resigned the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland—a post of greater
political importance than that of the Lord Chancellorship—in order to
succeed Freeman-Mitford as Speaker in 1802. Abbot refused the offer
of a Secretaryship of State from Perceval, the Prime Minister, in
1809 during his occupancy of the Chair; and Manners-Sutton could have
been Home Secretary in the Administration formed in 1827 by Canning,
but he did not think it good enough.

On the other hand, Ministers have been willing to give up their
portfolios for the Speaker’s Chair. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the
Exchequer of the Melbourne Administration, had his heart set on that
coveted office. He was in the running for the Speakership in 1835,
when James Abercromby was elected. In 1838 Abercromby intimated to
Lord Melbourne his intention to resign—throwing a curious side-light
on the relations at the time between Mr. Speaker and the Treasury
Bench—because from the attitude of Lord John Russell, the Leader of
the House, he felt he no longer possessed that degree of Ministerial
confidence which, in his opinion, was essential to the due conduct of
public business and the maintenance of the authority of the Chair.
The Prime Minister induced Abercromby to postpone his resignation,
and at the same time satisfied the renewed pretensions of his
Chancellor of the Exchequer with the promise that he should be the
Government candidate for the Chair whenever it became vacant. But
when Abercromby retired in the following year it was found that
Spring Rice was not acceptable to the Radicals, and Shaw-Lefevre was
selected in order to maintain the unity of the Party and preserve
the Liberal succession to the Chair. Again, on the resignation of
Arthur Wellesley Peel in 1895, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was
willing to lay down his portfolio as Secretary of State for War
in the then Liberal Government for the object of his ambition—the
Speakership; and it is said that he reluctantly yielded to the urgent
representations of his colleagues that the Party could ill spare his
services. Just ten years later he became Prime Minister.

Still, the office has, as a rule, fallen to unofficial Members, or to
Members who have held subordinate Ministerial appointments. Denison,
in the opening passages of his _Diary_, states that on April 8, 1857,
he was seated in his library at Ossington, when the letters were
brought in, and among them was the following:

                                                94 PICCADILLY,
                                                      _April 7, 1857_.

  MY DEAR DENISON,

  We wish to be allowed to propose you for the Speakership of the
  House of Commons. Will you agree?

                                                  Yours sincerely,
                                                           PALMERSTON.

Denison says the proposal took him by surprise. “Though,” he writes,
“I had attended of late years to several branches of the private
business, and had taken more part in the public business of the House
of Commons, I had never made the duties of the Chair my special
study.” William Court Gully had been ten years in Parliament before
his elevation to the Speaker’s Chair, but he was one of that large,
modest band of “silent Members” who, confining themselves to voting
in the division lobbies, are unknown in debate, and, consequently,
are never mentioned in the papers. Moreover, being a busy lawyer,
Gully took little or no part in the routine work of the House, such
as service on Committees upstairs, which is supposed to afford a good
training for the Speakership. Indeed, the Chair may be said to be the
one great prize that is open to the occupants of the back benches
as well as the front benches who possess the necessary physical and
mental qualities. Personal appearance is undoubtedly an essential
qualification for the office. This includes the possession of clear
vision. A Speaker with spectacles would look incongruous in an
assembly where the competition to catch his eye is so keen.


4

The term of office of Mr. Speaker is usually short. Arthur Onslow,
who was elected in 1726, continued in possession of the Chair for
thirty-five years, through five successive Parliaments, apparently
without ruffling a hair of his wig. So long an occupancy is now
wellnigh impossible. For one thing, the duties of Mr. Speaker are
physically more responsible and irksome. The sessions are longer,
the sittings of the House more protracted, and the fatigue of the
prolonged and often tedious hours in the Chair must be most severe
mentally and physically. Besides, there has grown up of late a
preference for a certain maturity of age in the Speaker. Arthur
Onslow was only thirty-six when he was called to the office. Henry
Addington, who occupied the Speaker’s Chair at the opening of the
nineteenth century, was thirty-two only on his appointment. William
Court Gully, who was in possession of the Chair at the opening of
the twentieth century, had passed his sixtieth year on his election.
The occupancy of the office must be comparatively brief if men are
appointed to it only when their heads are grey or bald. Of recent
Speakers, Henry Bouverie Brand sat for twelve years, Arthur Wellesley
Peel eleven years, William Court Gully ten years, James William
Lowther sixteen years.

The Speaker receives a pension of £4,000 a year. John Evelyn Denison
refused this retiring allowance. “Though without any pretensions
to wealth,” he wrote to Gladstone, then Prime Minister, “I have a
private fortune which will suffice, and for the few years of life
that remain to me I should be happier in feeling that I am not a
burden to my fellow-countrymen.” He retired in February 1872, and
died, without heir, in March 1873. A peerage is also conferred
on the Speaker when he resigns. This was not the custom in the
eighteenth century. When Arthur Onslow retired in 1761, after his
long service of thirty-five years, George III, in reply to the
address of the Commons to confer on Onslow “some signal mark of
honour,” gave him a pension of £3,000 a year for the lives of himself
and his son, but no peerage. The custom began in the nineteenth
century with Charles Abbot, who, on retiring in 1817, was made
Baron Colchester. Since then every Speaker has been “called to the
House of Lords”—Manners-Sutton as Lord Canterbury; Abercromby as
Lord Dunfermline; Shaw-Lefevre as Lord Eversley; Denison as Lord
Ossington; Brand as Lord Hampton; Peel as Lord Peel; Gully as Lord
Selby.

But he is Speaker no longer; another presides in his place; and
what a shadowy personage he seems, even as a Lord, compared with
the resounding fame and distinction that were his in the glorious
years when he filled with pomp and dignity the Chair of the House of
Commons!




CHAPTER XII

HOW A GOVERNMENT IS MADE


1

Macaulay, writing to his sister Hannah on December 19, 1845, says:
“It is an odd thing to see a Ministry making. I never witnessed the
process before. Lord John Russell has been all day in his inner
library. His antechamber has been filled with comers and goers, some
talking in knots, some writing notes at tables. Every five minutes
somebody is called into the inner room. As the people who have been
closeted come out, the cry of the whole body of expectants is: ‘What
are you?’ I was summoned almost as soon as I arrived, and found Lord
Auckland and Lord Clarendon sitting with Lord John. After some talk
about other matters, Lord John told me that he had be trying to
ascertain my wishes, and that he found I wanted leisure and quiet
more than salary and business. Labouchere had told him this. He
therefore offered me the Pay Office, one of the three places which,
as I have told you, I should prefer. I at once accepted it.”

But this Ministry was fated not to be formed. Both Lord Grey and Lord
Palmerston, two leading members of the Whig Party, wanted the Foreign
Office, and neither would recognize a superior claim in the other.
Macaulay, from whose very lips the cup of office was thus rudely
dashed, bore the disappointment philosophically. On the day after
he had sent the letter, from which I have quoted, he wrote another
to his sister, saying: “All is over. Late at night, just as I was
undressing, a knock was given at the door of my chambers. A messenger
had come from Lord John with a short note. The quarrel between Lord
Grey and Lord Palmerston had made it impossible to form a Ministry.
I went to bed and slept sound.”

When we come to consider the interesting business of making a
Government, the first question that arises is—What is the chief
test of a man’s capacity for office? Under our Constitution, with
its free and unfettered Parliament, of which the Ministers must be
Members, a deliberative assembly where everything is made the subject
of talk, talk, talk, and provided with a Reporters’ Gallery for the
dissemination of its debates through the Press, it is inevitable that
a man’s fitness for a post in the Administration should be decided
mainly by his gift of speech. It must often prove a false standard
of judgment in regard to genuine ability and character. Glibness of
tongue, or even oratory, is certainly not an essential qualification
for the administrative duties of government. Still, the fact remains
that the ready talker with but little practical experience of affairs
has a better chance of office than the man of trained business
capacity who is tongue-tied. Perhaps debaters are really more useful
to a Government than business men in an arena of conflict like the
House of Commons. There are some excellent anecdotes pointing to such
a conclusion. Disraeli, forming an Administration, offered the Board
of Trade to a man who wanted instead the Local Government Board, as
he was better acquainted with the municipal affairs of the country
than its commerce. “It doesn’t matter,” said Disraeli; “I suppose you
know as much about trade as Blank, the First Lord of the Admiralty,
knows about ships.” John Bright once said he asked Richard Lalor
Sheil, an eloquent speaker, but unconnected with commerce, how it
happened that he was appointed to the Board of Trade. “I think,”
replied Sheil, “the only reason is I was found to know less of trade
than any other man in the House of Commons.” Bright himself was made
President of the Board of Trade in 1869. It used to be said in the
Department that, so unfitted was he for administration, he did not
know even how to tie up official papers with red tape.

When, at an earlier period of political history, Sidney Herbert,
Lord Herbert of Lea, resigned the War Office, Palmerston fixed upon
Sir George Cornewall Lewis to succeed him, and argued the point with
Lady Theresa Lewis, saying that the duties would not be military,
but civil. “He would have to look after the accounts,” said the
Prime Minister. “He never can make up his own,” replied the wife.
“He will look after the commissariat,” said the Prime Minister. “He
cannot order his own dinner,” replied the wife. “He will control
the clothing department,” said the Prime Minister. “If my daughters
did not give the orders to his tailor, he would be without a coat,”
replied the wife. Cornewall Lewis, however, accepted the offer, and
his Under-Secretary soon afterwards discovered him in Pall Mall
reading a work on the military tactics of the Lycaonians. Sir Arthur
Helps, the essayist, who was Clerk of the Privy Council, used to tell
the story that once when there was a difficulty in finding a Colonial
Secretary, Lord Palmerston said: “Well, I’ll take the colonies
myself,” and presently remarked to Helps: “Just come upstairs with
me for half an hour and show me where these places are on the map.”
Charles James Fox is said to have confessed his ignorance of what
Consols meant. He gathered from the newspapers that they were “things
which rose and fell”; and he was always delighted when they fell,
because he noticed, that for some unaccountable reason, it very
much annoyed Pitt, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. That, no doubt,
was Fox’s fun. But we are told of Lord Randolph Churchill, on the
authority of his son and biographer, Winston Churchill, that when, as
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Treasury returns worked out in decimal
figures were laid before him, he inquired what “these damned dots”
signified. I myself heard Sir Edward Carson, a distinguished lawyer,
speaking as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1917, during the Great
War, declare that he entered the Admiralty in a state of extreme
ignorance. “Someone asked me the day I went there how I felt,” he
went on to say, “and I said, ‘My only qualification is that I am
absolutely at sea.’”

After all, perhaps, it is a matter of no very great concern. Are
there not capable permanent officials in the various Departments
of the State, whose duty it is to see that administration is
efficient and economical? The simple task of the Minister, as he
sits behind the scenes in a room at Whitehall, is as a rule to see
that things are done in harmony with the political policy of his
Party. What seems to be absolutely necessary to the prosperity of
an Administration is that in the Houses of Parliament—open as they
are to the gaze and hearing of the country—it should have at its
service a number of able debaters. The measures of the Government
have to be submitted to the judgment of a deliberative Assembly, and
a newspaper-reading public; and accordingly a successful Minister
is he whose ready gift of clear and forcible exposition of Party
principles and policies enables him to expound and defend these
measures. Gladstone, when forming his first Government in 1868,
invited John Bright to join it, giving him his choice of any office,
except the War Office or the Admiralty, which, as he was a Quaker and
a man of peace, would hardly suit him. Bright selected the position
of President of the Board of Trade. As I have said, he never gave
evidence of any special business capacity, but he was the greatest
orator of his day; he had uttered in the House of Commons and on
the public platform the most beautiful and also the most scornful
passages that ever fell from the lips of man; he possessed debating
gifts which enabled him to place a political question in a light that
made it shine beyond its deserts, and that being so he was deemed fit
for a place of importance and emolument in the new Government. What
is the good of a Minister rising to the Table of the House of Commons
with an unanswerable case if he be unable to state it—if he be choked
with arguments for which he can find no utterance?


2

It follows, therefore, that when a General Election has pronounced
the sentence of condemnation on the existing Government, and men of
another Party are called to the service of the country, selection
for office is restricted mainly to those who have won distinction as
debaters in Opposition. On the benches to the left of Mr. Speaker are
always numbers of young men ambitious of office, eagerly pushing
themselves to the front on that conspicuous field of political
activity, under the eyes of the Reporters’ Gallery, most constant
in their attendance, ever watching for an opportunity to strike
a blow at once for their Party and their own reputation, in the
hope that in the day of victory they shall have the proper reward
of their services. Some of them are capable of talking well upon
any subject. These aspire to be Secretaries of State. Others, not
so remarkable for general ability or so glib of tongue, confine
themselves to particular departments of administration. It is the
endeavour of each to obtain a mastery of the business details of
some special office—Foreign, Home, Treasury, Colonial, Army, Navy,
Post Office, Pensions, Trade, Transport, or Agriculture—looking for
an Under-Secretaryship, in the expectation of ultimately attaining,
after some years of diligent and capable service, to Cabinet rank.
Yet the qualities needed for success in office are often entirely
different from those that bring fame and renown in Opposition.
Gladstone said of Robert Lowe, whom he appointed Chancellor of
the Exchequer in his first Administration on the strength of the
reputation which that slashing debater had made in Opposition, that
he was “splendid in attack, but most weak in defence”; “that he was
capable of tearing anything to pieces, but of constructing nothing.”
But it is only after the brilliant swashbuckler of Opposition has
been tried in office that his incapacity and weakness in the true
gifts of statesmanship are discovered.

Besides the pushful young men in the ranks on the back benches, with
their abounding sense of fitness for office, there are the veterans
of the Front Opposition Bench, survivors of the Ministry of the Party
when it was last in power. Some of these, it often happens, are
men who have grown old and worn in the service, as their wrinkled
faces, bald heads, and stooped forms testify; but their interest in
public affairs has not in the least abated, and they still crave to
be placed at the head of Departments. It might be supposed that the
weighty responsibility of office is a burden to be avoided rather
than coveted by old parliamentarians; the world has such pleasant
delights, apart from politics, with which they might occupy the
leisure of the close of their day. But that is an idle supposition.
It is true that in the Senate of Rome, to which election was for
life, there was a special law providing that no senator over sixty
should be summoned to its meetings. Did any Roman ever willingly
acquiesce in it except the physically incapable? In modern England
human nature is exactly what it was in ancient Rome. The grievance of
the Front Bench man approaching seventy would be, not that he should
be dragged from seclusion and quiet to sit for hours of a morning in
a room at Whitehall, reading documents, and attend at the House of
Commons till late at night, but that he should be set aside in the
distribution of offices when his Party has again triumphed at the
polls. And he has tradition and custom at his back, in support of
his desire, as well as his past services. It is held that a member
of either House of Parliament who has already been in the Cabinet is
entitled to high office again whenever his Party comes back to power;
and that, should he be passed over, should he be put on the retired
list, he has every reason to feel affronted.

These are the two classes—the old but the tried, the able but the
untrained young—from which the Prime Minister draws the members of
his Administration. As I have indicated, he has not an absolutely
free choice. He may not sit down in his study and, surveying the
most prominent members of his Party in both Houses, select for
office those who have proved themselves possessed of the qualities
of character, ability, experience, and training. His task it is
to satisfy, as far as possible, claims as conflicting as they are
strong, and, at the same time, give to his Administration that weight
and authority which is necessary to win and hold, in some measure,
the confidence of the country. It is said that Gladstone, who formed
no fewer than four Administrations—an almost unprecedented record in
constitutional history—used to draw up on separate slips of paper a
list of the various offices, placing opposite each the names of three
or four more or less eligible men as alternatives, and then, by a
process of sifting, evolve the definite list. But this method, which
no doubt most Prime Ministers adopt more or less, is not at all the
simple matter it looks. It has to be followed out with exceeding
care and circumspection. For every post in the Ministry there are at
least three or four influential aspirants, old or young, each of whom
thinks the office on which his mind is set is his by every title of
personal fitness and devotion to the Party. To adjust these rival
claims is, as I have said, no easy thing for the Prime Minister. Some
of the office-seekers, those especially who know there are strong
rivals in the field, insist upon personal interviews, in order to
set forth their pretensions fully and unanswerably, and the serious
loss the Party, if not the nation, would suffer were it not to have
the advantage of their services. Every post brings shoals of letters
from Members of Parliament, and leading Party men in the country,
strongly urging the appointment of this person or that to a post in
the Ministry, or his inclusion in the Cabinet.

Another important consideration of which the Prime Minister is
obliged to take heed is the distribution of the offices of the
Administration between the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
It was provided by the Government of India Act, 1858—creating a
fifth Secretary of State, that for India, the others being for
Foreign Affairs, Home, the Colonies, and War—that four Secretaries
of State and four Under-Secretaries may sit as members of the House
of Commons at the same time.[1] In 1864 notice was taken that five
Under-Secretaries were sitting in the House of Commons in violation
of this statutory provision, and a motion was made that the seat of
the fifth Under-Secretary was thereby vacated. The House referred
the matter to a Committee, who reported that the seat of the
Under-Secretary last appointed was not vacated, but as the law had
been inadvertently infringed, it was thought necessary to pass a
Bill of Indemnity. By the Air Force Act, 1917, a sixth Secretary
of State, that for Air, was created, and the number of Principal
Secretaries of State and Under-Secretaries capable of sitting in
the House of Commons was increased to five. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer must be in the representative Chamber, as the hereditary
House cannot impose taxation. The holders of all the other prominent
offices may be in one House or the other, as the Prime Minister
thinks most convenient. But it has now become a rule, from which
probably there will never be a departure, of placing the Home
Secretary—the Minister whose department comes most closely into
touch with the ordinary life of the citizen—and his Under-Secretary
in the House of Commons. The Foreign Secretary, whose duties are
most delicate and responsible, has usually been given the greater
freedom and leisure of the House of Lords. Arthur Balfour declared in
the House of Commons, during the Session of 1905, that the Foreign
Secretary would never again be seen in that Chamber, unless the
House was prepared to release him from the ordinary obligations of a
Minister. “Because, if you ask him,” continued the Prime Minister,
“to come down to answer questions, or when his own office is under
discussion; if you require him to come down, as my other right hon.
friends are required to come down, whenever there is a Government
division or an important Government debate; if you require him to
be here throughout the whole night, and at the same time to carry
on the work of such an office as the Foreign Office—he cannot do
it. I respectfully say it with full knowledge both of what the
House of Commons requires and what is required of the Minister for
Foreign Affairs.” Sir Edward Grey subsequently sat in the House of
Commons for ten years, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, but
concessions in regard to answering questions and general attendance
were granted him of the kind indicated by Balfour. The other
Secretaries of State—War, Colonies, India—may be in either the House
of Lords or the House of Commons, subject to the statutory provisions
I have mentioned, but in whatever Chamber the Principal Secretary may
be, the Under-Secretary of the same department must be in the other.
The religion of aspirants to office must also be taken into account
by the Prime Minister.

There are two positions in the Government for which Roman Catholics
are ineligible—the Lord Chancellorship of England and the Lord
Lieutenancy of Ireland. In 1891 Gladstone brought in a Bill “for the
removal of the religious disabilities of Roman Catholics to hold
the offices of Lord Chancellor of England and Lord-Lieutenant of
Ireland.” It was opposed by the Unionist Government then in power,
and was defeated by 256 votes to 223. It was known as “The Ripon and
Russell Relief Bill,” as it was well understood that if the Bill were
carried Gladstone, on his return to office, intended to make the then
Lord Ripon, who was a Catholic, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; and Sir
Charles Russell, also a Catholic, Lord Chancellor of England.


3

The process by which the Government is formed is, constitutionally,
most interesting; but even in the best of circumstances, and apart
altogether from the limitations to his unfettered choice which I
have set out, it must indeed be harassing to the Prime Minister.
If his power and influence are great, so are his embarrassments
and difficulties. “Lord Grey is in a dreadful state of anxiety and
annoyance; thinks he shall break down under his load,” wrote Lord
Tavistock to his brother, Lord John Russell, in 1830, during the
making of the first Reform Administration. Disraeli, speaking in
the House of Commons in March 1873, described the constitution of a
new Government as “a work of great time, great labour, and of great
responsibility,” and declared that the task had to be discharged
solely by the Prime Minister. “It is a duty which can be delegated
to no one,” he said. “All the correspondence and all the interviews
must be conducted by himself, and, without dwelling on the sense of
responsibility involved, the perception of fitness requisite, and
the severe impartiality necessary in deciding on contending claims,
the mere physical effort is not slight.” The only Prime Minister,
perhaps, who approached the task of making an Administration with
a sense of gaiety not unmingled with irresponsibility was Lord
Palmerston. He had the engaging weakness of putting square men in
round holes and round men in square holes, and the reconstruction
of the Ministry which sometimes followed as a consequence was, to
him, only a fresh source of laughter. “Ah, ha!” he would cry, “what
a delightful comedy of errors!” Gladstone, while revelling in the
power and authority of the position, was deeply impressed also by
its gravity and solemnity. He writes in his diary, January 29, 1886:
“At a quarter after midnight in came Sir H. Ponsonby with verbal
communication from Her Majesty, which I at once accepted.” It was the
command to form his third Administration, that which came quickly to
grief on the question of Home Rule. Next day, Saturday, was spent by
Gladstone in consultation with his principal colleagues. After church
on Sunday, from one o’clock till eight, political business engrossed
his attention. “At night came a painful and harassing succession of
letters,” he writes, “and my sleep for once gave way; yet for the
soul it was profitable, driving me to the hope that the strength of
God might be made manifest in my weakness.” Next morning he went down
to Osborne to attend the Queen, had two audiences with her Majesty,
an hour and a half in all, and in the evening returned to London.
He writes in his diary the following day: “I kissed hands, and am
thereby Prime Minister for the third time. But, as I trust, for a
brief time only—slept well. D. G.”

John Morley, summarizing in his _Life of Gladstone_ the
correspondence which Gladstone received while he was engaged in
forming an Administration, writes: “One admirable man with intrepid
_naïveté_ proposed himself for the Cabinet, but was not admitted;
another no less admirable was pressed to enter, but felt that he
could be more useful as an independent Member, and declined—an
honourable transaction, repeated by the same person on more than one
occasion later. To one excellent member of his former Cabinet the
Prime Minister proposed the Chairmanship of Committees, and it was
with some tartness refused. Another equally excellent member of the
old Administration he endeavoured to plant out in the Viceregal Lodge
in Dublin, without the Cabinet, but in vain. To a third he proposed
the Indian Viceroyalty, and received an answer that left him ‘stunned
and out of breath.’”

It is also entertaining to study the varied feelings with which
politicians have received the offer of office. “Dear Henry,” wrote
Robert Lowe in a brief, laconic note to his brother in December 1868,
“I am Chancellor of the Exchequer with everything to learn. Yours
affectionately.” It was the surprise appointment of Gladstone’s first
Administration, for Lowe had previously shown but little interest in
finance. His administration of the office soon ended in an abortive
attempt to impose a tax on matches. In another letter to a friend,
Lowe said: “I have this day accepted the office of Chancellor of the
Exchequer in Gladstone’s Government. I am almost angry with myself
for not being more pleased. One gets these things, but gets them too
late. Ten years ago I should have been very differently affected.
However, it is something to have done what I said I would do.” It was
a curious frame of mind in which to enter upon a great office. He had
said he would be a Cabinet Minister, and the thing had come to pass.
That was all.

That eminent lawyer, John Duke Coleridge, returned home from a
concert on the night of December 4, 1868, to find—as he records in
his diary—“Gladstone’s messenger waiting with an offer of the S.G.,
Collier to be A.G.” The letter of the Prime Minister was written
from “11 Carlton House Terrace,” and marked “Most Private.” “I need
not spend words,” said Gladstone, “in assuring you that I anticipate
great advantage to the new Government from your most valuable
aid, and that I look forward with great pleasure to the relations
which will, I hope, be established between us.” Coleridge sent the
messenger back with a note refusing the post absolutely. He doubted
whether, as Solicitor-General, he could serve with satisfaction under
the proposed Attorney-General, Sir Robert Collier. “I know well,”
he wrote, “that a man who once puts office by puts it by probably
for ever; and you will not suppose that I send this answer without
regret and a considerable struggle. But I am sure it is my duty to do
it.” Next morning Coleridge received another letter inviting him to
come to 11 Carlton House Terrace. “So I had to go to him,” Coleridge
writes on December 5th. “He was most kind, and urged me to accept.”
Two days later he says: “So the deed is done, and I suppose in a few
days I shall be Minister.” On Saturday, December 10th, he went down
to Windsor, “with a lot of Ministers coming in and going out,” had
luncheon, saw the Queen, and was knighted. “I could not help it,”
he adds. What chance had his weak human disinclination for office
against the working of resistless, inevitable Fate?

At a Press Club dinner in London, John Morley related the
circumstances in which he received and accepted in 1886 the offer
of the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, with a seat in the
Cabinet. “It was whilst I was writing a leading article for a certain
periodical,” said he, “that I received a letter from an illustrious
statesman, who was then forming a Government, offering me a post in
his Cabinet.” “Gentlemen,” he added, amid the cheers and the laughter
of the company, “so strong in me was the journalistic instinct that,
after accepting the illustrious statesman’s offer, I went back and
finished that leading article. And I can assure you that neither the
grammar nor the style of the latter half of the article fell short
of my usual standard.” One of the most humanly interesting books
dealing with public life in England is _From a Stonemason’s Bench to
the Treasury Bench_, in which Henry Broadhurst tells the story of his
career. In 1886 he was Secretary to the Parliamentary Committee of
the Trades Union Congress and a Member of Parliament. One busy day at
his office a letter was handed to him by a messenger, and, opening
the envelope, he found the following communication:

  (Secret)

                                  21 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, S.W.
                                                  _February 5, 1886._

  DEAR MR. BROADHURST,

  I have great pleasure in proposing to you that you should accept
  office as Under-Secretary of State in the Home Department. Alike
  on private and on public grounds, I trust it may be agreeable to
  you to accept this appointment, which should remain strictly secret
  until your name shall have been laid before her Majesty.

                     I remain, with much regard, sincerely yours,
                                                      W. E. GLADSTONE.

According to custom, Broadhurst immediately called upon the Prime
Minister. He said that if it were Mr. Gladstone’s wish that he should
join the Administration, he hoped it would be in some capacity less
important than that of Under-Secretary of the Home Office. But the
Prime Minister would not listen to any objections to the offer.
“I’ll answer for you myself,” said he, playfully. “You must prepare
at once to enter upon the duties of the office.” Broadhurst adds:
“I can honestly declare that I left Mr. Gladstone’s house without
any of those feelings of exhilaration and pleasing excitement which
the gift of office is generally supposed to awake in the breast of
the politician.” He lived the hard struggle of his early years over
again in the next half-hour. “The lowly beginning of my career,”
he says, “its labours at the forge and the stonemason’s shop, the
privations, the wanderings, and my varying fortunes, stood out in my
mind’s eye as clearly as so many living pictures. Especially did my
memory recall the months I had spent working on the very Government
buildings which I was about to enter as a Minister of the Crown.”
He deplored the lack of education in his early days, and visions
of failure and humiliation in the discharge of his new duties, in
consequence, tormented him.




CHAPTER XIII

DISAPPOINTED HOPES


1

It is probably as annoying to an expectant Minister to be offered
what he regards as an inferior post as to be entirely ignored. Sir
Robert Peel, in December 1834, offered Lord Ashley (subsequently the
Earl of Shaftesbury) a seat on the Board of Admiralty, which Lord
Ashley, thinking it altogether beneath him, promptly refused. “Had
I not,” he writes in his _Diary_, “by God’s grace and the study of
religion subdued the passion of my youth, I should now have been
heart-broken. Canning, eight years ago, offered me, as a neophyte,
a seat at one of the Boards, the first step in a young statesman’s
life. If I am not now worthy of more, it is surely better to cease
to be a candidate for public honours. Yet Peel’s letter, so full
of flummery, would lead anyone to believe that I was a host of
excellency. The thing is a contradiction.” Nevertheless, it is
interesting to note that he accepted the post subsequently. He
satisfied himself that it was of more importance than he at first
supposed.

No politician had such curious adventures as an aspirant to office,
and certainly no one has confessed so freely the bitterness of
his disappointments, as Shaftesbury, whose name is so honourably
associated with legislation for the protection of women and children
employed in factories. In 1839 Peel was again engaged in making a
Government. Queen Victoria had hardly been two years on the Throne,
and was only twenty years of age. Peel invited Lord Ashley to accept
a post in the Royal Household, urging that he desired to have around
“this young woman, on whose moral and religious character depends
the welfare of millions of human beings,” persons whose conversation
would tend to her moral improvement. Lord Ashley acknowledges that he
was “thunderstruck” when he received Peel’s letter, as he expected a
far higher position than what he describes as “a mere Court puppet.”
But in his reply he said, somewhat sarcastically, that if Peel
desired it, he was willing to take “the office of chief scullion to
the Court.” However, this Administration was not constituted. It
was wrecked on what is known as “the Bedchamber question.” As one
of the ladies of the Bedchamber, the Mistress of the Robes, who was
most closely in attendance upon Queen Victoria, was related to some
of the outgoing Whig Ministers, by whom she had been appointed—the
office being at the time political, and its occupant bound to go out
on a change of Government—Peel insisted upon her resignation. The
Queen refused to consent to such a course, as one repugnant to her
feelings, and Peel, thereupon refusing to form an Administration, the
Melbourne Ministry were recalled to office. Two years later Peel was
engaged once more in making a Government—this time Queen Victoria
raised no objection to the Mistress of the Robes being changed—and
again he offered Lord Ashley a place in the Royal Household, as a
man who was deeply religious and moral. Lord Ashley now believed
that Peel simply wanted to muzzle him, the leader of the growing
humanitarian movement for the State regulation of factories. He
refused the office. “I told Peel,” he wrote, “the case was altered;
the Court was no longer the same; the Queen was two years older, had
a child, and a husband to take care of her.” So he declined to devote
himself to ordering dinners and carrying a white wand. He discovered
subsequently, to his deep mortification, that Peel had already
offered the post of Vice-Chamberlain of the Household to Lord ——
(“the hero of Madame Grisi,” as Ashley describes him); and that Lord
—— exclaimed: “Thank God, my character is too bad for a Household
place!” Lord Ashley argued that “morality, therefore, was not the
reason for putting me at Court.”


2

On January 27, 1855, the Coalition Government of Lord Aberdeen
and Lord John Russell resigned, being defeated on a vote of
censure charging them with mismanagement of the Crimean War. Lord
Palmerston received the commands of Queen Victoria to form an
Administration. He, too, desired to have a Ministry of both Liberals
and Conservatives. On February 7th he wrote to Ashley—now the Earl
of Shaftesbury and a Conservative—offering him the Chancellorship
of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the Cabinet. That was in
the morning. In the afternoon Shaftesbury received a brief note from
Palmerston requesting him to “consider the offer as suspended,”
in consequence of unforeseen difficulties, which, it subsequently
transpired, were the claims of the Liberals for a greater share
of place and power in the new Government. This explanation came
to Shaftesbury from Lady Palmerston. “Palmerston is distracted
with all the worry he has to go through,” she wrote. In a P.S. she
added: “It is no pleasure to form a Government when there are so
many unreasonable people to please, and so many interested people
pressing for their own gratification and vanity, without any regard
to the public good or the interests of the Government and country.”
Shaftesbury thus poured out his virtuously indignant soul on the
subject to his son: “The selfishness, the meanness, the love of place
and salary, the oblivion of the country, of man’s welfare and God’s
honour, have never been more striking and terrible than in this
crisis. These, added to the singular conceit of all the candidates
for office (and all have aspired to the highest), have thrown
stumbling-blocks in Palmerston’s path at every step. The greediness
and vanity of our place-hunters have combined to make each one of
them a union of the vulture and the peacock.”

Shaftesbury declares that he had then no desire for place; and it
is impossible to doubt the genuineness of the thanksgiving on his
“escape from office” in which he indulges. A month later some of
the Members of the Administration resigned, and Palmerston again
offered Shaftesbury the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster.
But Shaftesbury was still reluctant. “I could not satisfy myself,”
he says, “that to accept office was a Divine call. I was satisfied
that God had called me to labour among the poor.” However, one
morning he received this note from Lady Palmerston: “Palmerston is
very anxious now that you should put on your undress uniform and be
at the Palace a quarter before three to be sworn in. Pray do this,
and I am sure you will not repent it.” Shaftesbury gave way to these
pleading entreaties. The result was certainly curious. “I went and
dressed,” he writes in his _Diary_, “and then, while I was waiting
for the carriage, I went down on my knees and prayed for counsel,
wisdom and understanding. Then there was someone at the door, as
I thought to say that the carriage was ready. But instead of that
a note, hurriedly written in pencil, was put into my hand. It was
from Palmerston—‘Don’t go to the Palace.’” Many would have groaned
in the anguish of their souls over this crowning disappointment.
Shaftesbury declares he danced with joy. “It was to my mind,” he
says, “as distinctly an act of special Providence as when the hand
of Abraham was stayed and Isaac escaped.” Palmerston’s sudden change
of mind is no doubt accounted for in a passage which I find in the
_Autobiography_ of the eighth Duke of Argyll, who was a member of
Palmerston’s Cabinet. He states that one day Palmerston astonished
all his colleagues by proposing that Lord Shaftesbury should be
one of their number. “I was far too fond of Shaftesbury, and had
much too great a respect for him to say one word in opposition,”
Argyll writes; “but I saw that it rather took away the breath from
a good many of my colleagues. His fervid nature, his uncompromising
temperament, and his somewhat individual opinions were evidently not
considered as promising well for united councils. My opinion, which,
however, I kept to myself, was that he was a far more valuable man
out of office than in it.” Argyll adds: “Palmerston evidently saw
that the proposal was not very well received, and we heard nothing
more of it.”


3

In July 1886 Henry Cecil Raikes, a distinguished Conservative
M.P., awaited, with hope and misgiving alternating in his breast,
a letter from Lord Salisbury—then engaged in forming his first
Unionist Administration—inviting him to join the Cabinet. As the
list of Ministerial appointments announced in the Press grew towards
completion, and nothing was heard from the Prime Minister, the fear
grew upon him that he was about to be shelved. But he had staunch
friends at the Carlton Club, and they took the unusual course of
addressing a “round-robin” to Salisbury, earnestly requesting him not
to forget “the long and arduous services to the Party” of Henry Cecil
Raikes. A day or two later Raikes received the following letter from
the Prime Minister:

                                   20 ARLINGTON STREET, S.W.,
                                                      _July 28, 1886_.

  MY DEAR RAIKES,

  Are you disposed to join us as Postmaster-General? I am very
  anxious to meet your views. I wish I was in a position to do so
  more fully. But that is a species of regret which clogs me at every
  step of the arduous task in which I am engaged. I shall be very
  glad if we are able to persuade you to associate yourself with
  us—for the present in this office.

                                    Believe me, yours very truly,
                                                            SALISBURY.

Only the minor post of Postmaster-General, when he had expected the
Home Office, which carries a seat in the Cabinet! But to refuse an
offer of office because it does not come up to one’s expectations
often means the exclusion from office for ever. Raikes accordingly
decided to take the post of Postmaster-General. “He fully recognized
the difficulties of his chief’s position,” writes his son and
biographer, “and, of course, was not blind to the fact that if he
were to refuse this office he would probably be throwing away the
substance for the shadow, and would cut himself off from any but a
remote chance of future advancement.” It is not every politician who
has had an offer of an office which was less than he expected that
can follow the example of Henry Brougham, who contemptuously tore
up the letter of Earl Grey offering him the post of Attorney-General
in the first Reform Administration. Brougham wanted the Lord
Chancellorship, and would not be put off with anything else; and
though Grey was reluctant to trust Brougham in so exalted a post,
Brougham had his way, for he was in the strong position of being
indispensable to the new Government, not only in his own estimation,
which did not so much matter, but also in the estimation of many
leading Whigs, which did. But Raikes knew that he could be done
without, and, sensible man, he accepted what was offered. Naturally
he was mortified that the Secretaryship of State for the Home
Department was carried off by an entirely outside and unsuspected
rival, Henry Matthews (afterwards Lord Llandaff), who was discovered
in the Law Courts as a powerful advocate and pleader by Lord Randolph
Churchill.


4

Is there anything more poignant in the history of the making of
Governments than the entreaty addressed by Benjamin Disraeli to
Sir Robert Peel, in 1841, that he should not be forgotten in the
distribution of the offices in the Tory Administration which was then
being formed? Writing from Grosvenor Gate on September 5, 1841, and
addressing “Dear Sir Robert,” Disraeli said he should not dwell upon
his services to the Tory Party, though since 1834 he had fought four
contests, expended large sums of money, and exerted his intelligence
to the utmost for the propagation of Peel’s policy. He adds: “But
there is one peculiarity in my case on which I cannot be silent. I
have had to struggle against a storm of political hate and malice,
which few men ever experienced, from the moment—at the instigation
of a member of your Cabinet—I enrolled myself under your banner,
and I have only been sustained under these trials by the conviction
that the day would come when the foremost man of this country would
publicly testify that he had some respect for my ability and my
character.” Then, throwing all reserve aside, he ends his letter
with the following outburst of genuine feeling: “I confess to be
unrecognized at this moment by you appears to me to be overwhelming,
and I appeal to your own heart—to that justice and magnanimity which
I feel are your characteristics—to save me from an intolerable
humiliation.”

The same post brought the Prime Minister a most appealing letter
signed, “Mary Anne Disraeli,” addressed “Dear Sir Robert Peel,” and
marked “Confidential.” She begins: “I beg you not to be angry with
me for my intrusion, but I am overwhelmed with anxiety. My husband’s
political career is for ever crushed if you do not appreciate him.
Mr. Disraeli’s exertions are not unknown to you; but there is much he
has done that you cannot be aware of, though they have no other aim
but to do you honour, no wish for recompense, but your approbation.”
Her husband had made Peel’s opponents his personal enemies, she goes
on; he had stood four expensive elections since 1834. “Literature,”
she concludes, “he has abandoned for politics. Do not destroy all his
hopes, and make him feel his life has been a mistake.”

Peel’s reply was cold and formal. He disliked Disraeli, regarding
him as a political adventurer, and disliked him personally. “My
dear sir,” he addresses him, and, fastening on the statement that
Disraeli had joined the Tory Party at the instigation of a member
of Peel’s former Cabinet, he declares that no one had ever got from
him the slightest authority to make such a communication. Then Peel
gives a remarkable account of the difficulties which beset him in
constituting the new Government:

  But, quite independently of this consideration, I should have been
  very happy, had it been in my power, to avail myself of your offer
  of service; and your letter is one of the many I receive which too
  forcibly impress upon me how painful and invidious is the duty
  which I have been compelled to undertake. I am only supported in it
  by the consciousness that my desire has been to do justice.

  I trust, also, that when candidates for parliamentary office calmly
  reflect on my position, and the appointments I have made—when they
  review the names of those previously connected with me in public
  life whom I have been absolutely compelled to exclude, the claims
  founded on acceptance in 1834 with the almost hopeless prospects
  of that day, the claims, too, founded on new Party combinations—I
  trust they will then understand how perfectly insufficient are
  the means at my disposal to meet the wishes that are conveyed to
  me by men whose co-operation I should be proud to have and whose
  qualifications and pretensions for office I do not contest.

Disraeli, writing from Grosvenor Gate, September 8, 1841, hastens to
explain that he never intended to even suggest, much less to say,
that a promise of official promotion had ever been made to him at
any time by any member of Peel’s Cabinet. “Parliamentary office,” he
says, “should be the recognition of Party services and parliamentary
ability, and as such only was it to me an object of ambition.” He
ends with a dignified touch of pathos: “If such a pledge had been
given me by yourself, and not redeemed, I should have taken refuge in
silence. Not to be appreciated may be mortification; to be baulked
of a promised reward is only a vulgar accident of life, to be borne
without a murmur.”

Five years passed, and in the debate on the third reading of the
Bill for the repeal of the Corn Duties, Disraeli, from the back
Ministerial benches, made a scathing attack upon Peel and what he
called his betrayal of the Tory Party in bringing in such a Bill to
establish Free Trade. The Prime Minister, in reply, disclosed to the
country the curious incidents of 1841. “It is still more surprising,”
said he, “that if such were the hon. gentleman’s views of my
character he should have been ready, as I think he was, to unite his
fortunes with mine in office, thereby implying the strongest proof
which a public man can give of confidence in the honour and integrity
of a Minister of the Crown.” Disraeli rose at once to make a personal
explanation. He denied that his opposition to the Free Trade policy
of the Prime Minister was inspired by his disappointment of office.
He was not an applicant for office in 1841. “I never shall—it is
totally foreign to my nature—make an application for any place,” he
cried. “Whatever occurred in 1841 between the right hon. gentleman
and myself,” said he, “was entirely attributable to the intervention
of another gentleman, whom I supposed to be in the confidence of
the right hon. baronet, and I daresay it may have arisen from a
misconception.” The correspondence which I have quoted was not
published until long afterwards. The abrupt ending of the incident
in the House of Commons is strange in the light thrown upon it by
the correspondence. According to the report in _Hansard_, Peel made
no reply to Disraeli. Peel held the correspondence in his hands, and
resisted the temptation to read it and crush Disraeli, because he was
advised by one of his colleagues that the disclosure of a private
application for office would be contrary to the high and honourable
traditions of statesmanship.


5

Gladstone agreed with Peel that it was not advisable to put a man
into the Cabinet without a previous official training. It was also
Gladstone’s custom, once he had invited a man to office, to hold on
to him to the last possible moment. “The next most serious thing to
admitting a man into the Cabinet,” said he, mentioning one of the
principles which guided him in the making of a Government, “is to
leave a man out who has once been in.” Still, there were occasions
when he was compelled to pass over an old comrade-in-arms on the
ground of age. He was himself seventy-one years of age when, in 1880,
he was called upon to form his second Government. To one old member
of his former Administration he wrote: “I do not feel able to ask
you to resume the toils of office.” He admitted that he himself was
“the oldest man of his political generation,” and that, therefore,
he should be a solecism in the Government which he was engaged in
constructing. “I have been brought,” he added, “by the seeming force
of exceptional circumstances to undertake a task requiring less of
years and more of vigour than my accumulating store of the one and
waning residue of the other.” Here we have the answer to the question
of age and office. The exclusion of a veteran politician from office
is not a matter of the number of years he has counted. Is he an
extinct political volcano as well as an old man? May he safely be
set aside? On the answer which the Prime Minister gives to these
questions in his own mind depends the fate of the office-seeker of
advanced years. Gladstone was eighty-four in 1893, but he was still
inevitable as Prime Minister. If the strong young man of achievement,
and still greater promise, cannot be ignored, neither can the old
man, who, having built up a commanding reputation, takes care that it
is duly and fittingly recognized.

It is a singular thing that, among the twelve hundred men or so who
constitute the two Houses of Parliament, there has never been any
reluctance to take office. Probably the only instance of a public
man who had a positive repugnance of office was Lord Althorp, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons in the
Grey and Melbourne Administrations from November 1830 to December
1834. Office destroyed all his happiness, he declared, and so
affected his mind that he had to remove his pistols from his bedroom
lest he should be tempted to shoot himself. He remained in office
because he felt that one in his rank and position—born, as it were,
to the purple, a member of one of the great territorial families,
who boast of long lines of ancestors in the public service—could no
more set aside the responsibility of office than the earldom and
broad acres of which he was also the heir. The one consolation he
derived from the death of his brother, Earl Spencer, was that his own
accession to the House of Lords compelled him to lay down the burden
of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir George Cornewall Lewis seems to
have been animated by somewhat the same uncommonly high sense of
duty. When Palmerston, in the forming of his Administration in 1855,
offered him the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer which Gladstone
had vacated, he says he entertained the strongest disinclination
to accept the office. “I felt, however,” he writes, “that in the
peculiar position of the Government”—they were in difficulties over
the Crimean War—“refusal was scarcely honourable, and would be
attributable to cowardice, and I therefore, most reluctantly, made up
my mind to accept it.”

But these cases of objection to office on the part of public men,
however wealthy or however old, are exceedingly rare. The hunt for
posts when a new Government is being formed after a dissolution
is eager and untiring. The old men, who will not admit that
their weight of years unfits them for the cares of office, haunt
the political clubs and Downing Street, so as to keep themselves
conspicuous in the eyes of the new Prime Minister. But they cannot
all get “jobs,” to use a word commonly employed while a Government
is being made. Some of them must be sacrificed; there are so many
able and pushful young men to be provided for. The same cry is
heard in politics as in other walks of life: “Why should these old
fellows lag superfluous on the stage?” But “the old gang”—as they are
called by the young—will not retire from public life voluntarily and
gracefully. It is not alone that they instinctively revolt against
the assumption that their capacity for work is at an end, but they
also dislike change of habits and pursuits, and, above all, they
desire for a little longer to play a leading part on the prominent
stage of Parliament. Public life, therefore, retires from them. It is
only the few who have made a great reputation and acquired a great
authority that cannot lightly be set aside. For most politicians, no
matter how fine their services in the past, a time comes when they
are designated “old fogeys,” and, while still anxious to be once more
Ministers of the Crown, they experience the humiliation, as they look
upon it, of being shunted for ever. It is idle to talk of acquiescing
patiently in the inevitable. Political history affords many a sad
instance of such a fate being regarded as one of the sorest of the
injustices of life.

The young and pushful have their disappointments and vexations also.
Disraeli—according to Buckle, his biographer—having completed his
Administration in 1874, wrote to a lady friend: “I have contrived in
the minor and working places to include every representative man,
that is to say, everyone who might be troublesome—all those sort
of men who would have made a Tory cave.” He adds: “There are some
terrible disappointments, but I have written soothing letters, which,
on the whole, have not been without success.” But not altogether.
For in another letter, written in 1876, Disraeli says that at a
dinner party he met Lord Randolph Churchill—“he glaring like one
possessed of a devil, and quite uncivil when I addressed him rather
cordially.” “Why?” he asks, and answering, he says it was perhaps
that “I gave the lordship of the Treasury to Crichton instead of
himself.”

The making of a Government may be completed in a week if all goes
well. Should there be difficulties in reconciling the claims of
influential rivals for particular offices, it may extend over a
fortnight. And what does it all signify to the people or nation?
Charles Dickens was disposed to take an ironic view of the matter,
if we judge from some passages in _Bleak House_. “The limited choice
of the Crown,” he writes, “in the formation of a new Ministry would
lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle, supposing it to be
impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be
assumed to be the case, in consequence of the breach arising out
of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and
the Leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to
Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle,
what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer the Presidency of the
Council. That is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in the Woods
and Forests. That is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows?
That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces because you
can’t provide for Noodle!” That, however, does not quite settle the
matter. May it not be said, rather—Happy country which has so many
able and honest men striving for the opportunity of toiling in its
service!




CHAPTER XIV

THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS AND THE COUNTRY.


1

The list of the proposed Administration is submitted by the Prime
Minister to the King for approval. Constitutionally, the Sovereign
has the right of veto, and may require any of the Ministerial
appointments to be cancelled. This prerogative is now rarely, if
ever, enforced. So far as is known, Queen Victoria was the last
Sovereign to raise objections to certain of the names proposed to
her. When Gladstone was forming his Government in 1880, she wished
for Lord Hartington at the War Office, in place of Mr. Childers; but
she was induced to give way. It was said in 1893, when Gladstone
was again forming an Administration, that Henry Labouchere was not
included solely because Queen Victoria refused her sanction. In the
remoter past there are instances of the Sovereign not merely vetoing
an appointment, but also of making one. But when George IV attempted
to appoint Herries in 1827 Chancellor of the Exchequer, objection was
successfully maintained. By modern usage, therefore, the position
may be said to be that the Sovereign has the right to veto an
appointment, but not to make one.

The Administration having been completely formed, a day is appointed
by the King for taking leave of the outgoing Ministers, and receiving
the incoming Ministers, at meetings of the Privy Council. The
customary procedure is for the Clerk of the Council to collect all
the seals of office from the various Departments beforehand and take
them to Buckingham Palace for the ceremony. Only certain Ministers
hold seals as insignia of office. The retiring Prime Minister has no
seal to hand over, even though he may also hold, as he usually does,
the office of First Lord of the Treasury; and therefore the new Prime
Minister has none to receive. The Ministers having seals of office
are the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Privy Seal, the five Secretaries
of State—Home Department, Foreign Affairs, Colonies, War, and India
(all of whom are constitutionally of co-equal and co-ordinate
authority, and fully authorized to transact, if need be, each other’s
business)—the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, and the Secretary for Scotland.

The seals of office are sets of three seals, each made of metal,
known respectively as the signet, the smaller seal, and the cachet.
It is only at the Foreign Office that full use is made of the
three. The signet is affixed to instruments for the ratification of
treaties. The smaller seal is used for Royal Warrants countersigned
by the Secretary. The cachet is used for the purpose of sealing
letters sent by the King to Foreign Sovereigns on matters of State.
Two seals only are used at the Colonial Office, the signet and the
smaller seal; while at the Home Office and the India Office the
smaller seal is used for all purposes. All the seals bear the Royal
Arms, but have no image or device appropriate to the office of which
each is the symbol. Each Minister receives the seals of his office
enclosed in a velvet case from the King. No doubt curiosity impels
him to examine the seals on that great day when he enters office, but
he probably never sees them again until that other notable day when
he quits office by handing the seals back to the King.


2

The outgoing Ministers are first received by the King in the Council
Chamber. The seals being sorted out, each Minister takes his and
delivers it up to the King, thereby relinquishing his office.
Ministers without seals resign office by formally taking leave of the
King. Later on, the new Ministers arrive at the Palace. The second
Council is then held. The first thing done is to administer the
Privy Councillor’s oath to such Cabinet Ministers as are not yet
members of the Privy Council. Each swears to be “a true and faithful
servant unto the King’s Majesty,” and to reveal it to his Majesty
should he come to know of “any manner of thing to be attempted, done
or spoken, against his Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal,”
and then proceeds to take a further oath upon which the secrecy of
Cabinet proceedings rests. The passage is as follows:

  You shall, in all things to be moved, treated and debated in
  Council, faithfully and truly declare your Mind and Opinion
  according to your Heart and Conscience; and shall keep secret all
  Matters committed and revealed unto you, or that shall be treated
  of secretly in Council. And if any of the said Treaties or Councils
  shall touch any of the Counsellors, you shall not reveal it unto
  him, but shall keep the same until such time as, by the Consent of
  his Majesty, or of the Council, Publication shall be made thereof.

The oath winds up, “So help you God and the Holy contents of this
book,” though by an Act of 1889 affirmation may be substituted for
the oath.

Disraeli, who knew something about the formation of Ministries,
has described the antithesis of the Ministry of All the Talents,
in his novel _Endymion_, as the Ministry of Untried Men. There is
much fact and some fiction in the description. The Ministry was the
one formed by Lord Derby in 1852, with Disraeli himself in it as
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Derby, leader of the Protectionists,
seemed to have a difficult task, for, barring himself, there was no
one to choose who had already held office. The task, Disraeli tells
us, was accomplished in this way: “A dozen men without the slightest
experience of official life had to be sworn in as Privy Councillors
before they could receive the seals and insignia of their intended
offices. On their knees, according to official custom, a dozen
men, all in the act of genuflexion at the same moment, and headed,
too, by one of the most powerful peers in the country, the Lord of
Alnwick Castle himself, humbled themselves before a female Sovereign,
who looked serene and imperturbable before a spectacle never seen
before, and which in all probability will never be seen again. One
of the band, a gentleman without any experience whatever, was not
only placed in the Cabinet, but was absolutely required to become
the Leader of the House of Commons, which had never occurred before,
except in the instance of Mr. Pitt in 1782.” Lord Beaconsfield’s
confession, it is well to recall, appeared after his final
disappearance from the political scene.

When the whole Cabinet has thus qualified for admission to the Privy
Council, his Majesty declares Lord President of the Council the
Minister appointed to that office, who thereupon takes the oath to
“well and truly serve his Majesty,” and kisses his Majesty’s hand.
The other Ministers take a similar oath in due order, beginning with
the Lord Chancellor, who receives the Great Seal, followed by the
Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury; and those who are
entitled to seals receive them from the King, while the others kiss
his Majesty’s hand in acceptance of office. Thus does the Sovereign
ratify the selections of the Prime Minister for the various posts in
the Administration.


3

Lord Campbell relates in his _Diary_ that in 1859, as the members
of the Palmerston Administration, in which he held the office of
Lord Chancellor, were going down to Windsor by special train, they
passed another express returning to London with the outgoing Premier,
Lord Derby, and his colleagues. What an opening for aspiring young
statesmen if a wicked wag of a railway director had ordered the two
trains to be put on the same line, was the genial comment of the
Lord Chancellor! Sir Stafford Northcote, who was a Minister in the
next Derby Administration, formed in July 1866, also gives some
interesting glimpses of the proceedings associated with a change of
Government. He writes: “Queen’s carriages met us at the terminus
and took us to Windsor Castle. As we went upstairs we met the late
Ministers coming down, and shook hands with them. While we were
waiting in the long room there was a sharp thunderstorm, and there
was another while we were at luncheon, after taking office. The
slopes of the Terrace looked as if there had been a fall of snow.
Some thought this a bad omen for us. Disraeli had a bad omen of his
own as we came down, for, thinking there was a seat at the end of the
saloon carriage, he sat down there, and found himself unexpectedly
on the floor.” This Administration lasted scarcely two years;
but, despite the ill-omened accident to Disraeli, it was for that
statesman a fortunate Administration. In it he first filled the great
office of Prime Minister, to which he succeeded on the resignation of
Lord Derby, on account of failing health, early in 1868.

But to return to Windsor Castle. Sir Stafford Northcote goes on to
say: “Lord Derby was first sent for by the Queen, and had a short
audience. We were then all taken along the corridor to the door
of a small room, or, rather, closet. Lord Derby, Lord Chelmsford,
and Walpole were called in; then the five new members of the Privy
Council—Duke of Buckingham, Carnarvon, Cranborne, Hardy, and I—were
called in together, and knelt before the Queen while we took the
oath of allegiance; then we kissed hands, rose, and took the Privy
Councillor’s oath standing. The Queen then named the Duke of
Buckingham Lord President of the Council, and we all retired. The
Prince of Wales and Duke of Edinburgh were in the room. We were then
called in one by one and kissed hands on appointment to office, Lord
Derby going first, then the Lord Chancellor, the Lord President,
the Lord Privy Seal, the Secretaries of State (all together), the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, etc. The seals were delivered to all
these, except the Lord President. Lord Derby then had a long audience
with the Queen, while we went to luncheon. Returned by special
train at four o’clock.” John Bright was the only Minister who, so
far as I know, was relieved of the obligation to kneel and kiss the
Sovereign’s hands on receiving the seals of office. When he went to
Windsor on his appointment as President of the Board of Trade, Queen
Victoria, a great admirer of his speeches, sent Helps, Clerk to the
Privy Council, to tell Bright she would dispense with the ceremony if
that was more agreeable to his feelings as a Quaker, and he availed
himself of this “considerate permission,” as he regarded it.

How a Minister (Henry Chaplin, afterwards Lord Chaplin) held the
seals of the Secretary of State for War, for the briefest period
possible, is mentioned in the diary of Lord Cranbrook, when he enters
the visit to Windsor of the Conservative Ministry of 1885 upon taking
office. “There was no contretemps but the careless omission of the
kissing hands by Northcote, which was soon set right; and her Majesty
gave Chaplin the War Office seals by mistake, easily rectified.
Still, there should be some distinctive mark on each set.”


4

But all is not over yet. A Member of the House of Commons who accepts
an office of profit under the Crown thereby vacates his seat, and
must seek re-election. This applies to the heads of all the great
Departments. Minor Ministerial posts, such as the Secretary to the
Treasury, the Under-Secretaries of State, the Parliamentary and
Financial Secretaries of various Departments, are exempted from
this parliamentary law, as they are regarded as holding office not
by appointment of the Crown, but by appointment of the Ministers
in charge of the different offices. The object of compelling a
Minister to submit his acceptance of office to the judgment of his
constituents, which was first established by an Act of the reign
of Queen Anne—Succession to the Crown Act, 1707—was to restrain
the corrupt influence of the Crown over Parliament by its power of
conferring place on servile and obsequious Members. The danger the
statute was designed to avert has, happily, past long since and
gone for ever. The Act of Anne, however, continues in operation
despite the fact that, owing to the complete revolution which has
since been effected in the Constitution, it is entirely remote from
the realities of these democratic times. The only modification
of the original Act is a provision in the Reform Act of 1867, by
which a Minister who is transferred to another office “in lieu of
and in immediate succession the one to the other” need not submit
himself to his constituents. A constitutional difficulty arose on
the taking over of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer by Gladstone
on the resignation of Lowe in 1873, during a parliamentary recess,
Gladstone at the time being First Lord of the Treasury and Prime
Minister. Did the right hon. gentleman come under the provision of
the Act of 1867, and therefore not obliged to seek re-election? The
law officers of the Crown—Coleridge, Attorney-General, and Jessel,
Solicitor-General—came to the conclusion that the seat was not
vacated; and their opinion was supported by Sir Erskine May, Clerk
of the House of Commons. On the other hand, Lord Chancellor Selborne
advanced the opposite view, holding that, as Gladstone had taken
the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, not in lieu of and in
immediate succession to, but in addition to, the office of First Lord
of the Treasury, he must submit himself to his constituents. But this
Gladstone was reluctant to do, as his seat for Greenwich was believed
to be unsafe.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Opposition sought to make the situation
more embarrassing for the Government. The Speaker is not empowered
to issue his warrant for a new election during the Recess in the
room of any Member who since the Prorogation has accepted any office
whereby he has vacated his seat, unless on receipt of a certificate
from two Members and a notification from the Member himself of the
fact of such acceptance of office. What happened in this particular
case is thus described by John Morley in his _Life of Gladstone_:
“The unslumbering instinct of Party had quickly got upon a scent, and
two keen-nosed sleuth-hounds of the Opposition, four or five weeks
after Mr. Gladstone had taken the seals of the Exchequer, sent to
the Speaker a certificate in the usual form, stating a vacancy at
Greenwich, and requesting him to issue a writ for a new election. The
Speaker reminded them, in reply, that the issue of writs during the
recess in cases of acceptance of office required notification to him
from the Member accepting, and he had received no such notification.”
In the midst of the controversy Parliament was dissolved, and with it
the difficulty.

Governments have tried to repeal the statute of Queen Anne. Arthur
Balfour, who thought the law not only antiquated, but inimical to
good government, once, when Prime Minister, brought in a Bill to
abolish it. “I remember in my early days,” said he, in the session
of 1905, “the Party to which I belong—it was in 1880—derived
infinite enjoyment from the satisfaction of turning the late Sir
William Harcourt out of his seat at Oxford on his taking office as
Home Secretary. He found a seat after considerable inconvenience
to Mr. Gladstone’s Government; and in my opinion, although it gave
us great satisfaction as a good practical joke, it was a severe
condemnation of the system on which we now carry on business, and
which no practical assembly in the world but our own would tolerate
for an instant.” Balfour failed, however, to get the House of Commons
to agree to his Bill. I have heard several debates on the subject.
The chief argument of the Treasury Bench for the repeal of the Act
was that by reason of it no Prime Minister has ever been able to
exercise a really free choice in the selection of his colleagues in
the Administration; for often he has had to put a square man into
a round hole, because the round man that would fit the round hole
admirably held an unsafe seat, and therefore might not be re-elected.
But the view of the back benches always has been that the Act
supports the control of the House over the Government, and gives to
the constituency the opportunity of expressing its opinion as to the
action of its representative in accepting office under the Crown.
This view has always prevailed. During the Great War the principle
was twice suspended by emergency Acts. Members who accepted office
in the two Coalition Governments of the War—one under Asquith in May
and June 1915, and the other under Lloyd George in December 1916 and
January 1917—were expressly absolved from the necessity of seeking
re-election. But when the second Coalition Government, after the
General Election of December 1918, submitted to the new Parliament,
as their first measure, a Bill to repeal the statute of Queen Anne,
feeling against it was very strong, and all that the House of Commons
would assent to was to suspend for nine months the obligation on
Members to go to their constituencies on the acceptance of office.


5

With the re-election of the Ministers the work is at an end.
The Administration has been duly constituted, according to
long-established custom. However smoothly and rapidly it may have
progressed, there are certain to be many sore hearts—those of the
young with disappointed hopes, and, more pathetic still, those of the
old, who are deemed to be no longer fit for office. But what of the
outgoing Ministers? They no longer carry out of office the little
perquisites which were permitted to some of their predecessors. At
one time each Secretary of State, for instance, received on his
appointment a silver inkstand, which he could retain and hand down
as a keepsake to his children; but Gladstone, when Chancellor of the
Exchequer, abolished this custom, and the only souvenir of office an
outgoing Minister can take with him now is the red despatch box in
which he used to carry his official papers to the House of Commons.
How do they take their dismissal by the country? “There are two
supreme political pleasures in life,” says Lord Rosebery. “One is
ideal, the other real. The ideal is when a man receives the seals of
office from the hands of his Sovereign; the real, when he hands them
back.” It is the saying of a man who was sick and tired of office.
But I beg leave to doubt its general application.




CHAPTER XV

OFFICE AND ITS SPOILS


1

Why do every Government cling so tenaciously to the responsibility
and drudgery of office? Wherefore the feverish eagerness of every
Opposition to take the burdens of the Empire upon their shoulders?
Do the “Spoils of Office” account for the great trouble there always
is in compelling the “ins” to get out, and the little persuasion
necessary to induce the “outs” to come in? Surely here is a matter of
high public interest, which is well worth investigation.

The salaries of most of the chief offices of the Ministry were
settled at their present figures by an arrangement made so long ago
as 1831. During the Administration of Earl Grey (better known as the
Reform Ministry) fixed incomes of £5,000 a year for the Secretaries
of State, and £2,000 a year for the Presidents of Boards were agreed
to on the recommendation of a Select Committee of the House of
Commons. In 1850 the emoluments of office were again reviewed by
a Select Committee, and they reported in favour of the retention,
practically, of the 1831 settlement. Included in this Committee of
fifteen members were such rigid economists as Molesworth, Cobden,
Bright, and Ricardo, who grudged almost every penny spent for
State purposes. “For these offices,” they said in their report,
“it is requisite to secure the services of men who combine the
highest talents with the greatest experience in public affairs; and
considering the rank and importance of the offices and the labour and
responsibility incurred by those who hold them, your Committee are
of opinion that the salaries of these officers were settled in 1831
at the lowest amount consistent with the requirements of the public
service.”

The differences in the emoluments of the more important offices of
Cabinet rank have been a source of embarrassment to many a Prime
Minister engaged in forming a Government. It has often happened
that a man offered a post with the lower salary has considered
himself slighted by his political chief. To give one conspicuous
instance, the appointment of Joseph Chamberlain to the Board of
Trade by Gladstone in 1880 was resented by the Radicals, if not by
Chamberlain himself, as a belittling of his services and abilities.
This feeling did not tend to the harmony of the inner councils of the
Liberal Government; and yet the only foundation for it was that the
Presidency of the Board of Trade had only £2,000 a year as compared
with the £5,000 of a Secretary of State, for intrinsically it was a
high and important office.

In 1915 the Cabinet Ministers of the first War Coalition Government,
under Asquith, decided to put their varying salaries, big and little,
into a common fund, and then divide the amount equally among all.
The “pooling” was entirely novel. Its purpose was to mitigate the
personal hardship caused to certain Ministers who, in the reshuffle
of offices necessary in order to include Unionists in the Coalition
Government, had their emoluments reduced, or else to afford a salve
to their offended dignity. To give one example, so distinguished a
Minister as Winston Churchill would otherwise have lost £2,500 a
year by his transfer from the office of First Lord of the Admiralty,
paid £4,500, to the office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
paid £2,000. But the general effect of this adoption by the combined
Liberals and Unionists in the Cabinet of the trade union principle
of paying one rate of wages, was to more than double the salaries of
some Ministers, and more than half the salaries of others. The sum
that each received was £2,446. The chief sacrifices were made by the
Lord Chancellor, whose salary is £10,000, and the Attorney-General,
whose salary, exclusive of fees, is £7,000. The Prime Minister’s
salary was excluded from the pool. In the House of Commons the
arrangement was criticized on the ground that it was come to “behind
the back of Parliament,” and altered the remuneration of Ministers
which Parliament had sanctioned. Mr. Asquith strongly deprecated the
discussion. He absolutely declined to admit the right of the House of
Commons to inquire how Ministers proposed to spend their salaries.
“For my part,” he added, “I will never consent to hold office in
this House under the Crown, subject to the condition that the House
of Commons or any other body in this country is entitled to inquire
how I spend the money which I receive. If my right hon. friends
and colleagues—for I have no concern in the matter myself—choose
by domestic arrangement among themselves to determine how their
particular salaries are going to be allocated, I submit that that
is not a matter for the House or the public.” The payment to each
Minister of the salary attached by Parliament to his office was
resumed under the second Coalition Government formed by Mr. Lloyd
George.


2

The Prime Minister, head of the Government and its maker, receives
no salary. The position was even unknown to the Constitution until
1905, when it was formally recognized and given high precedence by
King Edward VII on the appointment of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman to it
in succession to Mr. Arthur Balfour. Some office of State carrying a
salary is accordingly held by the Prime Minister. It is usually that
of First Lord of the Treasury, or, as he is fully described, “First
Commissioner for executing the Office of the Lord High Treasurer of
his Majesty’s Exchequer,” which carries a salary of £5,000 a year
and that famous official residence, No. 10 Downing Street. There is
a country house, “Chequers,” in Buckingham, the gift in 1920 of Lord
Lee of Farnham. The post is a sinecure in the departmental sense, no
duties being attached to it, which leaves the holder of it free to
discharge his most responsible, varied, and laborious task as Prime
Minister. This includes the general supervision of every Department
of the State, domestic, colonial, and foreign, and the direction and
control of the political policy of the Government.

Of the Prime Ministers who have sat in the House of Commons, some
have been not only First Lord of the Treasury, but Chancellor of
the Exchequer also. Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as
First Lord of the Treasury in his long term of office from 1783 to
1801. Henry Addington, who succeeded Pitt as Prime Minister, was
also Chancellor of the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury.
Pitt, on returning to power in 1804, again filled the two offices;
and the precedent was followed by Perceval and Canning when each was
Prime Minister. Sir Robert Peel, in his first brief three-months’
administration of 1834-35, was also First Lord of the Treasury
and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Gladstone, both in his first
Administration, 1868-74, and in his second, 1880-85, was for a time
Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the Treasury.
The Prime Ministers, from Pitt to Canning, who were Chancellor of
the Exchequer and First Lord of the Treasury, drew the salaries of
both offices, then amounting to £10,398; but it was decided by the
Committee of 1831 that in the event of the two positions being again
filled by one Minister, half the salary of the second office should
be withheld. Peel and Gladstone, accordingly, were paid only at the
rate of £7,500 a year—the full salary of each office being fixed at
£5,000 in 1831—for the time that each was First Lord of the Treasury
and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Salisbury made a new departure
as Prime Minister by acting as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
in his three Administrations, 1885, 1886, and 1895, at a salary
of £5,000. The labours of these Prime Ministers, who, in addition
to supervising everything, administered a special Department, and
particularly a Department so onerous as that of the Treasury or the
Foreign Office, must indeed have been immense. It is improbable, now
that the labours and responsibilities of office are ever increasing,
that this herculean task will ever be undertaken again. But it shows
that our Prime Ministers have never shirked work while enjoying the
emoluments of office, to use the consecrated phrase.

The chief of the Treasury, in the control of the imposition of
taxes and the expenditure of the national revenue, is not the First
Lord of the Treasury, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is a
hard-worked Minister and not often is his task of making ends meet
brightened by the sunshine of popular favour. “You have held for a
long time the most unpopular office of the State,” Gladstone, as
Prime Minister, wrote to his fallen Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Robert Lowe, who had come to grief over an attempt to impose a tax
upon matches in 1873. “No man can do his duty in that office and be
popular while he holds it,” he went on. “I could easily name the two
worst Chancellors of the Exchequer of the last forty years; against
neither of them did I ever hear a word while they were in (I might
almost add, nor for them after they were out): ‘Blessed are ye when
men shall revile you.’ You have fought for the public tooth and nail.
You have been under a storm of unpopularity; but not a fiercer one
than I had to stand in 1860, when hardly anyone dared to say a word
for me; but, certainly, it was one of my best years of service, even
though bad be the best.” The salary attached to this arduous office
before 1831 was £5,398, which was made up of fees from different
sources. On the recommendation of the Committee of 1831 it was
reduced to a fixed sum of £5,000. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has
also an official residence, 11 Downing Street.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who assists the Chancellor
of the Exchequer in the administration of his department, is paid
£2,000 a year. There are also three Junior Lords of the Treasury.
As such they have no official duties whatever. What, then, do they
do for their salary of £1,000 a year each? According to an amusing
definition of their duties given by Canning, they are always to be
at St. Stephen’s, to keep a House and to cheer the Ministers. They
are, in fact, the assistant Whips of the Party in office. The Chief
Whip also fills a sinecure post of £2,000 a year, which used to be
styled the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury, and has of late years
been called the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury.[2] The
Constitution knows not the Whips. They are provided for by offices
to which there are salaries, but no duties attached.


3

Very important Ministers are the six Secretaries of State. For a
century before 1782 there were two joint Secretaries of State. One
had the management of affairs relating to the northern States of
Europe; the other dealt with matters affecting the southern countries
of the Continent, and Home affairs, which included Ireland and the
Colonies. In 1782 there was a redistribution of their duties, and
each got a distinctive title. The former was called “Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs,”[3] and was given control of the relations
of the Kingdom with all foreign States; and the latter was styled
“Secretary of State for the Home Department,” which included Great
Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies. There was also at this time a
Minister called “Secretary at War,” responsible for the land forces
of the Crown, who, by a singular arrangement, was a subordinate of
the Home Office. In 1794 the Secretary of State for War was created;
and in 1801 the affairs of the Colonies were by another strange
arrangement transferred to him from the Home Department. But in 1854,
on the outbreak of the Crimean War, the War Minister was relieved
of all Colonial business, which was vested in a new Secretary of
State for the Colonies. In 1858, after the Indian Mutiny, when the
authority and power of the East India Company were taken over by
the Imperial Government, the Secretary of State for India was first
appointed. The office of Secretary of State for Air which, as I have
already said, was created in 1917, during the Great War, is held
conjointly with the Secretaryship for War. The Air Minister, as
President of the Air Council, is responsible for the administration
of the Air Force and the defence of the realm by air. The salary
of a Secretary of State is £5,000 per annum. Each is assisted in
the work of his department by an Under-Secretary of State, who is
paid £1,500. The War Office has an additional parliamentary official
known as the Financial Secretary, who also receives £1,500. In 1919
a new Under-Secretaryship was attached to the Foreign Office, called
“Secretary of the Overseas Trade Department” (it has relations
with the Board of Trade also), with a salary of £1,500 a year. The
First Lord of the Admiralty is paid £4,500 a year for directing the
affairs of the Navy. He, like the Secretary of State for War, has two
subordinates in Parliament—the Parliamentary and Financial Secretary
to the Admiralty, concerned chiefly with the men and the pay and
conditions of service, who gets £2,000, and the Civil Lord of the
Admiralty, responsible for harbour works and docks, who gets £1,000 a
year.

The Administration includes three offices of high standing, having
little if any departmental duties, but carrying salaries of £2,000
each, which are usually given to elderly men of long service, so
that the Cabinet might have the advantage of their ripe experience
and sage councils. The first in dignity is the Lord President of
the Council. He presides at the meetings of the Privy Council; but
practically the only occasion on which all its members are summoned
is at the demise of the Crown, when it becomes the duty of that
ancient body to meet for the purpose of proclaiming the accession
of the new Sovereign. Formerly the Lord President was the chairman
of certain committees of the Privy Council, which no longer exist.
In 1837, when Lord John Russell took the first step to establish
a system of national education, a Committee of the Privy Council
was appointed to administer the moneys which Parliament voted for
the purpose, and at its deliberations the Lord President presided.
In 1855 a new office was created—that of Vice-President of the
Council—which in time became vested with the control of education,
and that, too, disappeared when the Board of Education, with a
Minister at its head, was created in 1902. In like manner, the
duties of the Privy Council in regard to trade were transferred to
the Board of Trade, and its duties in regard to public health were
transferred to the Local Government Board. Again, the Lord President
supervised the exercise of the statutory powers of the Privy Council
in connection with the prevention of cattle disease; but the creation
of a Board of Agriculture took that work out of his hands and left
him without any business, save that of the nominal supervision of
the administrative functions of the Privy Council. The office of
Lord Privy Seal is a survival from the historic past when the Privy
Council sought to restrain executive acts of the Crown by insisting
that the Lord Chancellor should not affix the imprimatur of the Great
Seal to any grant, or patent, or writ which the Sovereign desired to
issue, without their authorization in the form of a warrant under the
Privy Seal. In these days of Government by Parliament, the Lord Privy
Seal has nothing to do. Another office of dignity rather than of
responsibility is that of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
His duties in relation to the revenues of the Duchy, which are vested
in the Sovereign and exempt from parliamentary control are purely
nominal, so that he is free to come to the assistance of any Minister
when hard pressed in Parliament, or by departmental work outside.
“So far from resembling an epicurean divinity,” said Lord Dufferin
in 1871, when some noble lords called his position a sinecure, “the
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster seems to me to be a kind of
charwoman and maid-of-all-work to the Government.”


4

One of the busiest of Ministers is the President of the Board of
Trade. The work of the department is most diversified. It covers all
matters affecting trade and commerce, industries and manufactures,
the mercantile marine, and commercial relations with foreign
countries. The salary of the President, formerly £2,000, was raised
to £5,000 in 1909. Attached to the Board of Trade are a Parliamentary
Secretary and a Secretary of Mines (created in 1920), both of whom
are paid £1,500 a year. The Board of Trade holds a titular position
that distinguishes it from the other Government departments. It was
constituted in 1786 for the consideration of all matters relating
to trade and foreign plantations. As a board it is a relic of olden
and more leisurely times when much of the work done by the heads
of the departments and chief clerks was revised by commissioners
seated round a board or table. Now, however, only the name survives.
The Board of Trade never meets. It had, as ex-officio members
such exalted personages as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord
Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and also one whose
office came to an end as long ago as 1800—the Speaker of the Irish
Parliament. When Mr. Lloyd George was President of the Board of Trade
he was asked whether the Archbishop of Canterbury had attended any
meetings of the Board, and in an amusing equivocation replied that
his Grace “had not missed a single meeting to which he had been
summoned.” Sydney Buxton, another President of the Board of Trade,
was asked why the place of the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons
on the Board had not been filled up. “After keeping open his place
for more than a century,” he replied, “I should be sorry now to close
the door to his possible return to the Board.” He added, amid the
renewed laughter of the House, “that he should also greatly regret
losing the Archbishop of Canterbury as a colleague.”

The Minister of Health has charge of the public health and controls
local authorities. The Local Government Board, which was created
in 1871, was transformed into the Ministry of Health in 1918. The
Minister’s salary is £5,000, and that of his Parliamentary Secretary
£2,000. In 1889 the Board of Agriculture was established. The powers
of the Board of Trade relating to fisheries were transferred to
this department in 1903, when its title was changed to that of “The
Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.” In 1919 the Board became a
Ministry. It is responsible to Parliament for the Office of Woods and
Forests which administers Crown lands. The Minister of Agriculture
is paid £2,000, and his Parliamentary Secretary £1,200. In 1902
the Board of Education entered upon its independent existence
among the Departments of the State. The President of the Board of
Education has a salary of £2,000, and is assisted in administering
the system of national education by a Parliamentary Secretary, who
gets £1,200. The First Commissioner of Works, head of the Office of
Works, which performs overseeing duties in connection with Royal
palaces, State buildings and Royal parks, has £2,000 per annum.
The Postmaster-General receives £500 a year more, or £2,500, in
consideration of his more onerous duties and responsibilities in
the control of the postal and telegraph services, and there is an
Assistant Postmaster-General, who is paid £1,200.

Two new Ministries were created during the Great War to control and
administer affairs which arose out of it—ways and communication, by
the Ministry of Transport; and the allotment and payment of pensions
to disabled soldiers and sailors, and to the relations of the
killed, by the Ministry of Pensions.[4] The Labour Ministry, for the
enforcement of legal regulations in mines, factories and workshops,
was brought into being in the same period. These four Ministers are
paid £2,000 each, and their Parliamentary Secretaries £1,200 each.

The Chief Secretary for Ireland has £4,425 a year. The salary was
formerly £5,500. The Committee on Official Salaries, in 1850,
recommended its reduction to £3,000, but it was fixed at £4,000,
with an extra allowance of £425 for the special travelling and other
expenses of the post. The Chief Secretary has also an official
residence in the Phœnix Park, Dublin. He is paid double the salary
of an Under-Secretary of State—besides his extra allowance—on
account of being obliged to reside part of the year in London and
part in Dublin. Formerly the Chief Secretary was subordinate to the
Home Office, but he has been for many years independent of that
department. His full title is “Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland.” The relations between the Lord-Lieutenant and his
Chief Secretary have, however, become inverted in recent times. The
Chief Secretary is now solely responsible to Parliament for Irish
affairs; and the Viceroyalty has become more and more a position
of dignity rather than of power. The most highly paid office in the
Administration is that of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the salary
being £20,000 a year, with an allowance of £3,000 for outfit on
appointment, and an official residence in the Phœnix Park, known as
the Viceregal Lodge, as well as apartments in Dublin Castle. There
is also a political office of Vice-President of the Irish Department
of Agriculture, created in 1899, to which a salary of £1,200 a
year is attached. For Scotland there is a Secretary, responsible,
like the Chief Secretary for Ireland, for a large number of public
departments, paid £2,000 a year, and a Parliamentary Under-Secretary
for Health, paid £1,200 a year.

The salary attached to the office of Lord Chancellor of England
is £10,000—£4,000 as Speaker of the House of Lords, and £6,000
as Judge. The Lord Chancellor of Ireland is paid £6,000 a year.
Indeed, the best paid offices are the legal. The Attorney-General
gets £7,000, and the Solicitor-General £6,000; and both receive,
in addition, high fees for cases they conduct in the law courts on
behalf of the Crown. During 1913-14, the financial year before the
Great War, the Attorney-General was paid, in all, £18,397; and the
Solicitor-General, £19,027. The fees of the Attorney-General in the
year after the War, 1918-19, amounted to £8,500, and those of the
Solicitor-General to £10,300. They are the confidential advisers of
the Cabinet on questions of law. Both also expound and defend in the
House of Commons the legal provisions of Government measures and
proposals. The Attorney-General for Ireland, as chief law officer and
law adviser of the Crown in Ireland, gets £5,000 a year and fees;
and the Lord Advocate of Scotland, who holds a similar position in
regard to Scotland, also gets £5,000 a year, but no fees. Ireland and
Scotland have each a Solicitor-General, who is paid £2,000.

There are posts in the Royal Household which are political, and
therefore, like offices in the Administration, are vacated at a
change of Government. The best paid of these Ministers is the Master
of the Horse, who gets £2,500 a year, the use of a Royal carriage
and horses, and the services of four of the King’s footmen. He
has authority over all matters relating to the royal stables, the
King’s equerries, pages, grooms, coachmen, and is responsible for
arranging the details of Royal processions, such as the procession
from Buckingham Palace to Westminster when the King goes in State
to open Parliament. The Lord Chamberlain, who has the regulation of
Courts and levees, and admission to them; and the Lord Steward, who
has control of matters “below stairs,” just as the Lord Chamberlain
has of those “above stairs,” are each paid £2,000. Then there
are the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms, and the Captain of the
Yeomen of the Guard, who each draw salaries of £1,000 a year. The
functions of these ancient bodyguards of the Sovereign are now
entirely ceremonial. There are also seven Lords-in-Waiting—one for
every day in the week—who are paid £600 a year each. Only peers are
eligible for all the foregoing Household appointments. There are
three other posts, carrying salaries of £700 each, which are always
given to Members of the other House—Comptroller of the Household,
who conveys messages from the Commons to the Sovereign, Treasurer
of the Household, and Vice-Chamberlain. The duties of these offices
are practically nominal, and the holders of them, whether Lords or
Commons, act as assistant Whips in their respective Houses, or do all
sorts of odd jobs for the Government. Finally, there is one unpaid
Minister, and he is, strange to say, called “Paymaster-General.” He
is the head of the office which makes the payments required by the
different departments of State out of the sums voted for the purpose
by the House of Commons, and placed to his account by the Treasury.
He issues the warrants which puts thousands of pounds into the
pockets of his colleagues in the Ministry, but not a brass farthing
into his own. What a tantalizing position! It is the office that is
the attraction. For the Paymaster-General, though he gets no salary,
is proud to know that he is a Member of the Government.




CHAPTER XVI

PENSIONS FOR MINISTERS


1

It appears to be widely supposed that Ministers of the Crown receive
pensions on retirement. The position is that a Minister of the Crown
may obtain a pension if he has held office for four or five years.
But he is not entitled to it as a right on account of his service.
He must apply for it to the First Lord of the Treasury, and make a
declaration that his private income or resources are inadequate to
the maintenance of the social position proper to one who has been a
Minister of the Crown. Only two Members of the Government receive
pensions automatically on retiring from office, the Lord Chancellor
of England, whose pension is £5,000, and the Lord Chancellor of
Ireland, whose pension is £4,000 a year. These two pensions are
payable as a matter of course, however brief may have been the
period of service. Nor is there any limitation to the number of
such pensions that may be paid at the same time. At the close of
the World War in 1918 there were living four ex-Lord Chancellors
of England—Lord Halsbury, Lord Loreburn, Lord Haldane, and Lord
Buckmaster—all of whom are paid the £5,000 a year, and a fifth, Lord
Finlay, who, it was understood, waived his right to the retiring
allowance.

The other political pensions are, as I have said, conditional.
Johnson felt it necessary to define the English use of the word
“pension” as: “Pay given to a State hireling for treason to his
country.” Johnson, however, afterwards did something to make this
form of royal bounty respectable by himself accepting £300 a year
from George III. Undoubtedly in the corrupt stage of political
life during the eighteenth century there were numerous pensions and
sinecure offices for Ministers who were needy, or simply greedy.
A Committee of the House of Commons reported in 1802 that for
twenty years previous a sum of £115,000 had been annually spent on
pensions. But as political morality developed with the progress of
the nineteenth century, or as the tax-payer grew impatient of his
increasing burdens, this system of growing rich or repairing broken
fortunes at the public expense gradually came to an end. The granting
of political pensions was for the first time regulated by an Act
passed by the Reform Government of Earl Grey in 1834—the “4 and 5
William V, c. 24,” which is described as an Act, “to alter, amend,
and consolidate the laws for regulating pensions, compensations, and
allowances to be made to persons in respect of their having held
civil offices of his Majesty’s service.”

The statute which now governs the granting of pensions to
ex-Ministers is the Political Offices Pension Act, 1869. It was
Gladstone, then in the first year of office as Prime Minister, who
brought in the measure. The only serious opposition to it came from
Henry Fawcett (afterwards Postmaster-General in Gladstone’s second
Administration), who thought that no Minister should be entitled
to a political pension unless he had been obliged to give up his
profession or business on taking office, and found it impossible to
resume it on retirement. Gladstone explained that his scheme was no
more than a necessary amendment of the Act of 1834, which authorized
pensions varying from £800 to £2,000, according to length of service
and the emoluments received, and after a short discussion, with one
division—94 to 15—the Bill was passed.

Three classes of pensions for ex-Ministers were thus created:

  First-class pensions of £2,000 for four years’ service in an office
  of not less than £5,000 a year.

  Second-class pensions of £1,200 for five years’ service in an
  office of less than £5,000 a year and not less than £2,000 a year.

  Third-class pensions of £800 for five years’ service in an office
  of less than £2,000 and more than £1,000 a year.

The period of service may be continuous, or at different times,
and in different offices of the same class. “No new pension shall
be granted in any class while four pensions in that class are
subsisting,” says that Act; “nor shall more than one pension be
granted in the same year.”

The Political Offices Pensions Act, 1869, embodies the following
section of the Act of 1834:

  And whereas the principle of the regulations for granting
  allowances of this nature is and ought to be founded on a
  consideration not only of the services performed by the individual
  to the State, but of the inadequacy of his private fortune to
  maintain his station in life; be it therefore enacted that from
  and after the passing of this Act, whenever any person shall seek
  to obtain one of the pensions before mentioned his application for
  that purpose shall be made in writing to the Commissioners of his
  Majesty’s Treasury, to which he shall subscribe his name, and which
  shall contain not only a statement of the services performed by him
  and the grounds on which such pension is claimed, but a specific
  declaration that the amount of his income from other sources is
  so limited as to bring him within the intent and meaning of this
  Act and the principle hereinabove declared, and without such
  declaration no pension as hereinbefore provided or authorized shall
  be granted.


2

It is not generally known that Benjamin Disraeli was a pensioner
under the Act of 1834. There is but an obscure and passing reference
to it in Buckle’s _Life of Lord Beaconsfield_. Lord Derby granted
him a first-class pension in June, 1859. Disraeli was the only Prime
Minister of modern times who received a political pension. He was
in receipt of it when he died as Lord Beaconsfield in April, 1881.
The pension was, of course, suspended while he was in office as
Chancellor of the Exchequer or First Lord of the Treasury (including
his two terms as Prime Minister), but the total amount drawn by
him in pensions, between 1859 and 1881, was £26,456 6s. 7d. Other
distinguished pensioners under the Act of 1834 were Spencer Walpole,
three times Home Secretary, who from May, 1867, until his death in
May, 1898, received in the aggregate a sum of £62,032 19s. 4d.; Sir
George Grey, four times Home Secretary, who from 1857 to 1882 drew
£39,070 2s. 6d.; and Thomas Milner Gibson, President of the Board of
Trade, who was paid £35,275 1s. 3d. between 1866 and 1884.

The first beneficiary under the Act of 1869 was Charles Pelham
Villiers, the associate of Cobden and Bright in the agitation for
Free Trade. He entered Parliament for Wolverhampton in 1835, and sat
for the same constituency until his death in 1898 at the great age
of ninety-six. For some years at the end of his long career as a
member of Parliament he was Father of the House of Commons. Villiers
has a place among the few public men who have had statues erected
to them in their lifetime. He was so honoured by Wolverhampton
ten years before his death. Villiers held office in two Liberal
Administrations, having been Judge Advocate-General for six years,
and for the same period President of the Poor Law Board, an office
long since merged in the Local Government Board, now the Ministry of
Health.

Villiers was awarded a second-class pension of £1,200 by Gladstone
on August 19, 1869, a few days after the Political Offices Pensions
Act became law. Although this amount was reduced to £450 a year until
January 5, 1874, as Villiers had also a pension of £750 from the
Suitors’ Fee Fund of the Court of Chancery—is there not quite a touch
of eighteenth-century sinecure in this?—Villiers received altogether,
under the Act of 1869, the large sum of £30,810 12s. 8d., and was
drawing the pension at his death in 1898. It may be said that no man
better earned a pension than Villiers. His record of public service
is unparalleled in the annals of the House of Commons. But on the
proving of his will it was found that he had been a very wealthy man.
He left, in fact, a fortune of £250,000.

Gladstone, subsequently to the award of the pension to Villiers,
made a rule by which every ex-Minister to whom he, as First Lord
of the Treasury, granted a pension was required not only to make
the statutory declaration that he was unable to maintain his social
station, but was also obliged to engage to surrender the pension
should he come into a private fortune, or obtain a highly paid
appointment. Villiers, it seems, had an accession of fortune, but
evidently he did not consider that the new engagement applied to him,
as he had not signed it.

As these pensions are paid, not out of monies voted by Parliament,
but directly out of the Consolidated Fund, like the salaries and
retiring allowances of the Judges, they cannot be raised as a subject
of debate in the House of Commons. Attention, however, was drawn by
means of questions to Villiers’ case, and subsequently to the case of
Viscount Cross, who died in March, 1914, leaving a personal estate
of the value of £72,299, after having drawn a second-class pension
of £2,000 for over twenty years, which amounted in the aggregate to
£40,760. It appeared that Lord Cross, like Villiers, did not sign the
declaration to surrender his pension in the event of an improvement
in his pecuniary circumstances. As Lord Beaconsfield left £84,000
at his death, his case differs only in one respect from those of
Villiers and Cross—he had been twice Prime Minister of England.


3

The First Lord of the Treasury is restricted by precedent to granting
these political pensions only to ex-Ministers of his own Party.
In 1883 an application was made to Gladstone for a pension for a
Conservative ex-Minister. It was refused on the ground “that no
political pension has been granted by any Minister during the last
fifty years, except to one with whom he stood on terms of general
confidence and co-operation.” The Prime Minister went on to say,
“the examination of private circumstances, such as I consider the
Act to require, is, for its nature, difficult and invidious; but the
examination of competing cases in the ex-official corps is a function
that could not be discharged with the necessary combination of free
responsible action and of exemption from offence and suspicion.”
Gladstone therefore declined to “create a precedent of deviation from
a course undeviatingly pursued by my predecessors of all Parties.”
Lord Morley, who gives this letter in his _Life of Gladstone_,
observes in a note: “Mr. Gladstone had suffered an unpleasant
experience in another case of the relations brought about by the
refusal of a political pension, after inquiry as to the accuracy of
the necessary statement as to the applicant’s need of it.”

We are told also in the same work that Gladstone, in his last term of
office, came to hold strongly the view that these political pensions,
which he himself created, should be abolished. Lord Morley says he
was only deterred from trying to carry out his views by the reminder
from younger Ministers, not themselves applicants, nor ever likely to
be, that it would hardly be a gracious thing to cut off benefactions
at a time when the bestowal of them was passing away from him, though
he had used them freely while they were within his power.


4

I do not think it can be maintained that the salaries of Ministers
are more than fair remuneration, considering the weighty and
absorbing duties and responsibilities of the offices, and also
the difficulty of attaining to them and the uncertainty of their
tenure.[5] It is far from being an easy matter to become a Minister
of the Crown. The posts are few, and the competition among the many
aspirants to them is very keen. Most Members of Parliament never
reach it, even though they may have had long and brilliant careers in
public life. Fox, who was forty years in Parliament—having entered
the House of Commons when he was nineteen, and retained his seat
until his death at the age of fifty-nine—held Cabinet office for
only about eighteen months. In 1782 he was Secretary of State for
three months in the Rockingham Administration; in 1783 he filled the
same office for nine months during his coalition with Lord North,
who was the joint Secretary of State, with the Duke of Portland, as
Premier, nominally rather than effectually at the head of affairs.
Then followed twenty-three years of Opposition during the long and
brilliant ascendancy of William Pitt. In January 1806 Pitt died, and
in the Grenville Government which followed Fox returned to office
for the third time as Secretary of State. Once more his tenure of
the office was brief. After eight months it was brought to an end by
his premature death in September, 1806. Fox was a rake, and, being
a younger son, naturally was always in debt. But he never mourned
for the spoils of office, so that he could the more freely indulge
in his tastes as a man of pleasure. He desired office that he might
embody his political ideas in Acts of Parliament. He moved his famous
resolution for the abolition of the slave trade in June 1806; his
health had broken down, and conscious that the end was near at hand,
he declared that after forty years of public life he should retire,
feeling that he had done his duty, if he carried his motion. The
motion was carried by a majority of 99—114 voting for it, and only 15
against. It was practically his last appearance in the House. A few
days later disease compelled him to retire.

On the other hand, William Pitt, as a Minister, was the spoiled
darling of fortune. In 1782, at the age of twenty-three, he
was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the Shelburne
Administration. He was out of office for the nine months in 1783,
during which Fox and North were in power. But in December of that
year, on the dismissal of the Coalition Government, he became First
Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Prime Minister,
and he was not yet twenty-five. He held these offices for the
unbroken term of seventeen years. As First Lord of the Treasury he
had £5,000 a year, and £5,398 a year as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He had, besides, the official residence in Downing Street. The
Clerkship of the Pells, a sinecure office worth £3,000 a year, fell
vacant on Pitt’s accession to power; and in that age of jobs it was
deemed a remarkable instance of disinterestedness that, instead of
taking the place himself, and thus acquiring an independence for
life, he gave it to a friend. But on the death of Lord North in
1792, George III appointed him to the sinecure office of Lord Warden
of the Cinque Ports, with a salary of £4,000—reduced by payments to
subordinates to £3,080—and the seaside residence of Walmer Castle.
For eight years, therefore, he had £10,398 per annum, and for
another nine years, £13,478 per annum, from the State. Yet on his
resignation in 1801—owing to the refusal of the King to sanction
the emancipation of the Catholics, without which Pitt regarded the
Union with Ireland which he had just carried as incomplete—he was
in debt to the amount of £45,000. As his official salaries were
stopped—though, of course, he retained the £4,000 a year as Lord
Warden—he was in danger of being thrown into prison as a debtor. The
merchants of London offered him a free gift of £100,000, and the
King tendered him £30,000 from his Privy Purse, so that he might
extricate himself from his unpleasant predicament. He declined both
offers. He, however, accepted from fourteen personal friends and
political supporters £11,700 as a loan, by which he was enabled to
discharge the most pressing of his creditors. In May 1804 he returned
to power as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and Prime Minister, and again drew the double salaries of £10,398
until he died, in office, on January 23, 1806. His debts were paid by
Parliament. They amounted to the enormous sum of £40,000, exclusive
of the £11,700 advanced to him in 1801 by his friends, who now
declined repayment.

What was the explanation of Pitt’s indebtedness? His private life
seems to have been remarkably pure. His one dissipation was an
extra bottle of port. He was a bachelor. A man of cold and shy
manners, he had few friends—his nose, as Romney said, was turned up
to all mankind—he mixed little in society, and he was not given to
hospitality. Yet with £13,478 a year, and town and seaside houses,
“free of coal, candles and taxes”—to quote the official phrase of
the time—in each of which he maintained but a plain and inexpensive
establishment, he died at the early age of forty-seven, owing
£51,700. The only explanation of the mystery that has been advanced
is that, so absorbed was Pitt in public life, and so indifferent was
he to money, he neglected his private affairs and was robbed by his
servants. It was an hereditary weakness, perhaps. His father, the
first Earl of Chatham, of whose private life Lord Chesterfield wrote,
“It was stained by no vices, nor sullied by any meanness,” died in
debt to the extent of £20,000, which Parliament paid, as well as
settling an annuity of £4,000 a year on his successors in the earldom.

“Dispensing for near twenty years the favours of the Crown,”
says Canning in the epitaph he wrote of William Pitt, “he lived
without ostentation, and he died poor.” Further than this it
is now impossible to carry the story of the material result to
himself of Pitt’s official career. But these happy words are of
general application as a tribute to the devotion, honesty, and
self-sacrifice of the Ministers of the Crown. There is no instance
of a Prime Minister who grew rich in office. Spencer Perceval, who
was assassinated in the Lobby of the House of Commons, on May 11,
1812, left his family so ill-provided for that Parliament had to come
to their assistance. As is usual in such cases, Parliament acted
handsomely. It made a grant of £50,000 to the family, and voted to
the widow a pension of £2,000 a year, which on her death was to be
continued to the eldest son and increased to £3,000.


5

When Lord John Russell was Prime Minister and First Lord of the
Treasury he publicly declared that no man without a private fortune
could hope to fill any of the high offices of the State with freedom
from pecuniary worries. “For my part,” he said, “I never had a debt
in my life until I was First Lord of the Treasury.” A Minister was
obliged largely to increase his personal expenditure in order to
meet the social calls of his office. He must live in a better style
as a Member of the Government than as a Member of the Opposition. A
large house, servants, and carriages were essential to the adequate
fulfilling of his social obligations as a Minister. “If I recollect
aright,” said Lord John Russell to the Select Committee on Official
Salaries in 1850, “when Monsieur de Tercy went from France to
endeavour to make peace with the Dutch Government, he was very much
struck, on calling upon the Grand Pensionary, to find the door opened
by a servant-maid, and he thought it showed very great republican
sympathy; and no doubt it was very becoming. But I think that if
Lord Palmerston had only a housemaid to open the door, and Foreign
Ministers called there, everybody would say that he was very mean
and unfit for his situation.” Palmerston was, at the time, Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, and, being a wealthy man, was noted
for his lavish hospitality. In fact, the £5,000 a year which the
head of the Foreign Office is paid does not always cover the cost of
living, and the social entertainments which he has annually to give.
In addition to maintaining a position of great dignity in a becoming
manner, he is expected regularly to entertain at his own expense the
members of the various foreign diplomatic missions in London. Lord
Rosebery has said that when he was Foreign Secretary in 1893 he spent
half of his year’s salary upon two receptions at the Foreign Office.

Gladstone, like Lord John Russell, lived well in office and simply in
opposition. On his appointment as Prime Minister for the first time
in 1868 he took a house in that region of the rich and fashionable,
Carlton House Terrace. After his defeat in the General Election
of 1875 he wrote to his wife saying that they must retrench their
expenditure. “The truth is,” he said, “that innocently and from
special causes we have on the whole been housed better than according
to our circumstances. All along Carlton House Terrace, I think, you
would not find anyone with less than £20,000 a year, and most of them
with much more.” His official salary was but £5,000, and when it was
stopped he retired to Harley street. During his two other terms of
office as Prime Minister he inhabited the official house in Downing
Street. Gladstone had a passion for public economy. He even grudged
the spending of a small sum of money to make bright with flowers the
little garden at the back of No. 10 Downing Street, so eager was his
desire to limit the demands on the National Exchequer. But he always
considered that he had well earned his allowance as Minister. Mr.
John Bright, it seems, had a compunctious visiting of shame every
time that the quarterly cheque for his official salary arrived, and
once he disclosed his feelings to Gladstone. “There I don’t agree
with you, Bright,” said Gladstone. “I’d rather take my official money
than anything I receive from land, for I know I have earned every
penny of it.”

The emoluments of office were an important consideration to some
of the greatest men in political history. Burke, Pitt, Sheridan,
Perceval and Canning had no hereditary fortunes, and if there were
not adequate salaries attached to office they could not have given
their great abilities to the services of the country in government
and administration. Edmund Burke, whose movement for economic
reform in the conduct of State affairs led to the abolition of
many political sinecures, insisted, nevertheless, that reasonable
emoluments should be paid to Ministers. He said:

  I will even go so far as to affirm that if men were willing to
  serve in such situations without salary, they ought not to be
  permitted to do it. Ordinary service must be secured by the motives
  to ordinary integrity. I do not hesitate to say that the State
  which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues will be sure
  to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption.
  An honourable and fair profit is the best security against avarice
  and rapacity, as in all things else a lawful and regulated
  enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess.

Moreover, if the salaries of office were meagre, statesmanship would
become entirely an appendage of wealth. In former times most of
the highest offices of the Government were filled by territorial
magnates, Whig or Tory—members of aristocratic families with ample
private means as well as great traditions of public service. To
these men, possessed of personal fortunes of £15,000, £20,000 or
£40,000 a year, the salaries of office may have been regarded as
unconsidered trifles. And yet, strangely enough, in the seventeenth
century, when rich noblemen, their relatives and dependants were
at the head of affairs, the political seems to have been quite a
lucrative profession, for a Minister often held his majority in the
House of Commons together, not so much by principles, as by places
and pensions.

But the old custom of confining the highest of the offices of State
exclusively to men of hereditary position and wealth and leisure
came to an end by the middle of the nineteenth century. The tendency
to open the arena of statesmanship to all members of the Party in
power of proved ability and distinction, but irrespective of birth
or rank or fortune, was strikingly shown in the Administration
which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman formed in 1905, when John Burns,
a manual worker from an engineering shipyard, was made President
of the Local Government Board and a Cabinet Minister; and as this
tendency is bound to become wider and wider still as time progresses,
the salaries of Ministers must be at least sufficient to provide a
livelihood in order to attract to the service of the State men well
equipped for it in intellectual ability, and experience in affairs,
but without private means.

The fact, however, remains that the emoluments of office are not
the allurement of the public service, and they never can be in any
conceivable circumstances under the Party system, and the frequent
changes of Government which it involves. Those who make politics a
calling are very few in number. As a rule, men do not enter upon a
political career with the object of making fortunes as statesmen, or
even of securing a livelihood, in the way that men study medicine
to become doctors, or law to become barristers. The uncertainty of
attaining office and, in the event of success, the precariousness
and brevity of its tenure will always make statesmanship the most
unreliable of callings in the eyes of those bent on having a good
balance at their bankers. The emoluments of office are really not so
much salaries as prizes.

If two able young men of equal mental endowment were to set out on
the same day to make their way in the world, one going into commerce
or the professions, and the other into politics, it is almost a
certainty that when the time came for retirement the man who had
selected a professional or business avocation, and was successful,
would be ten times as wealthy, at the very least, as the man who gave
himself to the service of the State, even though he had attained to
the most renowned and exalted office of Prime Minister. Members of
Parliament are, as a rule, engaged in commercial and professional
occupations, and they follow politics as a concurrent career. The
few who show a special aptitude for leadership and office ultimately
reach the Treasury Bench, but they hold on, nevertheless, to the
established and secure positions on which they continue to depend for
their bread-and-butter.


6

“Spoils of Office!” The phrase was long since emptied entirely of its
eighteenth-century suggestion of “grab,” and remembering the public
rage for economy, which is likely to endure for ever and ever on
account of national necessities, it may be accepted that “spoils,”
in the sense of pecuniary rewards, will less and less attach to
service of the State. The responsibility and distinction of governing
the country will, happily, always be attractive, and it will always
bring the chance of gaining the greatest of most alluring “spoil” of
all—that of doing something to maintain the renown of the country for
honour and the prosperity and happiness of its people.

“This won’t do. You have taken the Queen’s shilling.” So said
Disraeli to a Member of his Administration who was absent without due
cause from a division in the House of Commons. It is not often that
a Minister has to be reprimanded by his chief for want of devotion
either to his Party or to the State. Happy country! Men of the
highest class in ability and integrity are ever ready to take its
burdens upon their shoulders. It does not, of course, follow that
honest and disinterested men are always the best of politicians.
Personal integrity and intellectual ability are, indeed, some
assurance of wisdom in the guidance of the State. But they are not
an infallible guarantee. If they were, there would never be a need
for a change of Government. It has happened, now and then, that the
principles of an Administration were large and lofty enough almost
to bring the nation to ruin. But this much is true—that if Ministers
cling to office in times of Party stress and conflict, it is not
because of its emoluments. It is, in the main, because of a real
concern for the welfare of the Commonwealth. They are convinced that
the administration of public affairs in the light of their Party
principles is essential to the salvation of the country. That and,
fearing they would be beaten at the polls, the human weakness, “to
keep the other fellows out.”




CHAPTER XVII

THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE


1

The Speech from the Throne, or, as it is popularly called, “The
King’s Speech,” which at the opening of every session of Parliament
is read to Peers and Commons assembled in the House of Lords by the
Sovereign himself, is always awaited with considerable interest, and,
at times of high political excitement, with some apprehension not
unmingled with vows of defiance. For in it the legislative programme
of the Government is disclosed. As such it is the text on which the
Opposition develop their attack.

To call the Speech the “King’s Speech” is a polite fiction—aye,
though, should his Majesty be absent, the Lord Chancellor, before
he reads it, is careful to say—following an ancient custom, which
changes in the Constitution have long since deprived of its old
significance—that it is in “his Majesty’s own words.” The Sovereign
has practically little or no share in its original composition. It is
really the Speech of the Cabinet. But there was a time when the King
really spoke in the Speech. Parliament could not then assemble until
the King thought fit personally to summon it. When it did meet, the
King appointed and declared the business in his Speech, and Lords and
Commons were expected to confine themselves strictly to the tasks
thus prescribed. This prerogative is still theoretically vested
in the Crown. Parliament can be summoned only by the Sovereign,
but since the Revolution of 1688 the Sovereign in summoning it has
acted on the advice of the Ministers. Parliament cannot proceed with
business until the Speech from the Throne has been delivered; but
since the Revolution, also, neither House—as we shall see later—is
bound to confine itself to the “causes of summons” set forth in the
Speech.

The first draft of the Speech is usually written by the Prime
Minister. What Bills are to be submitted to Parliament is first
decided by the Cabinet, but the general contents of the Speech,
and certainly its phraseology, may be ascribed to the head of the
Government. The draft is submitted to a full meeting of the Cabinet,
where it is discussed point by point; and probably undergoes some
alteration in the way of an omission here, an addition there, or
a qualification of some particular statement. Then a copy of the
Speech is sent to the King for his approval. In _Selections from
the Correspondence of Queen Victoria_ (published 1907) there is a
memorandum, written by Prince Albert and dated December 9, 1854, of
an interview with Lord Aberdeen, then Prime Minister, which describes
a “scene” in the Cabinet Council over the preparation of the Speech
that Queen Victoria was to read at the opening of Parliament. Lord
John Russell had to withdraw a scheme of parliamentary reform at the
outbreak of the Crimean War, and now wanted to bring it on again,
greatly to the annoyance of Lord Palmerston, for the War was not yet
over. Prince Albert writes:

  Later, when they came to the passage about Education, Lord
  John made an alteration in the draft, adding something about
  strengthening the institutions of the country. Lord Palmerston
  started up and asked: “Does that mean Reform?” Lord John answered:
  “It might or might not.” “Well, then,” said Lord Palmerston, with
  a heat of manner which struck the whole Cabinet, and was hardly
  justified by the occasion, “I wish it to be understood that I
  protest against any direct or indirect attempt to bring forward the
  Reform question again!” Lord John, nettled, muttered to himself,
  but loud enough to be heard by everybody: “Then I shall bring
  forward the Reform Bill at once.”

That the “King’s Speech” is the Speech of the Ministers has been
admitted by reigning Sovereigns even in the eighteenth century when
constitutional monarchy was not quite firmly established, and, at
any rate, when Kings were disposed to act independently of their
advisers. In 1756, a too enterprising and most audacious bookseller
was prosecuted for publishing a spurious Speech on the eve of the
opening of Parliament. “I hope,” said George II, “the fellow’s
punishment will be light, for I have read both Speeches, the real and
the false, and, so far as I understand them, I like the printer’s
speech better than my own.” The fellow was heavily fined and sent
to Newgate by the Lords and the mock Speech was burnt by the common
hangman in New Palace Yard and at the Royal Exchange as a “scandalous
libel and a high contempt of his Majesty.” But the King had the
fine remitted and the term of imprisonment curtailed. “Well, Lord
Chancellor,” said George III to Lord Eldon, as he was leaving the
House of Lords after opening Parliament, “did I deliver the Speech
well?” “Very well indeed, sir,” was the reply. “I’m surprised at
that,” said the King, “for there was nothing in it.” The voice was
the voice of the King, but the words were the words of his Ministers.
Still, the King must surely be allowed some latitude of opinion in
regard to the King’s Speech beyond a formal expression of approval.
The truth is that if he chooses he may suggest alterations, and
insist upon them, no doubt, provided modifications of policy are not
implied. He probably softens an expression now and then, or adds a
gracious sentence. Did not George III insert in his first Speech the
famous words, “Born and bred in this country, I glory in the name of
Briton!” He was the first English-born King since the Revolution.
George I could not speak a word of English. He and his Prime
Minister, Walpole, discussed affairs of State in bad Latin. George
II publicly proclaimed himself a foreigner every time he read the
Speech to the “Gendlemen of de Houze of Gommons.” The historic phrase
of George III has been ascribed to the influence of his early friend
and adviser, the Scottish John Stuart, third Earl of Bute, which, it
was said, explained the degradation of the proud name of “Englishman”
into the commonplace “Briton.” But the King always insisted that the
inspiration of the sentence, as well as its composition, was entirely
his own. A story is told which lends confirmation to his claim.
Notwithstanding the birth and training in which he gloried, he wrote
English ungrammatically and was a bad speller; and thus “Briton” in
the renowned sentence, as written by the royal hand, was actually
misspelt “Britain.” “What a lustre does it cast upon the name of
Briton when you, sir, are pleased to esteem it among your glories,”
said the House of Lords in their Address thanking the King for his
Speech.


2

That there have been many cases of dispute between the Sovereign and
his Ministers, in recent years, at least, as to either the measures
set out in the Speech or the phraseology of its sentences is very
unlikely. Only two instances during the long reign of Queen Victoria
have come to light. In 1859, Austria, struggling to maintain her
position in Italy, was at war with Sardinia, and the intervention of
France on the side of Sardinia was regarded in some circles in this
country as a characteristic act of aggression by the Emperor, Louis
Napoleon. The draft of the proposed Speech from the Throne submitted
to Queen Victoria contained the following passages:

  Receiving assurances of friendship from both the contending
  parties, I intend to maintain a strict and impartial neutrality,
  and hope, with God’s assistance, to preserve to my people the
  blessing of continued peace.

  I have, however, deemed it necessary, in the present state of
  Europe, with no object of aggression, but for the security of my
  dominions, and for the honour of my Crown, to increase my Naval
  Forces to an amount exceeding that which has been sanctioned by
  Parliament.

The Queen sent to the Premier, Lord Derby, the following criticism:

                                              BUCKINGHAM PALACE,
                                                       _June 1, 1859_.

  The Queen takes objection to the wording of the two paragraphs
  about the war and our armaments. As it stands, it conveys the
  impression of a determination on the Queen’s part of maintaining
  a neutrality—_à tout prix_—whatever circumstances may arise which
  would do harm abroad, and be inconvenient at home. What the Queen
  may express is her wish to remain neutral, and her hope that
  circumstances may allow her to do so. The paragraph about the Navy,
  as it stands, makes our position still more humble, as it contains
  a public apology for arming, and yet betrays fear of our being
  attacked by France.

The Queen then suggested two amended forms for these passages, in
which she said she had taken pains to preserve Lord Derby’s words,
as far as was possible, with an avoidance of the objections before
stated:

  I continue to receive, at the same time, assurances of friendship
  from both contending parties. It being my anxious desire to
  preserve to my people the blessing of uninterrupted peace, I trust
  in God’s assistance to enable me to maintain a strict and impartial
  neutrality.

  Considering, however, the present state of Europe, and the
  complications which a war, carried on by some of the Great Powers,
  may produce, I have deemed it necessary, for the security of my
  dominions and the honour of my Crown, to increase my Naval Forces
  to an amount exceeding that which has been sanctioned by Parliament.

Lord Derby, in his reply, contended that the country was unanimous
in favour of a strictly neutral policy. Its sympathies were neither
with France nor with Austria, but, were it not for the intervention
of France, it would generally be in favour of Italy. He went on to
say that the Opposition Press were insinuating that the neutrality of
the Government covered wishes and designs in favour of Austria; and
any words in the Speech from the Throne which should imply a doubt
of strict impartiality would certainly provoke a hostile amendment
in the interest of Sardinia, which might possibly be carried, and
in such circumstances her Majesty would be placed in the painful
position of having to select an Administration pledged against the
interests of Austria and of Germany. He thought the Queen’s suggested
words in regard to the Navy—“complications which a war carried on
by some of the Great Powers may produce”—would inevitably lead to a
demand for an explanation of the “complications” which the Government
foresaw as likely to lead to war. The Prime Minister went on to say:

  In humbly tendering to your Majesty his most earnest advice that
  your Majesty will not insist on the proposed Amendments in his
  draft Speech he believes that he may assure your Majesty that he
  is expressing the unanimous opinion of his colleagues. Of their
  sentiments your Majesty may judge by the fact that in the original
  draft he had spoken of your Majesty’s “intention” to preserve peace
  “so long as it might be possible”; but by universal concurrence
  these latter words were struck out; and the “hope” was, instead of
  them, substituted for the “intention.”

In answer to this letter, Queen Victoria wrote that there was, in
fact, no difference between her and Lord Derby. She had suggested
the verbal amendments merely with a view to indicate the nature of
the difficulty as it presented itself to her. Whatever decision
Lord Derby might on further reflection come to, she was prepared
to accept. In the Speech read by the Queen from the Throne the two
paragraphs were somewhat modified in the sense her Majesty desired.

Five years later, in 1864, another difference arose between Queen
Victoria and her advisers in regard to statements in the Speech.
Denmark and Germany were at war over the right to the Duchies of
Schleswig and Holstein—obtained finally by Germany—and the draft of
the Speech submitted to Queen Victoria contained a paragraph plainly,
if not menacingly, expressing the sympathy of England with Denmark.
To this the Queen objected. In her opinion the best policy for this
country was to stand neutral, and though the stubborn Palmerston,
who was then Prime Minister, was, as usual, disposed to show fight,
she finally had her way. The Speech as read in the House of Lords
declared that—

  Her Majesty has been unremitting in her endeavours to bring about
  a peaceful settlement of the differences which on this matter have
  arisen between Germany and Denmark, and to ward off the dangers
  which might follow from a beginning of warfare in the North of
  Europe, and her Majesty will continue her efforts in the interest
  of peace.

It is not sufficient for the King formally to express approval of
the draft of the Speech submitted to him by his advisers. He must
sign the Speech in the presence of the Ministers, thus giving them a
guarantee of assurance that he will deliver that particular Speech,
and no other, to the two Houses of Parliament. Consequently, at a
meeting of the “King in Council,” or, in other words, the Privy
Council, at which, however, only Cabinet Ministers are present, the
King endorses the Speech with his signature. When next his Majesty
sees the Speech, a printed copy of it is presented to him on the
Throne of the House of Lords by the kneeling Lord Chancellor in the
presence of the Commons.

The Speech is written in a prescribed form. Each one bears the
closest resemblance outwardly to its predecessors. It is divided into
three sections. The first section, addressed generally to Members of
both Houses, “My Lords and Gentlemen,” deals exclusively with foreign
affairs; then there is a brief paragraph referring to the Estimates,
which specially concerns “Gentlemen of the House of Commons,” as the
sole custodians and guardians of the public purse (or “Members of the
House of Commons” as the phrase became when the first female Member,
Lady Astor, was elected in 1919); and the third section, which opens
again with “My Lords and Gentlemen,” contains some general remarks on
home affairs, and sets out the legislative programme of the Session.
“I pray,” the Speech usually concludes, “that Almighty God may
continue to guide you in the conduct of your deliberations, and bless
them with success.”


3

These Speeches possess a double interest, as the literary
compositions and the political manifestoes of the most eminent
statesmen of the Nation. To me it has been a pleasant occupation
dipping into them, here and there, in the volumes of _Hansard_ and
extracting a few notes personal to the Sovereign, or references
to some of the great political issues of the latter half of the
nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth. There
is a popular supposition that “the King’s Speeches” are the worst
possible models of “the King’s English.” The condemnation is too
sweeping. Unquestionably there are Speeches with sentences doubtful
in grammar, as well as feeble and pointless. The writing of most
of them, however, is pure and concise. It is possible to trace in
them the characteristic styles and different moods of mind of the
Prime Ministers by whom they were written. Disraeli’s Speeches stand
put as the most ornate. He used more rhetoric than other Premiers
deemed to be necessary or desirable. In one there is a picture of
“the elephants of Asia carrying the artillery of Europe over the
mountains of Rasselas”; in another the founding of British Columbia
calls up a vision of her Majesty’s dominions in North America
“peopled by an unbroken chain, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, of a
loyal and industrious population of subjects of the British Crown.”
Nothing could be more effective from an elocutionary point of view.
The “Speeches” of Lord Melbourne trembled at times on the verge of
puerility. Palmerston’s waved the Union Jack in relation to foreign
affairs, and his off-hand “Ha, ha!” was heard in references to things
domestic. Gladstone and Salisbury drafted “Speeches” equally noted
for freshness and strength of expression. Lloyd George composed
the longest and most comprehensive and possibly the most historic
“Speeches”—those that immediately followed the conclusion of the
World War. They were obviously addressed not so much to Lords and
Commons as to the people at large.

  The early age at which I am called to the sovereignty of this
  Kingdom renders it a more imperative duty that under Divine
  Providence I should place my reliance upon your cordial
  co-operation, and upon the loyal affection of all my people. I
  ascend the Throne with a deep sense of the responsibility which
  is imposed upon me; but I am supported by the consciousness of my
  own right intentions, and by my dependence upon the protection of
  Almighty God.

These are the concluding words of the Speech from the Throne read
by Victoria, the girl-Queen, to her first Parliament, on November
20, 1837. “Never,” wrote Mrs. Kemble, “have I heard any spoken words
more musical in their gentle distinctness than the ‘My Lords and
Gentlemen’ which broke the breathless stillness of the illustrious
assembly, whose gaze was riveted on that fair flower of Royalty.”
It was a new Parliament, fresh from the country, after the General
Election which, as the law then required, followed the demise of the
Crown owing to the death of William IV. The scene on that historic
occasion in the old House of Lords was most brilliant. To the right
of the young Queen stood her mother, the Duchess of Kent. On her
left was Viscount Melbourne, the Prime Minister. At the foot of the
Throne were grouped other great officers of State. The benches were
crowded with peers in their robes—amongst whom Wellington, Brougham,
Lyndhurst, were distinguished figures—and with peeresses in Court
plumes and diamonds. At the Bar were assembled the Commons, Mr.
Speaker Abercromby at their head, and in the throng might be seen
such eminent statesmen and notabilities as Lord John Russell, Sir
Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Daniel O’Connell, Stanley (afterwards
Lord Derby), and two young Members, Gladstone, who already had four
years’ experience of Parliament, and Disraeli, just returned at the
General Election for Maidstone, who were destined to become the two
greatest political protagonists of the nineteenth century. Writing to
his sister on November 21, 1837, Disraeli thus comically describes
how the Commons went to the House of Lords, and what they saw there:

  The rush was terrific; Abercromby himself nearly thrown down and
  trampled upon, and his macebearer banging the Members’ heads with
  his gorgeous weapon and cracking skulls with impunity. I was
  fortunate enough to escape, however, and also to ensure an entry.
  It was a magnificent spectacle. The Queen looked admirable; no
  feathers, but a diamond tiara. The peers in robes, the peeresses
  and the sumptuous groups of courtiers rendered the affair most
  glittering and imposing.

What a contrast between this splendid and joyful ceremony and the
pathetic scene that was witnessed in the same Chamber, just a year
earlier, when Parliament was opened by William IV for the last
time! The aged King, wrapped in his ample purple robes, and his
grey locks surmounted by the Imperial Crown, stood on the Throne
struggling with dim eyes in the twilight of the Chamber to read the
Speech prepared for him by Lord Melbourne. He stammered slowly, and
almost inaudibly, through the first few sentences, pausing now and
then over a difficult word, and querulously appealing to the Prime
Minister “What is it, Melbourne?” loudly enough to be heard by the
Assembly. At last, losing all patience, he angrily exclaimed, in
the full-blooded language of the period, “Damn it, I can’t see!”
Candles were instantly brought in and placed beside the King. “My
Lords and Gentlemen,” said he, “I have hitherto not been able,
for want of light, to read this Speech in a way its importance
deserves; but as lights are now brought me, I will read it again from
the commencement, and in a way which, I trust, will command your
attention.” Then in a pitiful effort to prove to Peers and Commons
that his mental and physical powers were by no means failing, he
commenced the Speech again and read it through in a fairly clear
voice and with some emphasis.

It was at the opening of the third session of the first Parliament
of Queen Victoria, on January 16, 1840, Lord Melbourne being still
Premier, that her Majesty read from her Speech the announcement of
her approaching marriage to Prince Albert. Writing to the Prince a
few days previously, she said the reading of the Speech was always
a nervous proceeding, and it would be made an “awful affair” by the
announcement of her engagement. “I have never failed yet,” she added,
“and this is the sixth time that I have done it, and yet I am just as
frightened as if I had never done it before. They say that feeling of
nervousness is never got over, and that William Pitt himself never
got up to make a speech without thinking he should fail. But then I
only read my speech.” The passage in the Speech from the Throne in
reference to her marriage is as follows:

  My Lords and Gentlemen,—Since you were last assembled I have
  declared my intention of allying myself in marriage with Prince
  Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. I humbly implore that the Divine
  blessing may prosper this union, and render it conducive to the
  interests of my people, as well as to my own domestic happiness;
  and it will be to me a source of the most lively satisfaction to
  find the resolution I have taken approved by my Parliament. The
  constant proofs which I have received of your attachment to my
  person and family persuade me that you will enable me to provide
  for such an establishment as may appear suitable to the rank of the
  Prince and the dignity of the Crown.

Mrs. Simpson, in her _Many Memories of Many People_, writes that
her first recollection of the opening of Parliament was on this
auspicious occasion. “I sat up in a little gallery over the Woolsack
between the beautiful Lady Dufferin and Miss Pitt,” she says. “I
remember well the Queen’s sweet voice and that the paper shook in
her hand. By her side stood Lord Melbourne, repeating inaudibly—we
could see his lips move—every word she uttered.”

On the next occasion her Majesty opened Parliament, February 3, 1842,
Sir Robert Peel being Prime Minister, she announced in the Speech
another joyful event in her domestic life, the birth of the Prince of
Wales, which took place on November 9, 1841. The Speech said:

  My Lords and Gentlemen,—I cannot meet you in Parliament assembled
  without making a public acknowledgment of my gratitude to Almighty
  God on account of the birth of the Prince, my son—an event which
  has completed the measure of my domestic happiness, and has been
  hailed with every demonstration of affectionate attachment to my
  person and government by my faithful and loyal people.

The Prince Consort died on December 14, 1861, at the early age of
forty-two years. At the opening by Commission of the next session
of Parliament, Lord Palmerston being Prime Minister, the domestic
affliction of the Sovereign was thus announced in “the Queen’s
Speech”:

  My Lords and Gentlemen,—We are commanded by her Majesty to assure
  you that her Majesty is persuaded that you will deeply participate
  in the affliction by which her Majesty has been overwhelmed by the
  calamitous, untimely and irreparable loss of her beloved Consort,
  who has been her comfort and support. It has been, however,
  soothing to her Majesty, while suffering most acutely under this
  awful dispensation of Providence, to receive from all classes of
  her subjects the most cordial assurances of their sympathy with her
  sorrow, as well as their appreciation of the noble character of
  him, the greatness of whose loss to her Majesty and to the nation
  is so justly and so universally felt and lamented.


4

Six years elapsed before Queen Victoria was seen again at
Westminster. She opened the Conservative Parliament which assembled
on February 10, 1866. The ceremony, by her command, was plain and
simple. She declined to wear the purple robe of State, and had it
placed over the Chair of the Throne. Her attire consisted of a black
dress and a widow’s white cap, the only touch of bright colour being
the blue sash of the Garter across her breast. For the first time
also she did not read the Speech from the Throne. She reverted to an
ancient practice by deputing the Lord Chancellor, Cranworth, to read
it. The Speech announced the termination of the long and bloody Civil
War in America. “The abolition of slavery,” it added, “is an event
calling forth the cordial sympathies and congratulations of this
country, which has always been foremost in showing its abhorrence for
an institution repugnant to every feeling of justice and humanity.”

Queen Victoria next opened the first session of the Liberal
Parliament on February 11, 1869, in which Gladstone for the first
time was Prime Minister. The great measure of that session was the
Bill for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church in
Ireland. “The ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland,” said the
Queen’s Speech, “will be brought under your consideration at a very
early date.” It went on to say:

  I am persuaded that in the prosecution of the work you will bear
  careful regard to every legitimate interest which it may involve,
  and that you will be governed by the constant aim to promote the
  welfare of religion through the principles of equal justice, to
  secure the action of the individual feeling and opinion of Ireland
  on the side of loyalty and law, to efface the memory of former
  contentions and to cherish the sympathies of an affectionate people.

As the time approached for the meeting of Parliament in the following
year, 1870, Gladstone was most anxious that it should be opened by
the Queen. The chief business was to be a Bill dealing with the
Irish land question. Gladstone said to Lord Granville: “It would be
almost a crime in a Minister to omit anything that might serve to
mark and bring home to the minds of men the gravity of the occasion.”
“Moreover,” he added, “I am persuaded that the Queen’s own sympathies
would be—not as last year—in the same current as ours.” This shows
how important it was for the success of the Government’s legislative
programme that Parliament should, in the opinion of Gladstone, be
opened with the impressiveness that attends the ceremony when it is
performed by the Sovereign in person. But her Majesty was unable,
or disinclined, to comply with his request. The opening passage
of the Speech from the Throne is significant, in the light of
what happened—as we now know—behind the scenes. It runs: “We have
it in command from her Majesty again to invite you to resume your
arduous duties, and to express the regret of her Majesty that recent
indisposition has prevented her from meeting you in person, as had
been her intention, at a period of remarkable public interest.”

The last time that Queen Victoria appeared at Westminster was on
January 21, 1886, at the assembling of a new Parliament, with the
Conservatives in office but not in power. “The Queen’s Speech” which
was read on that occasion was perhaps—having regard to what occurred
subsequently in Parliament—the most remarkable of Victoria’s long
reign. The session of 1886, which was destined to be made historic
by Gladstone’s first attempt to carry Home Rule, was opened with a
Speech from the Throne strongly reprobating any disturbance of the
Legislative Union.

The events which led up to this extraordinary constitutional
situation may be briefly related. In June 1885 the Gladstone
Administration, defeated on an amendment to their Budget condemning
the increases proposed in the beer and spirit duties, resigned, and
they were succeeded by a Conservative Government, with Lord Salisbury
as Prime Minister for the first time. There was a General Election in
November, and the Liberals came back from the polls in triumph. The
Government, although in a minority, did not resign. They decided to
meet Parliament, not to put their fortune to the test, for they knew
that was hopeless, but in order to have a Speech from the Throne in
which there should be an emphatic declaration against any attempt to
disturb the legislative relations between Great Britain and Ireland,
and the session was opened in person by Queen Victoria to show her
sympathy with the maintenance of the Union. The Speech from the
Throne, as in every instance of the opening of Parliament by the
Queen since the death of the Prince Consort, was read by the Lord
Chancellor. The principal passage, relating to the Irish situation,
was as follows:

  I have seen with deep sorrow the renewal, since I last addressed
  you, of the attempt to excite the people of Ireland to hostility
  against the Legislative Union between that country and Great
  Britain. I am resolutely opposed to any disturbance of that
  fundamental law, and in resisting it I am convinced that I shall be
  supported by my Parliament and my people.

That Gladstone was committed to Home Rule was well known at the
time, and it was hoped by the Conservatives that this declaration
would prove embarrassing to him. Five days later the Government were
defeated on an amendment to the Address in reply to the Speech in
favour of small allotments for agricultural labourers. Gladstone
once again returned to office. The new Liberal Government accepted
the Address in reply to the Speech from the Throne, drawn up by
their Conservative predecessors, only adding to it the amendment
expressing regret that there was no promise in the Speech of
legislation to enable agricultural labourers to obtain allotments and
small holdings. At that time the Address was an echo of the Speech
itself. The Sovereign was thanked, separately and specifically, for
every expression of promise, hope or regret contained in the Speech.
Here is one sentence from the Address, agreed to by the Liberal
Government, which, in view of the introduction of the Home Rule Bill
by Gladstone as Prime Minister a few months later, is one of the
curiosities of constitutional history:

  We humbly thank your Majesty for informing us that your Majesty
  has seen with deep sorrow the renewal, since your Majesty last
  addressed us, of the attempt to excite the people of Ireland to
  hostility against the Legislative Union between that country and
  Great Britain; that your Majesty is resolutely opposed to any
  disturbance of that fundamental law; and that in resisting it your
  Majesty is convinced that your Majesty will be heartily supported
  by your Parliament and your People.

Sure enough, the Home Rule Bill brought in by the Prime Minister in
June was rejected by a majority of thirty.

King Edward VII opened his first Parliament on February 14, 1901,
the Unionists being in office and Lord Salisbury Prime Minister. His
Majesty said:

  I address you for the first time at a moment of national sorrow,
  when the whole country is mourning the irreparable loss which we
  have so recently sustained, and which has fallen with peculiar
  severity upon myself. My beloved Mother, during her long and
  glorious reign, has set an example before the world of what a
  monarch should be. It is my earnest desire to walk in her footsteps.

Of the Speeches of King George V, one of the most interesting was
that which he read at the opening of Parliament in 1914—six months
before the outbreak of the Great War—when the country was in turmoil
over the question of Home Rule and seemed to be drifting into Civil
War. One of its passages was said at the time to have been personally
written by the King, with a view to mitigating the excesses of Party
spirit. It runs:

  I regret that the efforts which have been made to arrive at a
  solution by agreement of the problems connected with the Government
  of Ireland have, so far, not succeeded. In a matter in which the
  hopes and the fears of so many of my subjects are keenly concerned,
  and which, unless handled now with foresight, judgment, and in the
  spirit of mutual concession, threatens grave future difficulties,
  it is My most earnest wish that the good will and co-operation
  of men of all Parties and creeds may heal dissension and lay the
  foundations of a lasting settlement.

It was the good fortune of George V to be able to announce at the
opening of the new Parliament on February 11, 1919, “the end of the
struggle between German tyranny and European freedom” and “the dawn
of a new era.” The Speech was of unprecedented length, as well as of
historic importance. One of its most striking passages was this:

  To build a better Britain we must stop at no sacrifice of
  interest or prejudice to stamp out unmerited poverty, to diminish
  unemployment and mitigate its sufferings, to provide decent homes,
  to improve the nation’s health, and to raise the standard of
  well-being throughout the community.

Never before was the question of the condition of the people enlarged
upon so emphatically and boldly in the Speech from the Throne. His
Majesty added the warning:

  We shall not achieve this end by undue tenderness towards
  acknowledged abuses, and it must necessarily be retarded by
  violence and even by disturbance.


5

For many years the Commons went to the House of Lords in a way that
was most unseemly in answer to the message of Black Rod, to hear
the Speech from the Throne read by the Sovereign. So great was the
rush and crush at one of the earlier openings of Parliament by Queen
Victoria, that Joseph Hume, as he bitterly complained in the House of
Commons, neither saw her Majesty nor heard her voice, although he was
within touch of the Speaker as he stood at the Bar. “I was crushed
into a corner,” he said, “my head being knocked against a post,
and I might have been much injured if a stout Member had not come
to my assistance.” Dickens, who was present at the ceremony a few
years later, said the Speaker was like a schoolmaster with a mob of
unmannerly boys at his heels. “He is propelled,” the novelist wrote,
“to the Bar of the House with the frantic fear of being knocked down
and trampled upon by the rush of M.P.’s.” In 1851 the Speaker was so
pushed and hustled that his wig was knocked awry and his robe torn.
Frank Hugh O’Donnell relates in his book on _The Irish Parliamentary
Party_ how at one opening of Parliament in the later ’seventies he
saved Disraeli from being knocked down by squaring his shoulders and
elbows to keep off the pressure of the mob of M.P.’s from the frail
person of the Prime Minister. Disraeli sent his secretary, Montagu
Cory, to thank O’Donnell. The last time such a scene was enacted was
in 1901, at the first opening of Parliament by King Edward. Since
1902 the Strangers’ Gallery of the House of Lords has been set apart
for Members of the House of Commons, and they are allowed access to
it before the King appears in the Chamber and Black Rod is sent to
command the attendance of the Commons at the Bar. It is a spectacle
well worth seeing—the King crowned and in his purple robes and
standing on the Throne, surrounded by his Ministers, addressing the
assembled Lords and Commons. It is the most noble and impressive
sight to be seen at Westminster.

The Speech is read in both Houses—in the Lords by the Lord
Chancellor, in the Commons by the Speaker—when they reassemble after
the ceremony of the opening of Parliament by the King. But before
this is done each House gives a first reading to a Bill, in obedience
to a Standing Order in the Lords, and in the Commons by ancient
custom. The incident escapes the attention of most Lords and Commons,
so unostentatiously is it done, and probably its constitutional
significance is lost to most of those who may chance to notice it.
In the Lords the Bill is called “Select Vestries Bill,” and in the
Commons the “Bill for the more effectual Preventing of Clandestine
Outlawries.” It may seem a matter of form, the procedure being that
the Clerk in each House simply reads the title of his Bill, but it
is meant to assert the right of Parliament to act as it thinks fit,
without reference to any outside authority, to debate matters other
than “the causes of summons” set forth in the Speech from the Throne.
Neither of these Bills is ever heard of again during the session.
The Outlawries Bill, which does service in the House of Commons,
has been preserved in the drawers of the Table since the opening of
the present Chamber in 1852. For one moment, at the opening of each
session, it is produced by the Clerk, and is seen no more for another
twelve months.




CHAPTER XVIII

DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS TO THE KING


1

The Commons hear the Speech from the Throne twice—by the Sovereign
in the House of Lords and again at its subsequent recital in their
own Chamber by the Speaker. Macaulay states in his _History_ that
the first Speech of James II to Parliament in 1685—notable for its
extraordinary admonition to the Commons, that if they wished to
meet frequently they must treat him generously in the matter of
supplies—was greeted with loud cheers by the Tory Members assembled
at the Bar of the House of Lords. “Such acclamations were then
usual,” says the historian. “It has now been during many years
the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments to hear in respectful
silence all expressions, acceptable or unacceptable, which are
uttered from the Throne.” The recital of the King’s Speech by Mr.
Speaker to the House of Commons was unmarked by any demonstration of
Party feeling for two centuries and a quarter. But at the opening
of the last session of the Balfour Parliament, in February 1905,
there was a breach of the traditional decorum, which, as a change in
parliamentary manners, is noteworthy enough to be placed on record.
The promise in the Speech of economy, “so far as the circumstances
of the case admitted,” was received with derisive laughter on the
Opposition benches, while the mention of the “prospect” of a promised
Redistribution Bill, by which Ireland was to lose twenty-two seats,
provoked loud and angry cries of defiance from the Irish Members.
Since then the reading of the Speech by the Speaker in the Commons,
whether at the opening of a new Parliament or a new session,
is usually greeted with Ministerial shouts of approbation or
Opposition cries of dissent. These Party cheers constitute a complete
acknowledgment that the King’s Speech is the speech, not of the King,
but of his Ministers.


2

In each House a motion for an Address to the King for his “most
gracious Speech” is submitted on behalf of the Government. The
proposer and seconder of the Address in each House are in uniform or
full dress. This is the only occasion, be it noted, when a Member,
whether of the Peerage or of the Commons, is permitted to appear in
Parliament otherwise than in civilian clothes, a rule which, probably
in the history of Parliament, was suspended only during the Great
War, when many Members wore khaki. The uniforms of the Militia or
Yeomanry are much affected, and, failing the commission to wear
them, Court costume or levee dress is the rule. Another order, which
prohibits Members of either House from “carrying a lethal weapon,” is
also suspended for the occasion in favour of the sword of the soldier
or courtier. There is, however, one instance of the Address having
been seconded by a Member who wore no costume of ceremony. That was
when Charles Fenwick, the Labour representative, who at the opening
of the first session of the Liberal Parliament of 1893-95 discharged
that function in his ordinary everyday clothes.

In March 1894 the same Liberal Administration being in office—save
that Lord Rosebery had succeeded Gladstone as Premier—an amendment to
the Address moved by Labouchere, Member for Northampton, hostile to
the House of Lords, was carried against the Government by the narrow
majority of two—147 votes to 145. It declared “that the power now
enjoyed by persons not elected to Parliament by the possessors of
the parliamentary franchise to prevent Bills being submitted to your
Majesty for your Royal approval shall cease,” and expressed the hope
that “if it be necessary your Majesty will, with and by the advice of
your responsible Ministers, use the powers vested in your Majesty to
secure the passing of this much-needed reform.” The method suggested
by Labouchere was the creation of 500 peers who would be willing to
carry through the House of Lords a Bill for the abolition of that
Chamber and themselves. Sir William Harcourt, Chancellor of the
Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons, declined to treat the
reverse as a vote of censure, or to add the amendment to the Address.
“The Address in answer to the Speech from the Throne,” said he, “is
a proceeding for which her Majesty’s Government make themselves
responsible—responsible as the representatives of the majority in
the House of Commons from whom that Address proceeds. I think that
is a clear constitutional principle which nobody will be disposed
to dispute. The Government could not present to the Sovereign in a
formal manner a document of which they are not prepared to accept the
entire and immediate responsibility.” He concluded by inviting the
House to negative the amended Address, and to adopt a new Address,
which simply assured her Majesty “that the measures recommended to
our consideration shall receive our most careful attention.” This
motion was seconded by John Morley.

The fact that neither of these Ministers wore Court dress or uniform
led that humourist, Colonel Saunderson, Member for North Armagh,
to indulge in a characteristic joke. Rising to a point of order,
he asked the Speaker whether it was not contrary to the immemorial
practice of the House for the mover of the Address to appear without
the uniform befitting his rank? If, he continued, the Speaker
should answer that question in the affirmative, he would move the
adjournment of the House for twenty minutes, so as to give the
Chancellor of the Exchequer an opportunity of arraying himself in
garments suitable to the occasion. The Speaker took no notice of
the question, for, of course, it was not seriously intended. What
Colonel Saunderson wanted was a laugh, and that he got in the fullest
measure. The incident, unprecedented in parliamentary history, ended
with the unanimous adoption of the new Address.

Another strange thing happened in relation to the Speech from the
Throne at the opening of a new session on February 12, 1918. I was in
the Reporters’ Gallery of the House of Lords when the Lord Chancellor
read the Speech at the reassembling of the House after the opening
ceremony by the King. As he was reading the document, Lord Curzon,
Leader of the House, handed him a slip of paper. The Lord Chancellor
then said that the following passage had been accidentally omitted
from the printed copy of the King’s Speech, which was supplied to him
and distributed to their lordships:

  I have summoned representatives of my Dominions and of my Indian
  Empire to a further session of the Imperial War Cabinet in order
  that I may again receive their advice on questions of moment
  affecting the common interests of the Empire.

It had also been omitted, by some oversight, from the copy of the
Speech given by the Lord Chancellor to the King to read from the
Throne. Attention was called to the matter in the House of Commons.
The Member for Carlisle, Mr. Denman, pointed out that this paragraph
was to be found in the Lords’ record of the King’s Speech, but not in
the record of the King’s Speech printed in the Votes and Proceedings
of the Commons. He thought it desirable that the records of both
Houses as to what was actually contained in the King’s Speech should
be identical. The Speaker, Mr. Lowther, said the hon. Member seemed
to want him to put into the mouth of the King words which his Majesty
did not use—a remark that was received with laughter. He explained
that the copy of the Speech which he had read to the Commons had
been supplied to him by the Home Secretary, and he assumed it to be
accurate. It was brought to his notice afterwards that the copy of
the Speech which he had read did not correspond with the copy which
had been read by the King, and therefore he caused the official
record to be amended so as to correspond exactly with the actual
Speech which his Majesty had read from the Throne.


3

It is a compliment to be invited to move or second the motion for the
Address in reply to the Speech. Young Ministerialists of promise in
the House of Commons are generally selected for the distinction. As
a rule, one represents an urban and the other a rural constituency;
one is associated with agriculture and the other with trade. The
debate which follows is always of interest, and usually is a good
test of the debating quality of the House. The Opposition give battle
to the Ministerialists. The policy of the Government is attacked
along the whole line in a series of amendments to the Address.

In former times the Address—as I have already mentioned—used to be an
elaborate answer to the Speech, paragraph by paragraph, expressing
approval of its every declaration, and thanking the Sovereign in each
instance for the great condescension and wisdom of his words. This
practice was abandoned owing to the waste of time it involved, and
for many years the Address has assumed a more simple and rational
form. From the Commons it consists of a simple resolution in the
following terms:

  That a humble Address be presented to his Majesty, as followeth:

  Most Gracious Sovereign,—We, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal
  subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
  Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank your Majesty
  for the most gracious Speech which your Majesty has addressed to
  both Houses of Parliament.

The Addresses from the Lords and Commons, in reply to the Speech,
were at one time presented to the Sovereign at Buckingham Palace,
nominally by “the whole House” in each case, but really by the
Lord Chancellor for the Lords and by the Speaker for the Commons,
each being attended by the proposer and seconder and a few of the
Ministers in either House. All the Members of each House, however,
were supposed to have the privilege of “free access” to the Throne
on these occasions; and, moreover, they might, if they so pleased,
enter the presence of the Sovereign in ordinary attire, instead of
in the regulation gold-braided coat and knee-breeches. The ceremony
of presenting the Address by the whole House is now obsolete.
The course which has been followed in recent years is that the
Addresses are presented by two Ministers who are members of the Royal
Household. These Ministers also bring back to both Houses the King’s
acknowledgment of the Addresses.

A message from the Crown, or, as it is styled officially, “a message
under the Royal sign-manual,” is presented to both Houses with some
ceremony. In the Lords, the Lord Steward of the Household, wearing
his official uniform, holding a white wand in one hand and a roll of
parchment in the other, rises in his place at an opportune moment
and announces that he has a message from the King. He then hands his
roll of parchment to the Lord Chancellor, who reads it to the House.
In the Commons the incident is perhaps a little more picturesque.
The Comptroller of the Household appears at the Bar unannounced.
Unlike the incursions of “Black Rod” from the House of Lords, who is
always heralded by the loud cry of the door-keeper, and must knock
at the door to obtain admittance, the Royal Messenger who brings the
King’s acknowledgment of the Address has free entry to the House.
He comes in, without fuss or noise, and, his duty discharged, is
allowed to depart silently and in peace. Standing at the Bar, in
his dark uniform relieved by a liberal display of gold braid and
gilt buttons, and carrying his long white wand, he announces to the
House—the Speaker standing and the Members uncovering while the
Message from the King is being delivered—that he brings his Majesty’s
most grateful thanks for the Address from his faithful Commons. Then
advancing to the Table, he hands the document to the Clerk, and it
is passed on to the Speaker, by whom it is read to the House. The
Comptroller of the Royal Household retires, stepping backwards,
bowing to the Chair, until the Bar is reached, when, turning round,
he disappears through the swing-doors. But this happens a week or
more after the Address has been adopted, and the work of Parliament
has begun in real earnest.




CHAPTER XIX

THE SERJEANT-AT-ARMS


1

“Order, order!” These are the words that are most frequently heard in
the House of Commons. They run like a refrain, appealing, warning,
and, at times, even menacing, through the babble and confusion of
the Party conflict. “Order, order!” Members shout at each other with
bitterness and defiance across the floor. “Order, order!” cries Mr.
Speaker, when he observes any breach of decorum or rises to intervene
in an altercation.

A conspicuous object in the House of Commons is a large armchair of
heavy oak, upholstered in dark green leather, at the Bar, raised a
few feet above the level of the floor, just inside the swing-doors of
the main entrance to the Chamber. It is the Serjeant-at-Arms’ chair.
The Serjeant-at-Arms is the chief executive officer of the House of
Commons. He it is who is charged with the duty of preserving decorum
in the Chamber and its precincts, of executing the warrants of the
House against persons it has adjudged guilty of breaches of its
privileges or contempt of its dignity; and it is he who backs with
force, when force is necessary, the “Order, order!” of Mr. Speaker.
He sits in his chair, facing the Speaker, picturesquely clad in a
black cutaway coat, open at the breast to show the daintiest of
ruffles in the whitest of cambric (of which fops in the times of the
Georges were so fond), knee-breeches, black silk stockings, and shoes
with silver buckles; and, as the symbol of the power and authority of
his office, a rapier in its scabbard is girt to his side. His voice
is very rarely heard in the House. It is seldom necessary for the
Speaker to give him an order in words, and a reply or explanation
from him is scarcely ever needed.

The Serjeant-at-Arms is appointed by the King personally. An officer
of his Majesty’s Forces—alternately soldier and sailor—usually
gets the position. He is styled “Serjeant-at-Arms in Ordinary to
his Majesty,” and his duty is, as described in the patent of his
appointment, “to attend upon his Majesty when there is no Parliament,
and for the time of every Parliament to attend upon the Speaker of
the House of Commons.” He has a salary of £1,200 and an official
residence in the Palace of Westminster. The Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms,
who, wearing the same official dress as the Serjeant-at-Arms, takes
turns at sitting on guard in the big chair at the Bar, has a salary
of £800 a year, and also lives in the Palace rent free. There is
also an assistant Serjeant-at-Arms, who usually attends to the
administrative work of the office outside the Chamber. He has £500
a year and £150 as an allowance for a house. The department of the
Serjeant-at-Arms costs about £14,000 a year, for, in addition to his
deputy and assistant, there are also two door-keepers and eighteen
messengers (recognized by their brass chains and badges of Mercury),
who are his first reserves in the maintenance of order in the House.

It is not alone to “strangers” who have offended the dignity and
majesty of the House of Commons that the Serjeant-at-Arms is an
awe-inspiring personage. Even the representatives of the people may
have occasion to shiver at the dread touch of his hand on their
shoulder. Of the large number of new Members returned at a General
Election few are probably aware of the fact (which, indeed, is not
generally known even to old Members) that the Clock Tower contains
a suite of rooms for the confinement of representatives who may
be pronounced guilty by the House of some serious breach of its
privileges or some outrage on its decorum. A Member of Parliament
arrested on the warrant of the Speaker was formerly sent, like
strangers guilty of breaches of privilege, to Newgate or to the
Tower. But in the building of the Palace of Westminster prison
accommodation was specially provided for Members and strangers
committed by the House to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms.

The prison of the House of Commons is not, however, a dungeon vile,
deep down below the vaults of the Palace, a dark and slimy place into
which the light of day never enters. It is situated about half-way up
the Clock Tower, and under the home of that popular London celebrity,
Big Ben, probably the best known clock in the whole world. There are
two suites of apartments, each consisting of two bedrooms—one for the
prisoner and the other for one of the Serjeant-at-Arms’ messengers,
who acts as gaoler—and a sitting-room. There is, therefore,
accommodation for two prisoners and two gaolers in the Clock Tower,
which so far has been found more than sufficient.

Access to these rooms is obtained only through the residence of
the Serjeant-at-Arms, who is responsible for the safe keeping of a
prisoner of Parliament. Their windows command a view of the Thames
and Westminster Bridge on one side and of Palace Yard on the other.
Imprisonment under any conditions is, perhaps, an undesirable
position, but it must be said that in the Clock Tower it is deprived
of all its terrors and most of its inconveniences. The prisoner
may rise when he pleases; his meals are supplied from the catering
department of the House of Commons, and he can have what he likes—at
his own expense. After breakfast he is allowed an hour’s recreation
on the terrace, accompanied by his gaoler and a police-officer in
plain clothes, and he may take the air also in the evening. Should
his term of imprisonment extend over Sunday, he may attend service in
St. John’s Church, close to the Palace of Westminster, to which he is
accompanied by his guards.

The practice of the House of Commons, in recent times, was to commit
a person guilty of any violation of its privileges to the custody
of the Serjeant-at-Arms, to be detained during its pleasure. The
imprisonment generally continued until the prisoner expressed
contrition for his offence, or the House in its mercy resolved that
he be discharged. But before he was free to go he had to pay a
substantial fee to the Serjeant-at-Arms for locking him up and seeing
that he did not escape. The House, however, has no power to keep a
person in custody during its recess. If, therefore, the confinement
should last until the prorogation of Parliament, he may not only
claim his release but decline to make good the Serjeant-at-Arms’ bill
of costs. The last occupant of the prison was Charles Bradlaugh, the
Member for Northampton. His confinement for twenty-four hours, in
1880, was an episode in his long contest with the House of Commons
over his claim to be allowed, as an atheist, to take his seat without
having to use, in the oath of allegiance, the expression, “So help
me, God!” Bradlaugh, in a conversation about his prison experiences,
stated that while the rooms were comfortable, and the confinement by
no means irksome, the noisy passage of time as recorded by Big Ben in
booming the quarters and the hours at night allowed him but little
sleep.


2

Contumacy on the part of a Member nowadays would hardly be visited
by imprisonment. Among the expressions which are considered out of
order are treasonable or seditious words, the use of the Sovereign’s
name offensively, or, with a view to influence debate, disparaging
references to the character and proceedings of Parliament, personal
attacks on Members, allusions to matters pending judicial decision
in the courts of law, and insulting reflections on Judges or
other persons in high authority. The Speaker, or the Chairman of
Committees, has also the power, after having called attention three
times to the conduct of a Member who persists in irrelevance, or in
tedious repetition, to direct him to discontinue his speech. If a
Member’s conduct is grossly disorderly, or if he refuses to apologize
for an unparliamentary expression, the Speaker or Chairman orders
him to withdraw immediately from the House and its precincts for
the remainder of the sitting, and should he refuse to leave he may
be forcibly removed by the Serjeant-at-Arms and his messengers. If
suspension for the remainder of the sitting be deemed by the Speaker
an inadequate punishment for the breach of order, the offending
member may be named. The Speaker simply says, “I name you, James
Thomas Millwright.” The motion of suspension which follows the
naming of a Member is moved by the Leader of the House or, in his
absence, by another Minister. It is simply and briefly worded, to
this effect: “I beg to move that James Thomas Millwright, Member for
Little Peddlington, be suspended from the service of the House.”
It is put to the House immediately, no amendment or debate, or
even an explanation by the offending Member, being allowed. If the
offence has been committed in Committee, the proceedings are at
once suspended, the Speaker is sent for, the House resumes, and the
Chairman reports the circumstances. The motion of suspension is
then moved by the Minister and put by the Speaker. The Member thus
suspended must forthwith quit the precincts of the House, a term
officially interpreted as “the area within the walls of the Palace
of Westminster.” It will be noticed that the period of suspension is
not mentioned in the motion. Formerly, the Standing Orders provided
that for the first offence it was to be one week, for the second a
fortnight, and for each further offence one month. But by amendments
to the Orders made in February 1902 the suspension continues in force
till the end of the session, unless previously rescinded. Suspension
involves the forfeiture of the right of entry to the lobby, the
smoking-room and dining-room, the library, the terrace, and indeed
to any portion of the Palace; but it does not exempt the Member from
serving on any committee for the consideration of a Private Bill to
which he has been appointed, and that is considered an additional
hardship.

If too large a number of Members to be coped with effectively by
the force at the command of the Serjeant-at-Arms should disregard
the authority of the Chair, the Speaker, by powers vested in him in
February 1902, may forthwith adjourn the House. The new Standing
Order was designed to cope with such a scene of disorder as that
which occurred a short time previously, when a force of police was
brought into the Chamber by Mr. Speaker Gully to remove some Irish
Members who, as a protest against being closured in debate, refused
to take part in the division that was challenged on the question
under discussion. “In the case of grave disorder arising in the
House,” it runs, “the Speaker may, if he thinks it necessary to do
so, adjourn the House without question put, or suspend any sitting
for a time to be named by him.” In other words, the Speaker can turn
out the lights and the reporters, leaving the disorderly Members to
cool their anger in privacy and in darkness.

The House has also the power of expulsion. This punishment is
resorted to only in the case of a Member guilty of a gross criminal
offence. Strangely enough, it does not disqualify for re-election,
if the expelled Member could persuade a constituency to accept him.
But to name a Member is the highest coercive authority vested in
the Speaker for dealing with disorderly conduct in the House. It
should be a very grave breach of the privileges of the House, or
very indecorous conduct within its walls, that nowadays would land a
Member in the prison of the Clock Tower.

But to see the Serjeant-at-Arms in all his glory one must have the
good fortune to be present on one of those rare occasions when some
outside violator of the privileges of the House is brought to the Bar
for judgment. Parliament can itself redress its wrongs and vindicate
its privileges. It acknowledges no higher authority. It has the
power summarily to punish disobedience of its orders and mandates,
indignities offered to its proceedings, assaults upon the persons or
reflections upon the characters of its Members, or interference with
its officers in the discharge of their duties. The Serjeant-at-Arms
can arrest, under the warrant of the Speaker issued by order of the
House, any person anywhere within the limits of the kingdom. In the
execution of the warrant he can call on the aid of the civil power.
If he thinks it necessary, he can even summon the military to his
assistance. He can break into a private residence between sunrise and
sunset, if he has reason to suspect that the person he is in search
of is inside.

The most famous case of house-breaking in execution of a warrant
of the Commons was the forcible entrance into the residence of Sir
Francis Burdett, in Piccadilly, by the Serjeant-at-Arms, supported
by police and military, and the arrest of the Radical Member for
Westminster and his commitment to the Tower. Burdett was pronounced
guilty of a breach of privilege in April 1810 by declaring in a
letter to his constituents that the Commons had exceeded their
powers in sending to prison John Gale Jones, the revolutionary
orator, and an order for his commitment to the Tower was carried by a
Majority of 38—190 against 152. Burdett barricaded his house against
the Serjeant-at-Arms. An entrance was effected by climbing the area
railings and breaking open the area door. The Serjeant-at-Arms found
Burdett in the drawing-room upstairs. “Sir,” said Burdett, “do you
demand me in the name of the King? In that case I am prepared to
obey.” “No, sir,” replied the Serjeant-at-Arms, “I demand you in
the name and by the authority of the Commons of England.” Burdett
protested that the law of the land was being violated, but he was
carried off and lodged in the Tower. An action which he afterwards
brought against the Speaker for false imprisonment failed on
the ground that the Commons are the supreme guardian of its own
privileges and upholder of its authority. Neither does any suit lie
against the Serjeant-at-Arms. Arising out of proceedings brought in
1884 by Charles Bradlaugh for assault against the Serjeant-at-Arms
in having him removed by force from the House of Commons, Lord Chief
Justice Coleridge laid it down that the Serjeant-at-Arms was not
liable for damages in the execution of his duty, and that the court
had no jurisdiction over him.


3

The Serjeant-at-Arms brings his prisoner to the House of Commons. A
brass rod is pulled out from the receptacle in which it is telescoped
at the Bar, and stretched across the line which marks the technical
boundary of the Chamber. The fixing of that glittering rod is
almost as fearfully thrilling as the putting on of the black cap
by the Judge to impose the sentence of death, and I have seen both
spectacles. Behind the rod stands the prisoner. To his right is the
Serjeant-at-Arms, carrying the glittering Mace on his shoulder. At
the other end of the Chamber, standing on the dais of the Chair, is
Mr. Speaker in his flowing silk gown, his face sternly set under his
huge wig—an awful figure indeed—delivering in the weightiest words
he can command, amid the dramatic hush of the crowded Chamber, the
sentence or reprimand of the House on the scorner or violator of
its ancient privileges. On such occasions, the Mace being off the
table, no Member can address the House. It would be out of order for
a Member to put a question direct to the prisoner at the Bar. If
therefore a Member desires to put such a question he must write it
down and submit it to the Speaker, who alone has then the right of
speech.

In former times the prisoner at the Bar was compelled to kneel
down while the Speaker delivered the sentence or censure of the
House. In February 1751 a Scottish gentleman named Alexander
Murray (brother of the Master of Elibank), having, in the course
of a contested election at Westminster, under the very shadow of
the House, spoken disrespectfully of the authority of that august
assembly, was brought to the Bar in custody. But so unimpressed was
he by the crowded benches, by Mr. Speaker Onslow in wig and gown, by
the Serjeant-at-Arms with the Mace on his shoulder, that he flatly
declined to kneel, though the Speaker sternly roared at him, “Your
obeisance, sir! You forget yourself! On your knees, sir!” “Sir,”
said Murray, “I beg to be excused; I never kneel but to God.” “On
your knees, sir!” again cried the Speaker. “Your obeisance—you
must kneel.” But down on his knees Murray stoutly declined to go.
“That,” said he, “is an attitude of humbleness which I adopt only
when I confess my sins to the Almighty.” The House declared that
this obstinacy aggravated his original offence. “Having in a most
insolent, audacious manner, at the Bar of the House, absolutely
refused to go upon his knees,” so ran the resolution of the House,
“he is guilty of a high and most dangerous contempt of the authority
and privileges of this House.” Murray was committed to Newgate, and
so close was his confinement that he was denied the visits of friends
and the use of pen, ink and paper. Committal to prison by Parliament
lapses, as I have said, at the end of the session. That being so,
when Parliament was prorogued the doors of Murray’s prison had to
be flung open. The House of Commons, however, was not satisfied
that three or four months’ incarceration had adequately purged the
Scotsman of his impudent offence. It has power to re-arrest when
Parliament meets again. Accordingly, in the new session a fresh
warrant for Murray’s committal was made out, and the Serjeant-at-Arms
went to his house to arrest him; but he had fled, and though a reward
of £500 was offered for his discovery, he was never captured.

Twenty years afterwards the custom requiring prisoners to kneel at
the Bar was abolished. The last prisoner to suffer this indignity
was a journalist—Mr. Baldwin, the publisher of _The St. James’s
Chronicle_. On March 14, 1771, he was arrested for publishing
a report of the proceedings of the House, and was compelled to
prostrate himself abjectly at the Bar while the Speaker scolded
him for having dared to inform the electors of the doings of
their representatives in Parliament. In 1772 a Standing Order was
passed—inspired, as John Hatsell, the Clerk of the House, ingenuously
suggests, by “the humanity of the House”—by which it was ordered that
in future delinquents should receive the Speaker’s judgment standing.
Perhaps the House was moved to take this action by the cutting irony
of a remark made by Baldwin. On rising from his knees, after being
censured, he said, as he brushed the dust from his clothes, “What a
damned dirty House!” Perhaps the House preferred to allow culprits to
stand at the Bar rather than run the risk, by making them kneel, of
exposing its majestic self any longer to such ridicule.

The peers, however, have never formally renounced this custom by
Standing Order. Warren Hastings was obliged to kneel at the Bar
of the House of Lords on being admitted to bail, in 1787, on his
impeachment; and again, at the opening of his trial in the following
year, he remained on his knees until directed to rise by the
Lord Chancellor. “I can,” he afterwards wrote, half pathetically
and half indignantly, “with truth affirm that I have borne with
indifference all the base treatment I have had dealt to me—all
except the ignominious ceremonial of kneeling before the House.”
Even on being called to the Bar to hear his acquittal announced by
the Lord Chancellor, eight years subsequently, he had to undergo the
same humiliating ordeal. But the Lords have not for many years now
required a prisoner at the Bar to kneel.


4

Persons of all sorts and descriptions, as the Journals of the House
show, have stood at the Bar of the Commons not only for disobedience
of the orders of the House, for indignities offered to it, for
insults to Members, for reflections on their character and conduct in
Parliament, for interference with the officers of the House in the
discharge of their duties, but also to give evidence in inquiries
instituted by the House, to plead some cause, or to receive the
thanks of the House for services to the State. In each case the
Serjeant-at-Arms, with the Mace on his shoulder, was a prominent
figure in the scene. Samuel Pepys stood at the Bar to defend himself
against charges of dereliction of duty as registrar of the Navy
Board. To fortify himself for the ordeal he drank at home a half-pint
of mulled sack, and just before being called to the Bar he added a
dram of brandy. So completely did he answer the accusations that he
and his fellow-officials were acquitted of all blame. Titus Oates,
the perjurer, stood there to relate the particulars of his Popish
Plot. Dr. Sacheverell, the Jacobite divine, stood there in 1709 to
answer the charge of preaching “a scurrilous and seditious libel” in
St. Paul’s Cathedral—that famous sermon in which he asserted that
it was sinful for subjects to resist the authority of the King.
Wellington sat on a chair, set for him within the Bar, in 1814,
to receive the thanks of the House of Commons for his services
in the Peninsular campaign. Mrs. Clarke, the discarded mistress
of the Duke of York, appeared there in 1809, to give evidence in
support of the charge brought against his Royal Highness of having,
as Commander-in-Chief, corruptly bartered in the sale of Army
Commissions, an accusation that was declared not proven, though it
led to the Duke’s resignation. Warren Hastings stood there as a
witness, close on thirty years after his impeachment. Members cheered
him on his appearance, and when he retired they rose and uncovered.
Daniel O’Connell, the first Roman Catholic elected to Parliament
since the Revolution, stood there is 1828 to plead, and plead in
vain, that he should be allowed to take his seat without having to
subscribe to the oath which declared his faith to be idolatrous
and blasphemous, an abjuration, however, that was abolished by the
Catholic Emancipation Act which was passed in the following year.

Persons not so distinguished or notorious have also stood at
the Bar, in the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms, charged with
whimsical breaches of privilege. A man named Hyde, who tried to
obtain admission to Westminster Hall at the impeachment of Warren
Hastings, was rudely jostled into Palace Yard by a policeman. Hyde
had the constable served with a summons for assault. For this Hyde
was arrested by the Serjeant-at-Arms, on the order of the House,
brought to the Bar, and actually committed to prison for a breach
of privilege in having attempted to bring an officer of the House
before the ordinary legal tribunals of the land. But perhaps the
most amusing instance remains to be told. Dick Martin, a well-known
Irish Member in the early years of the nineteenth century (founder
of the excellent Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals),
was greatly perturbed to find in a London newspaper some passages
of his speech in the House, the previous night, printed in italics.
He complained to the House of having been misrepresented, and the
reporter (who happened to be a fellow-countryman of Mr. Martin) was
brought to the Bar for a breach of privilege. The journalist pleaded
that the report was absolutely correct. “It may be,” replied the
indignant Irish representative, “but I defy the gentleman to prove
that I spoke in italics!” In this case the culprit was dismissed amid
the laughter of the House.




CHAPTER XX

A NIGHT IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS


1

The House of Commons is the supreme authority in this land. It
should, therefore, be a consoling thought to the people that every
sitting of the House is opened with a prayer for Divine light and
guidance in the exercise of its unlimited powers of legislation.
Both Houses of Parliament have used the prayer since the Restoration
of Charles II in 1660. Besides the spiritual benefit that a Member
derives from attendance at the service, he also gets the material
advantage of a seat during the sitting, which, as the Chamber
provides places only for about half its membership, is an additional
inducement to be present at prayers.

Mr. Speaker stands at the head of the Table. By his side is the
Chaplain in gown and bands. Standing in files along the benches
are the Members—the two great political Parties facing each other
across the floor. The service opens with the 67th Psalm, with its
aspirations for the enlargement of God’s Kingdom, to the joy of the
people and the increase of God’s blessings. “O let the nations be
glad and sing for joy, for Thou shalt judge the people righteously
and govern the nations upon earth.” The sublime maxims of the Lord’s
Prayer are recited. For social policy: “Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread;” and for foreign
affairs, “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that
trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation.” There are
prayers for the King and Queen. Then follows the invocation to God
on behalf of the House of Commons, at which the Members turn to the
walls with bowed heads.

The Chaplain prays:

  Send down the Heavenly Wisdom from above to direct and guide us
  in all our consultations; and grant that we, having Thy fear
  always before our eyes, and laying aside all private interests,
  prejudices, and partial affections, the result of all our counsels
  may be to the Glory of Thy blessed Name, the maintenance of true
  religion and justice, the safety, honour and happiness of the King,
  the public welfare, peace and tranquillity of the realm, and the
  uniting and knitting together of the hearts of all persons and
  estates within the same in true Christian love and charity one
  towards another, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

Strangers are not admitted to the galleries until prayers are
over. If they were present they could not fail to notice a strange
thing. That is, that the Treasury Bench is always empty during the
service. Ministers may be really more in need of prayers than private
Members, but then their seats in the Chamber are secured to them by
prescriptive right.

The first sight of the plain architectural features of the House
of Commons must be disappointing to anyone swayed by the great
and stirring historical associations of the place. If there be
any secular institution to which something of religious solemnity
should attach, it surely is the free Legislature of a Nation, where
the habits, customs and institutions of the people are largely
moulded, where, at any rate, the morality or ethics of the country
find expression in laws. The Chamber is unadorned. The prevailing
colour is dull brown, conveyed by the oak framework of galleries
and panelled walls plainly carved. In the daylight a warm dimness
prevails. At night the Chamber looks more impressive, when a mellow
radiance streaming from the lights through its glass ceiling
falls upon the crowded benches. But to the uninstructed stranger
accidentally straying into it on an off-day, its stiff arrangement of
tiers of benches, upholstered in dark green, on each side, and the
absence of any pictorial background, would suggest an assembly-room
or debating-hall, with a certain air of distinction, it is true, but
lacking character and soul. Is it really in this simple Chamber of
modest dimensions and severe aspect that the elected and principal
House of the Imperial Parliament is content to meet? Is it here that
since 1852—the year the Chamber was first occupied—so many exciting
and momentous battles over political principles have been fought? Is
it from this narrow hall that influences radiate which are felt to
the farthest confines of the world, in the wigwams of savage tribes
as well as in the Chancelleries of the Great Powers? You would do
well, indeed, when you visit the House of Commons and desire to fall
under its spell, to come with your historical memories refreshed, for
you will there see nothing in the way of portraits of its immortal
Members, or pictures from its storied past, to tell of its greatness
and renown.

What emotions have there found vent! These walls, sheathed in oak,
have echoed to the voices of the great Parliamentarians of three
reigns—Victoria, Edward and George—Palmerston, Lord John Russell,
Cobden, Disraeli, Bright, Parnell, Randolph Churchill, Gladstone,
Chamberlain, Balfour, Asquith, John Redmond, Lloyd George, Winston
Churchill, Lord Hugh Cecil—laying down beneficent truths or
pernicious fallacies. Think of the groans of despair and the shouts
of exultation these forcible and vibrating personages have aroused!
With what volumes of sound, rising from the hearts of men and
expressive of every phase of human feeling—joy and grief, pathos and
humour, pity and contempt, exasperation and rage—has the Chamber
reverberated. Fine things have been said here, and mean things. Great
ideas have been expressed by great men who worthily served them.
The storms of passion, evoked by the clash between opposing reason
and thought in the political controversies that have been fought
out there at close quarters, have made the atmosphere of the House
of Commons humid and warm with emotion, and one with a mind at all
sympathetically attuned to the spirit of places cannot be there very
long before the effluence that emanates from these panelled walls is
thrilling him through and through.

Yet there are objects within the Chamber, made sacred almost by
history and tradition, which at once catch the eye. The visitor will
notice with becoming awe the high-canopied Chair, surmounted by an
oak carving of the Royal Arms, and will look with fitting reverence
on Mr. Speaker in his big grey wig and black silk gown. At the
head of the Table, beneath the Speaker, sits the Clerk of the House
and the two assistant clerks, all in the gowns and short wigs of
barristers-at-law, busily discharging their multifarious duties,
such as sub-editing papers handed in by Members containing questions
to be addressed to Ministers, amendments to be moved to Bills, and
notices of motions to be proposed should opportunity offer, and also
taking minutes of the proceedings for the Journals of the House. The
Table is indeed a “substantial piece of furniture,” as Disraeli once
described it when he spoke of his satisfaction that it lay between
him and Gladstone, who had just concluded a fierce declamatory
attack. It contains pens, ink and stationery for the use of Members,
volumes of the Standing Orders and other works of reference. At
the end of the Table, on either side, are two brass-bound oaken
boxes. These are the famous “dispatch-boxes” on which Ministers and
ex-Ministers lay their notes when addressing the House, and following
the traditional example of great statesmen in the past, thump to give
emphasis to an argument or, metaphorically, to bash the head of an
opponent.

The Table is also made to serve a part in parliamentary procedure.
Important documents, such as the reports of Committees, and Foreign
Office papers have to be “laid on the Table,” or, in other words,
presented to the House, before they can properly be made public;
and Orders of Departments have likewise to be “laid” for specified
periods preliminary to their coming into operation. Even the
floor-covering of the Chamber is a chapter from history. See the red
border-lines on the matting right down the floor, about two feet
from the front benches below the gangways. The opposing parties must
not step beyond that line while in the act of speaking. And why?
Because centuries ago Members were as ready to enforce an argument
with the sword as with the tongue, and, to hedge them in, these lines
of demarcation were drawn down the centre of the House. But of all
the objects in the House calculated to awaken historic memories the
Mace, perhaps, is the most potent. Made of silver and gilt with gold,
its large globular head surmounted by a cross and ball, its staff
artistically embellished, it lies a prominent and luminous object,
when the Speaker is in the Chair, on raised supports at the end of
the Table.


2

Business begins the moment the Speaker takes the Chair. It is noted
for its miscellaneous character. Private Bills—or Bills introduced
on behalf of the promoters of commercial or municipal undertakings
which interfere with rights of property—are first considered. But
the proceedings are formal, and devoid of interest. Petitions are
also presented to the House at this stage of the sitting. A Member
rises in his place and, stating that he has a petition to present,
reads a brief summary of its purport. It invariably ends with the
phrase, “And your petitioners will ever pray, etc.” No one has ever
seen the sentence completed. What, then, can “etc.” imply? It seems
a slovenly and irreverent way of saying one’s prayers, reminiscent
of the backwoodsman who chalked up his pious wishes at the head of
his bed, and, when tumbling in at night, jerked his thumb over his
shoulder saying, “Lord, them’s my sentiments.” “Will the honourable
Member bring it up?” says the Speaker, referring, of course, to the
petition. The Member walks up the floor and drops the roll into
the yawning mouth of a big black bag, hanging at the back of the
Chair. More often than not there is no public mention whatever of
the petition in the House. The Member to whom it is sent contents
himself with privately stowing it away into the bag, without anyone
being made a bit the wiser as to its nature or signatures. Through
the yawning mouth of this big black bag petitions may be said to drop
out of sight and out of mind into the limbo of waste and forgotten
things. Their presentation is recorded in the Journals of the House.
But they make no impression whatever on the minds of Members as to
the grievances they are intended to expose, and they are heard of
no more, except the Committee on Petitions, before whom, in due
course, they come for scrutiny, find some of the regulations have
been violated—that, for instance, the prayer of a petition, instead
of being in writing, is printed, or lithographed, or typewritten,
or that several of the signatures are in the same handwriting, or
denote persons manifestly fictitious, such as “Charles Piccadilly,”
“John Trafalgar Square”—put down by jokers—when the petition is
either returned for correction to the Member who presented it or its
rejection is recommended. Two municipal bodies have the privilege
of presenting petitions ceremoniously at the Bar of the House of
Commons—the Corporation of the City of London and the Corporation
of Dublin. In the early decades of the nineteenth century petitions
were read in full by Members who presented them, and there were
great debates arising out of them on such questions as Negro slavery
within the Empire, the political emancipation of Catholic or Jew, and
parliamentary reform. I have seen, in the later years of the same
century, huge petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures
trundled up the floor of the House like enormous cartwheels or big
drums. They related usually to proposed changes in primary education
or the liquor laws—the two chief subjects of controversy in the dull
and happy time I speak of. But the sending of petitions is almost a
thing of the past. The House has become indifferent to any form of
persuasion save that of elections.

The Chamber has now rapidly filled up for “question time,” which
is often the most interesting part of a sitting. One of the most
precious and highly cherished privileges of a Member is the right to
question Ministers—before the House proceeds to business—in relation
to public affairs, matters of administration, policy or legislation.
Moreover, these interrogations and replies are an unfailing source of
interest and also of entertainment. The House then invariably wears
an alert and animated aspect. The benches on both sides are thronged.
Every Member is supplied with a copy of the official programme called
the “Orders of the Day”—a white folio paper of many pages, in which
the questions are printed, with other matter relating to the business
arranged for the sitting—and one of the most characteristic sights
which the House affords is the flutter of these papers on the crowded
benches, as the questions are put and answered. The proceedings are
followed with the closest attention, with, in fact, an absorbed
interest which during a debate is evoked only by a really great
speech on a subject of the first importance. The questions deal with
all sorts of topics, illustrating at once the freedom of inquiry
within the House and the jurisdiction of Parliament within the
far-spreading Empire.

Questions are given in writing to the Clerks at the Table. “A
question,” according to the Standing Orders, “must not contain any
argument, inference, imputation, epithet or ironical expression.” The
judge of the regularity of a question is the Speaker. He disallows
it if in his opinion it is an abuse of the right of questioning, the
sole object of which is to obtain information from the Government.
Questions are sometimes altered by the Clerks on the ground of
impropriety of expression. Members occasionally complain of this
censorship. The Irish Party once resented the insertion at the Table
of the word “Roman” before “Catholic” in a question handed in by
one of their Members. Mr. Speaker Lowther was greatly surprised
that they should have regarded the word as offensive, but promised,
in deference to their feelings, it would not be used again. On the
other hand, they rejoiced over their success in having the term
“land-grabbers”—one of ill-omen, in Irish agrarian agitation—passed
in a question and thus appearing for the first time on the official
records of Parliament. I can also recall instances of Members who
refused to put questions as they appeared in print. They were so
different from the form in which they had been given in manuscript to
the Clerks that their authors absolutely disowned them. But however
questions may be sub-edited, it is rarely that one is rejected
altogether by the Speaker. A question addressed to a Minister must,
of course, relate to some public affair with which he is officially
concerned, or to a matter of policy or administration for which he is
responsible. Subject to these limitations a Member may put down four
questions daily interrogating Ministers on any subject, no matter
how local or trivial, for there are little things as well as great
things in regard to which the House daily exercises supervision or
requires to be informed. The Minister, however, may decline to answer
a question on the ground that it is against the public interest. This
stops the irresponsible interference of Members in the most delicate
functions of the Executive, which, if allowed, especially in foreign
affairs, might be productive of embarrassing and perhaps hazardous
consequences.

Questions of an urgent character, or of exceptional importance, may
be asked without being printed in the “Orders of the Day,” provided
private notice—or notice, by letter—has been given to the particular
Minister and the consent of the Speaker has been previously obtained.
These special interrogations are always put when the printed
questions are disposed of. But the usual custom is for two or three
days’ notice to be given, in order to afford time for the preparation
of the replies. It is not the Ministers who discharge the task of
obtaining the information that is asked for. The questions are sent
to the different departments, to whose parliamentary chiefs they are
addressed, and the answers are drafted by the permanent staff. In
most cases all the Minister has to do with the replies is to read
them in the House of Commons. The day’s questions are printed, as I
have said, in the “Orders of the Day.” They are prefixed with the
names of the Members responsible for them and are also numbered. The
way in which they are put is direct and simple. Each Member rises
in his place when called on, in succession, by the Speaker, and
says: “I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department
question No. 1,” or, “I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty
question No. 40.” The Treasury Bench, be it understood, is crowded
with Ministers, each of them in possession of a bundle of typewritten
answers supplied to him by the clerks of his department. Accordingly,
the Home Secretary looks up question No. 1, or the First Lord of the
Admiralty question No. 40, from his bundle and reads it to the House.

The growth of this practice of questioning Ministers has been very
remarkable. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century
that it became an established feature of the proceedings of the House
of Commons. In 1849 a special place was assigned to questions in
the “Orders of the Day.” Before that year they were few in number;
they referred mainly to the arrangement and progress of business,
and were rarely printed. The first time a question appeared in the
“Orders of the Day” was in 1835. But after 1849 questions were
printed regularly in the “Orders of the Day,” and the subjects
inquired about—confined, previously, to pending legislation—extended
gradually to public affairs and matters of administration. Still, it
was rare to see more than twelve, or at the most twenty, questions on
the paper for thirty years subsequently. In the session of 1860 the
number of questions asked was 699; in 1870, 1,203; in 1880, 1,546;
in 1890, 4,407, and in 1920 over 5,000. The questions occasionally
exceed 200 per day. The average number is about 150. All this shows
how interpellation, like other functions of the House of Commons,
came almost haphazardly into operation, and now rests immovably
on the foundation of privilege. And the Committee on National
Expenditure reported during the Great War that each question costs
the country thirty shillings.

Until 1880 it was the practice of Members to read every question when
putting it to the Minister, although it was printed in the “Orders of
the Day.” On July 8, 1880, after question time, Joseph Cowen called
attention to the fact that two hours had been occupied in asking
and answering questions. Yet the number of questions put that day
was only thirty. He added that, having taken the time on his watch,
he had found the mere reading of the questions occupied an hour;
and he asked the Speaker whether, as the questions were printed in
the “Orders of the Day,” it was necessary they should be read. Mr.
Speaker Brand, in reply, said: “It has been the general practice for
many years for hon. Members, in putting questions, to read these
questions, and it has been generally found to be a convenient course.
There is, however, no absolute rule on the subject.” From that day,
however, the reading of questions was gradually discontinued; and
questions were put simply by a reference to the numbers as they
appeared in the “Orders of the Day.” It was only a month later that
an Irish Member, named Finigan, on reading a question, was received
with loud cries of “Order!” The Speaker was asked whether it was not
“a great abuse of the rules of the House” for the hon. Member to
have read his question. “The matter is not so much one of order as
of propriety,” replied Mr. Speaker Brand. “I consider that the hon.
Member in reading the question of which he has given notice was,
strictly speaking, not out of order. With regard to the propriety
of his doing so, I give no opinion.” This was the last occasion a
question appearing in the “Orders of the Day” was read on being put
to the Minister.

Often the real interest of a question and answer only develops when
the Minister has read his typewritten reply. This arises from the
custom of putting what are known as supplementary questions. “Arising
out of the right hon. gentleman’s answer, may I ask ——?” the Member
begins. His purpose is to extract further information from the
reluctant Minister. If the subject is controversial, the Minister is
made the target of inquisitorial arrows, which he meets or parries as
best he can. Mr. Speaker Peel never attempted to set up any limit to
the liberty of a Member—dissatisfied with the answer to the question
he had placed on the paper or, as often happened, anxious to show off
his humour—to cross-examine, as it were, the Minister by means of
supplementary questions.

I remember many instances of Arthur Balfour, when Chief Secretary
for Ireland, being subjected for a quarter of an hour to a harassing
fusillade of supplementary questions arising out of the question on
one paper, and Mr. Speaker Peel saw no occasion for interference.
But a totally different line was taken by Mr. Speaker Gully. When
a Member rose to put a supplementary question, Mr. Speaker Gully
interposed with a cry of “Order, order!” and informed the hon.
gentleman that his question did not arise out of the question on
the paper. The rule regulating supplementary questions previously
was that they must arise out of the answer of the Minister. Some
Members, notably the most pertinacious hecklers of the Government,
chafed under this unwonted restraint, and occasionally showed signs
of a disposition to revolt against the Chair, but Gully had might
on his side, at least, and could not be trifled with. Mr. Speaker
Lowther was disposed to follow the precedent set by Gully. “If,” he
said on one occasion, “questions are at all important they should
be put on the notice-paper, and if they are not important, they
should not be asked.” Under Peel there was no limit to the duration
of question time. It was limited to an hour under Lowther, and a
point he repeatedly urged was that supplementary questions were
unfair to Members who had questions on the notice-paper because they
lessened the chance of these questions being reached within the time
allowed. The answer to such questions as are not reached within the
hour, and therefore are not read by the Ministers, are printed with
those orally given by the Ministers in the official report of the
proceedings of the House. Of questions generally it may be said that
while great principles are frequently raised or indirectly suggested
by them, many of them are concerned with what appears to be small
details of administration interesting only to the individuals whom
they affect.


3

New Members are introduced after questions. Quaint indeed are the
contradictions of parliamentary procedure. Rules that are entirely
different regulate the taking of the oath of allegiance and their
seats in the House of Commons by M.P.’s returned at the General
Election, and M.P.’s who come in at by-elections. We have seen on
the opening days of Parliament hundreds of men appear at Westminster
and being permitted to take the oath and their seats without any
examination of credentials or any evidence of identification.
It was quite possible, on the occasion of a large influx of new
representatives, unknown by appearance to the officials, for a
“stranger,” impudent enough and sufficiently strong of nerve, to
pass in with the crowd, and snatch the fearful joy of sitting on
the sacred Treasury Bench or Opposition Bench—in front even of the
brass-bound box associated with leadership and quite close to the
Mace—without anyone saying him nay. On the other hand, there is an
elaborate ceremony of introduction prescribed for those returned at
by-elections. The new Member has to be escorted to the Table, to take
the oath of allegiance and sign the Test Roll, by two full-blown
Members of the House. This custom has survived from a remote past
when, in order to prevent personation, two Members of the House
were required to identify the claimant of a seat after a by-election
as the person named by the returning officer in the return to the
writ. This precaution has been unnecessary for many a year. But
such is the reluctance of the House of Commons to part with any of
its historic ceremonies, such is its scrupulous regard for ancient
precedents—no matter how incongruous they may appear owing to the
changes effected by time—that this formality is still retained; and
though a representative may appear at the Bar of the House as the
unanimous choice of a constituency of 20,000 electors, and produce
the certificate of the official return of his election, he will not
be sworn in and permitted to take his seat unless two Members act as
his sponsors, and so declare that, as the conjurers say, there is
positively no deception.

There is the famous case of Dr. Kenealy, counsel for “The Claimant,”
in the Tichborne Trial, who was disbarred by the Benchers of
Grey’s Inn, and afterwards returned for Stoke-upon-Trent at a
by-election in February 1875. He came to the Table alone. It is
not clearly established whether he failed to find two Members who
would accompany him as sponsors, or whether he wanted to put to the
test a custom which, in his opinion, was no part of constitutional
law. At any rate, the Speaker informed him that as he had not been
introduced by two Members, in accordance with the ancient usage of
the House—founded on a Standing Order dating from 1688—he could
not be sworn in or take his seat. Kenealy was, therefore, obliged
to withdraw from the House. No objection could be raised to Dr.
Kenealy’s election. He produced the certificate of his return as
Member for Stoke-upon-Trent. Everyone in the House knew that he was
the person named in the official document. He laboured under no legal
disability. Had he been returned at the General Election he could
have taken, without question, the oath and his seat. But coming
in at a by-election he was not allowed to do so solely because of
his inability to comply with what, after all, in this age is but a
mere ceremonial function. The position was, indeed, absurd. It was
impossible that a duly elected representative of the people could be
excluded from Parliament for so unsubstantial a cause. Accordingly, a
special resolution, moved by Disraeli, who was then Prime Minister,
was carried dispensing with the ancient introductory ceremony in the
particular case of Dr. Kenealy. In the course of the discussion John
Bright and another Member named Whalley intimated that they were
willing to walk up the floor with Kenealy “out of deference,” as
Bright put it, “to the will of a large constituency.” The Member for
Stoke-upon-Trent once more came to the Table unaccompanied; the oath
was administered to him and he signed the Roll—the sole instance of a
departure from a custom observed since 1688. Kenealy then disappeared
in the mass of Members among whom he could not count two friends.
“He was in the House, but not of it,” said Joseph Cowen, speaking in
1881. He was effectually and completely boycotted.

Sometimes the new M.P., returned at a by-election, forgets to
bring to the Table the certificate of the return to the writ. This
document, which is sent by the Clerk of the Crown to the Clerk of
the House, is given to the new Member on application at the Vote
Office, in the Lobby, just before the ceremony of initiation, and
must be presented to the Clerk of the House at the Table as evidence
that he is the person named in the return to the writ as having been
duly elected, before the oath can be administered to him. As a rule,
therefore, the new Member takes care that he has this indispensable
official paper in his possession before he starts to walk, between
his two sponsors, from the Bar to the Table. But Hardinge Giffard,
afterwards Earl Halsbury and Lord Chancellor, when elected at a
by-election in 1877, found on reaching the Table that the little blue
document was missing. In his consternation he hurriedly turned out
all the contents of his pockets, piling them upon the Table—letters,
a purse, some loose coppers and silver, a bunch of keys, a briar-wood
pipe—all sorts of things but the essential certificate. In this case
the Speaker refused to accept any evidence—not even the testimony
of identification by the two sponsors—but the Clerk of the Crown’s
certificate that the man at the Table was the man that had been
duly returned at the recent election for Launceston. The House, of
course, was amused at the spectacle. Happily, one of the Whips who
went in search of the missing return found it in the hat of the new
Member, under the cross-bench below the Bar, where Hardinge Giffard
had sat with his sponsors awaiting the time for the Speaker to make
the customary announcement—“New Members desirous of taking their
places will, please, come to the Table.”

Yet it would seem, after all, as if the production of the certificate
of the return to the writ were not absolutely necessary before a
new Member, coming in at a by-election, can take his seat. On March
11, 1848, Mr. Hames was elected for the Irish borough of Kinsale;
on the 15th he took the oath and his seat, but it was not until the
18th that the return to the writ was received by the Clerk of the
Crown. The Clerk of the House of Commons had neglected to ask for
the certificate on the appearance of the new Member at the Table,
thinking that the formality might be dispensed with as the return
to the writ had not arrived. When the mistake was discovered there
was great wagging of official heads. But none of the authorities
could suggest a way out of the difficulty. It was unprecedented. The
Clerk went about haunted by visions of the deepest dungeon under
the moat of the Tower of London. At last a committee of the House
was appointed to make inquiries; and after due investigation they
reported that the Clerk had done a perfectly sensible thing, however
unwittingly. They said it was true that the return to the writ had
always been required by the House as “the best evidence of a Member’s
title to be sworn.” “Nevertheless,” continued they, “the absence
of that proof cannot affect the validity of the election, nor the
right of a person duly elected to be held a Member of the House.”
Truly, a most proper decision! Still, the committee recommended a
strict adherence to the practice of requiring the production of the
document. This much, at least, can be said for it, that it is a
picturesque detail in the initiation of a new Member of the House of
Commons.

The House then comes to the real business of the sitting. At this
stage of the proceedings leave may be asked for to move the
adjournment of the House, but, even if it be granted, action is not
immediately taken. The object of such a motion is to obtain from
the Government an explanation of some act of commission or omission
on their part; of something which, in the opinion of the Opposition
or any other section of the House, they have wrongly done or left
undone. The matter complained of must be—as the Standing Order
says—“a definite matter of urgent public importance” in the opinion
of the Speaker, and the motion must also have the concurrence of at
least forty members. Therefore, when a Member rises after questions
and asks leave to move the adjournment of the House, stating at the
same time the object he has in view, the Speaker, should he consider
the subject definite and urgent, asks whether the hon. Member is
supported by forty Members. Immediately the Members in favour of
the motion rise in their places, and if they muster forty, leave
is granted, but the debate stands over until a quarter past eight
o’clock. Forty members make a quorum, without which no business
can be done. If leave is not given because it lacks the necessary
support, the Member who asks for it may challenge a division in
the hope of winning in the lobbies, or for the purpose of getting
a record of those for and against his motion. I remember in the
session of 1912 when George Lansbury the Socialist startled everyone
by claiming that a division should be taken on a motion for the
adjournment, in support of which only 38 Members had risen. The
Speaker, Mr. Lowther, had recourse to the little book containing
the rules of the House which he always has by him on the arm of the
Chair, for this was probably the first time that such a request had
been made, and satisfied himself that Lansbury was within his rights.
The motion was lost by 115 against 86.


4

This being disposed of, the Speaker rises and says: “The Clerk will
now proceed to read the Orders of the Day,” and the Clerk, with a
copy of the Order Paper in his hand, reads the title of the first
of the list of Bills down for consideration. It may be the second
reading or the third reading stage, at which, on all great Bills,
there is usually a big debate. Disraeli is said to have described
the House of Commons as a dull place, with some great moments. In
my opinion, it would be difficult for the House of Commons ever to
be downright dull. Its great moments are, indeed, many. The variety
and vitality of the questions at issue there and its personalities
secure it against tediousness. For Disraeli—as for most of those
who have once breathed its intoxicating atmosphere—it always had
an absorbing charm. Joseph Gilles Biggar, one of the best known of
the Irish Party, lived in the House and for the House. Outside it
he had no interest or amusement. I happened to be talking to him
in the Lobby during a sitting that was supposed to be dull, when a
colleague asked him whether he might go to a theatre for the evening.
Biggar was then the Chief Whip of the Nationalist Party, and a stern
martinet. “Theatre!” he exclaimed contemptuously. “This is better
than a play, Mister. It is all real here.” Yet he was the man who,
by the invention of obstruction, and its use, did most violence to
its time-honoured and dearly cherished customs. The House of Commons
is, indeed, a most alluring place. It has an interest of the highest
dramatic intensity on the occasion of a big debate relating to the
predominant political question of the day, which deeply stirs Party
passions and prejudices, and brings down into the arena of the floor
the great chiefs to fight for principle with the keen and subtle
weapon of the tongue.

“Mr. Speaker.” So begins each Member who rises to address the House.
Of all the speakers in the Chamber, Mr. Speaker speaks seldomest, and
in the fewest words. The Speaker sits in his high-canopied Chair,
not to talk but to listen to talkers. Hours may pass, and “Order,
order,” may be the only words spoken by Mr. Speaker. He guides the
deliberations of the House. He names the Member who is to continue
the debate. This is not a matter simply of “catching the Speaker’s
eye,” as it is popularly called. The Speaker does not always name
the Member upon whom his eye may first rest. On both sides of the
House Members jump to their feet, eager to join in the debate, each
straining forward, or shaking his notes to attract the attention
of Mr. Speaker. The Speaker’s selection of one from among these
competitors to fix his wandering eye is careful and deliberate. If
an opponent of the Bill has just spoken, it is almost certain that a
supporter will be selected to follow. The aim of the Speaker is to
secure that, as far as possible, every phase of opinion shall find
expression. In this he is assisted by lists given to him beforehand
by the Whips of the different Parties, containing the names of
their chief spokesmen in the debate. Therefore it is that Members
on opposite sides follow each other alternately, the only exception
to the rule being that should a Minister, or one of the leading
occupants of the Front Opposition Bench, intervene at any moment,
he has the right, more or less prescriptive, to be called on by the
Speaker.

The Speaker follows the flow of discursive talk with what appears
to be the most absorbing interest. Indeed, it is into his ears that
the Member “in possession of the House”—to use the traditional
phrase—pours all his views and prognostications, all his fears and
expectations. It is, “Now, Mr. Speaker, let me say,” or “With great
respect, Mr. Speaker, I submit.” Accordingly, the Speaker may not
betake himself, even for a little while, to his own select and
profitable thoughts. He must always be seized of the drift of the
argument of the Member who is addressing him. At any moment he may be
called upon to rule a point of order. His faculties must always be
wide awake. At any moment some emergency may arise, without the least
forewarning, when all his authority, tact, and common sense will be
needed.

It is said there are Judges of the High Court who can sleep during
the speeches of counsel, and wake up at the moment that the
slumberous presentation of argument is concluded. The atmosphere of
the House of Commons is often drowsy. Members may be seen asleep on
the benches at all hours. Yet it is a remarkable fact that there is
only one instance on record of a Speaker—impassive figure though
he be, in a big wig and a flowing gown, reclining in a large Chair
under a spreading canopy—having been caught nodding or napping. It
was to Shaw-Lefevre, the only Speaker over whom tired Nature asserted
itself, and whose weighted lids, despite his desperate resistance,
were finally closed in slumber, that Mackworth Praed addressed these
lines:

      Sleep, Mr. Speaker; it’s only fair,
      If you don’t in your bed, you should in your Chair,
      Longer and longer still they grow,
      Tory and Radical, Aye and No.
      Talking by night and talking by day;
      Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may.


END VOL. I.




                    _Printed in Great Britain by_
                       UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
                          WOKING AND LONDON




FOOTNOTES:

[1] This statutory provision was temporarily suspended during the
Great War. It was provided by an Act passed in December 1916, making
certain new Ministerial appointments, and additional Secretaries or
Under-Secretaries, that during the continuance of the War, and for
six months afterwards, the limitation on the number of Principal
Secretaries and Under-Secretaries who may sit and vote in the House
of Commons, shall not have effect.

[2] In the Coalition Government during the Great War there were two
Chief Whips, one Liberal, the other Unionist, each styled “Joint
Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury,” and paid £2,000.

[3] Sir Edward Grey, speaking at a public meeting in 1911, when he
was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, humorously objected to
being referred to as the “Foreign Secretary.” “I am told,” said
he, “it gives the impression that, if I am not in the service of
foreigners, I am at least an alien.”

[4] Three other Ministries were temporarily created for the purposes
of the War—Munitions and Shipping and Food. They were brought to an
end in 1921.

[5] A Committee of the House of Commons appointed to consider the
salaries of Ministers, owing to the great rise in the cost of living,
following the World War, recommended, in 1921, that the salary of the
Prime Minister be raised to £8,000, that the salary of all Ministers
of Cabinet rank be £5,000; that the salary of second class Ministers
be £3,000, third class Ministers, £2,000, and that Under-Secretaries
and Parliamentary Secretaries be paid £1,500.




  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources.

  Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
  when a predominant preference was found in the original book.

  Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
  and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

  Pg 21: ‘emanate fron the’ replaced by ‘emanate from the’.
  Pg 25: ‘by a votor’ replaced by ‘by a voter’.
  Pg 29: ‘petitions impunging’ replaced by ‘petitions impugning’.
  Pg 37: ‘in order to forestal’ replaced by ‘in order to forestall’.
  Pg 38: ‘in still in vogue’ replaced by ‘is still in vogue’.
  Pg 41: ‘the custon for’ replaced by ‘the custom for’.
  Pg 82: ‘seemed eminent’ replaced by ‘seemed imminent’.
  Pg 92: ‘appropriating portion’ replaced by ‘appropriating a portion’.
  Pg 95: ‘It weights’ replaced by ‘It weighs’.
  Pg 98: ‘not tongue to’ replaced by ‘nor tongue to’.
  Pg 163: ‘George Cornewell’ replaced by ‘George Cornewall’.
  Pg 174: ‘red dispatch box’ replaced by ‘red despatch box’.
  Pg 198: ‘or the prefessions’ replaced by ‘or the professions’.
  Pg 228: ‘the House wi hout’ replaced by ‘the House without’.
  Pg 247: ‘said Joseph Cowan’ replaced by ‘said Joseph Cowen’.





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