[ADJOURNED DEBATE.] [SEVENTEENTH NIGHT.]

HC Deb 08 November 1882 vol 274 cc1028-93

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Main Question [20th February], as amended, That when it shall appear to Mr. Speaker, or to the Chairman of Ways and Means in a Committee of the whole House, during any Debate, that the subject has been adequately discussed, and that it is the evident sense of the House, or of the Committee, that the Question be now put, he may so inform the House or the Committee; and, if a Motion be made 'That the Question be now put,' Mr. Speaker, or the Chairman, shall forthwith put such Question; and, if the same be decided in the affirmative, the Question under discussion shall be put forthwith: Provided that the Question, 'That the Question be now put,' shall not be decided in the affirmative, if a Division be taken, unless it shall appear to have been supported by more than two hundred Members, or unless it shall appear to have been opposed by less than forty Members and supported by more than one hundred Members."—(Mr. Gladstone.)

Main Question, as amended, again proposed.

Debate resumed.

MR. ASHMEAD-BARTLETT

The issue which is now before this House I venture to consider the most momentous which has ever been submitted to the decision of Parliament. Great and critical as have been the decisions which the Government and Parliament of an Imperial people hare in the course of their brilliant history been compelled to take, there has been none so pregnant with the fate of the English people as that now under discussion. In this question of the freedom of speech and the fulness of Parliamentary debate the very life and independence of the British House of Commons are at stake. Upon the decision of this brief Autumn Session depends the fate, not of one question, or group of questions, however important, but of every political issue that shall in the future come before Parliament. The poison is directed against the very centre and mainspring of the Constitution itself. It is the brain and the heart of the body politic which are about to be vitiated. Now, I protest at the outset against this clôture being applied, to the debates of this House. It is bad in principle and unjust in application. Real Obstruction, most of us agree, should be prevented. But it is monstrous to close the mouths of all because of the offence of a few. To wholly stop discussion because some abuse their privileges is totally indefensible. The true remedy is to punish individual Obstructives, and not to gag the whole House. There is no difficulty in doing this. There are Rules of Procedure available which have, I believe, whenever properly applied, proved effective. If they are insufficient let them be strengthened. But never let the House of Commons give to an imperious Minister, working with an obedient majority and a subservient Speaker, the power of strangling debate. The Prime Minister admitted that this was a most serious and critical change. Yet the position of affairs is, he said, unprecedented, and the demoralization of Parliamentary debate requires a desperate remedy. But whose fault is it that the House of Commons has thus degenerated? Is this House to be punished, and freedom of speech to be annihilated, because of the terrible blunders committed by the Government in their management of Ireland, and in their conduct of the Business of this House? Are the 650 Members of Parliament to be gagged because the Prime Minister has reduced Ireland from a state of peace and unwonted prosperity to a reign of terror and to widespread demoralization? Is this grievous and terrible innovation to be inflicted upon Parliament because the Ministry have introduced ill-considered and immoral legislation—laws of violent coercion, and acts of unjust plunder—in order to atone for their own mismanagement? Is it because the right hon. Gentleman who represents Birmingham, thought fit to encourage Irish agitation for political purposes, and then to repress it with the utmost severity, that this House is to be deprived of its freedom of discussion? Is it because the Government first created a necessity for coercion, and then introduced a stupid and ineffective measure, administered that measure inefficiently, and had to supplement it by other enactments, that we are to be thus afflicted? Is it because the Ministry have wasted the time of Parliament in alternately fostering and treading down Irish agitation that this odious and unwholesome clôture is to be imposed upon this House? Much was made by the Prime Minister and those who follow him in advocating this clôture by a bare majority of the assumption that it prevails in other countries, and in the Colonies of Britain. With regard to the Colonies, whose love of freedom—we have it on the authority of the right hon. Gentleman—is not inferior to our own, his information was, as is not unfrequently the case, singularly inaccurate. The clôture does not exist, as the Prime Minister affirmed it did, in Canada, in New Zealand, in Tasmania, in Victoria, or in our great and important Cape Colony. In South Australia alone, with a population of less than 250,000, has it been adopted; whereas the population of those Colonies which are free from this unwholesome and un-English gag number nearly 10,000,000 of souls. New South Wales and Queensland are free from it, and the Colony of Victoria having, in 1875, adopted a somewhat similar Standing Order, has never again repeated the unfortunate experiment. In the Cape Assembly serious Obstruction was tried in 1865, there having been two Sittings of 17 and 21 hours respectively. In the interesting Report of Mr. Noble, Clerk of the Assembly, the following statement occurs:— This course of Obstruction, however, failed in its object, and was acknowledged to be an unwise as well as an undignified mode of procedure. It has never been repeated, and on any appearance of an approach to it the good sense of the House has always asserted itself, and checked any undue exercise of the inherent powers of a minority. That would, I believe, soon be the fate of Obstruction in this House. There has been already a very strong reaction against Obstruction, as practised during the last two years; and I believe that it required only a little more patience, combined with, perhaps, considerably more judgment on the part of the Government in their management of Public Business, to prevent its recurrence. If the right hon. Gentleman is so inaccurate as to his facts, with regard to those members of the British family in countries closely connected with England by every tie of race, and feeling, and government, why should we rely upon his confident predictions as to the harmlessness of his grave innovation? If the Legislative Assemblies of the Colonies, which are constructed on more Democratic lines, and where there is necessarily less of culture, knowledge, and refinement, can do without this odious restraint, why should not this ancient Commons House of England deal with Obstruction and yet preserve freedom of debate? The very name of the Grand Council and Legislature of these Realms signifies the origin and the main object of its existence and privileges. We are not an Assembly, or a Corps Législatif, or "Congress," or a Senate—we are the Commons House of the Parliament of Britain—that is, the place and the Assembly whose main purpose is the full and complete and free discussion and debate of every subject that affects the people of this Empire. I should have thought the right hon. Gentleman, with his knowledge of the history of his country, with the traditions of Constitutional liberty and struggles after freedom of speech, which are associated with this House and with the careers of many of his greatest Predecessors in the high Office which he holds, would have blushed to appeal to the example of Continental nations, who have tried, with but scant success, to follow in the footsteps of English freedom. Is it to France, ever fickle and ever unreliable, with its shifting kaleidoscope of régimes and Ministries, that we should turn to find a guide in the process of annihilating our dearly-won freedom of debate? France has never known the meaning of real liberty, as between man and man, and class and class. The oppression of the Ancien Régime was suc- ceeded by the sanguinary tyranny of the Jacobins; after them came the crushing despotism of the First Empire. Under the Constitutional Monarchy of Louis Philippe, which was the nearest approach to real freedom that France has enjoyed, there was no clôture. The Third Empire saw it introduced, and bitterly did the Favres, Gambettas, and the Thiers complain of its repressive force. The evident sense of the House was shown by uproarious clamour, rattling of paper knives, and banging of desks. The Republicans, since they have held power, have made an even more unscrupulous use of this weapon. Over and over again of late years has awkward criticism been checked, damaging investigation prevented, discussion abruptly closed by the organized clamour which there represents the "evident sense of the House." There have been ample indications of late in the intolerant bearing and disorderly interruptions of Members opposite as to the manner in which searching criticism will be prevented by them if this Rule becomes the law of the House. The very last Session of the French Assembly furnished a conspicuous instance of the abuse and the ruinous power of the clôture. A measure of the last importance for the future of France was brought forward by the Government. It proposed to do that which the Radicals of Birmingham—and the identity of action in this respect is worth noticing—tried to effect within their municipal jurisdiction a few years back. All religious teaching, all religious emblems, even reference to the name of the Almighty, were to be forbidden throughout the public schools of France. The Conservative Party in the Chamber, and even some moderate Republicans, were aroused by so shameful a proposal. It seemed certain that the Bill would receive unsparing and prolonged criticism. The public conscience might have been aroused and the Ministry defeated; but the favourite weapon of Parliamentary despotism was at hand. Clamours were raised for the clôture. It was promptly voted by a majority; and thus, after the briefest of discussions, an Atheistic measure was hurried through the Legislature, and all religious teaching was banished from the schools of the Republic. Was it asking too much to demand that the exercise of such a power as this should not be conferred upon any Ministry unless supported by, at the very least, a majority of two-thirds, which the Amendment of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) proposed. I have referred to the case of France, from which, if time permitted, many other instances of the evil-working of the clôture might be quoted. It has been the rule, and not the exception, for French Oppositions to be abruptly silenced by the clôture, in order that Ministerial measures might not be "obstructed"—that is, not be criticized or debated. Yet, even in France, there is this great advantage over the scheme of our Government—that the clôture cannot be voted without a debate. What, then, are the other Legislatures to which the Prime Minister would point as models for the imitation of the British Parliament? Is it the young Assembly of Germany to which be would direct our admiration? I am not sure, Sir, that a little more Bismarckian resolution and statesmanship, and a little less sophistry and rhetoric and verbosity, would not be a good thing for England; but I shall be somewhat surprised to find hon. Members opposite basing their ideas of Parliamentary debate upon the example of Germany. In Hungary, whose history and Constitution more closely resemble our own than those of any European country, and whose national pride and dauntless independence of spirit are akin to those of the English people, clôture is unknown. But I had forgotten the deep admiration which the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, and many of his followers, have, of late years, professed for that Government, whose methods of clôture, national and individual, are so absolute and so perfect. It is the country of the "civilizing mission" and the "knightly crusade" which furnishes the Prime Minister with the most crushing form of clôture which the world has ever seen. Nor is it surprising to find that the founder of the Caucus and the principal advocate of the clôture has lately been studying the science of national oppression under the shadow of the despotism of St. Petersburgh. Even the ingenuity of Birmingham may learn a few lessons from the practised absolutism of Russia. If there is any lesson to be deduced from a comparison of the liberties of our Parliament with the mechanical devices of Foreign Assemblies, it is not that we should blindly imitate their clôture, but rather that they should copy the unrestricted freedom of the parent of Constitutional liberty. Moreover, in some Foreign Legislatures Members had the immense protection of voting by ballot upon the question of the clôture. Will the Government grant this protection to Members of the House of Commons? The monstrous blunder of the right hon. Gentleman as to Colonial practice is hardly less creditable than his total want of information as to the working of the clôture in those foreign countries to whose example he appealed, or than his silence respecting its abuses, if he was acquainted with them. The fact is, the clôture has acted as a deadly blow to liberty wherever it prevails, and that all minorities in clôture-ridden countries groan under its tyranny. Why was it that the Government refused to accept the moderate and sensible Amendment of the right hon. and learned Member for the University of Dublin? Why were they unwilling that a majority of two-thirds should be necessary to close discussion in this House? Did they adduce the smallest proof that such a limitation would not be ample, and more than ample, to prevent Obstruction? Had they any evidence to bring forward which would show that a third of the Members of this House, or anything like that proportion, ever attempted to delay the progress of Business? Why, Parliamentary discussion has never been resorted to by more than a twentieth part of the Representatives of the people. In one year it may have slightly exceeded this proportion; but that was when the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain), the hon. Baronet the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir Charles W. Dilke), and the Vice President of the Council (Mr. Mundella), were the co-Obstructors and abettors of those Irish Gentlemen whom they have of late been so vigorously coercing. No, Mr. Speaker; the clôture, by a bare majority, is not meant as a genuine Parliamentary reform. It is a political engine and a partizan device. It is to be used, like the Irish Land Act, as a means for crippling a great Party in the State, and a class of the community who do not fall down and worship the more advanced Leaders of the Liberal Party. A series of revolutionary and drastic measures have to be hurried through Parliament in order to redeem the rash pledges, and to revive the waning credit of Radical Ministers. The existing electorate has had enough of the anarchy at home and confusion abroad, which have marked the career of Her Majesty's present Government. Fresh fields of credulity are to be opened, in order that their lease of power may be prolonged. Careful discussion and thorough debate might be fatal to the success of their pernicious projects; and so, like the Atheists and Radicals of the French Republic, they seek to stifle discussion with the clôture, and to strangle argument by the vote of a bare majority. We might be willing to intrust such a power as this to the present Prime Minister, though I am bound to say that many of his acts do not bear the impress of Parliamentary toleration. His conduct with regard to the Royal Warrant in 1873, his more recent and repeated attempts to override the decisions of the House with regard to Mr. Bradlaugh, and his hasty and ill-considered censure upon the House of Lords for appointing a Committee, which was perfectly within their rights, might render me unwilling to confide so great a power even to the right hon. Gentleman himself. But the very argument used by the right hon. Gentleman, that his own interest in this measure lies in the past, and that it will mainly affect Parliaments in which he may not have the conspicuous voice he holds in this, is, to my mind, a very strong one against this clôture. We might, perhaps, trust the right hon. Gentleman, with his 50 years of Parliamentary life, and his long traditions of Parliamentary fairness; but can we trust those who may succeed him? Those who have introduced new and unwholesome elements of mechanical wire-pulling into English politics; those who have organized victory, not by healthy public opinion, not by individual judgment, but by an organized machinery, at once slavish and tyrannical; those who get themselves, by adroit pressure from outside, pitchforked into the Cabinet—these are the men whose possible advent to commanding positions in the State should make everyone who regards the independence and spontaneity of political life hesitate before placing such a tremendous weapon in the hands of politicians who are only too likely to misuse it. The right hon. Gentleman, however, has often before been on the point of abandoning his prominent position in political life, and we may still hope for his long continu- ance among us. I pass over the obvious inequalities and absurdities of the Rule as proposed by the Government. These have already been fully criticized. No Minister has yet been able to explain the sense or logic of permitting a majority of 62 to silence 39 Members, while they require a majority of 161 to silence 40 Members, and, above all, while they allow 201 Members to silence 200. The disproportion of these regulations is so glaring that their details need only to be stated without comment. The general arguments of the Prime Minister are exceedingly weak when tested by practical investigation. The right hon. Gentleman is certainly a most accomplished actor, and those portions of his eloquent speeches which are delivered with the most fervour are generally the weakest in logic. His main argument is built on two assumptions, neither of which will by any means bear close inspection. The first is the infallibility of the Speaker; the second is the certainty that an oppressed minority would always be able to make itself heard in the country if not in the House, and that such indignation would be aroused out-of-doors that a Government using the clôture vigorously to cut discussion short would speedily be hurled from power. In the first place, this second statement is the purest assumption. It is not so easy to hurl Governments from power, even if their conduct be reprehensible and their unpopularity great. A Ministry that commands a majority in this House can retain Office without the possibility of its overthrow till the natural term of its Parliamentary existence expires. Such a Government will be sure to hold on till the last moment, hoping for some lucky event to change public feeling. I believe that last May and June the present Ministry were wholly discredited in the country, and that an appeal to the constituencies would then have been fatal to them. The Egyptian War is pretty generally thought to have been the Deus ex machinâ of their deliverance. With this view I do not altogether agree, for when the country sees how little the Government obtain as the fruits of a costly war, and, above all, when the country realizes the full volume of the incapacity and blundering, monstrous and incredible, that alone rendered this war necessary, public feeling will undergo a remarkable re-action. How can the oppressed minority in this House assert its rights and arouse the indignation upon which the Prime Minister so eloquently descanted? The majority have the whip-hand, and they will keep it ruthlessly under the dictation and management of the Caucus. What happens in the United States? Let the right hon. Gentleman read a little of the political literature of that great country, and he will see how, in spite of a magnificent Continent, a noble people, and originally very free institutions, that monstrous triple offspring of ingenious Demagogueism—the Caucus, the clôture, and organized clamour—are absolutely fatal to freedom and independence. What says a very acute judge, and one by no means hostile to Republican institutions, who has just been visiting the great Republic of the West?— We see a whole people gradually losing their freedom amidst the growth of great commercial activity and the development of the Arts. While the American people retain the form of freedom there has been considerable loss of the substance. The sovereign people are fast becoming a puppet, which moves and springs as the wire-pullers determine. These are startling and important sentences. They are pregnant with warning to Englishmen, who have already seen the initiation in this country of that accursed system of wire-pulling and of professional politics which are ruining the free institutions of the United States. Well, Sir, this is not the only instance. In such a case a few examples of the practical working of the clôture are worth bushels of sentiment and rhetoric. Take the example of another Democratic country—that of France. How has the clôture worked there? It is perfectly misleading for Ministers to come to this House with vague and groundless statements that the clôture works well in foreign countries. I challenge the Prime Minister to give me an instance where it does work well. In France every Party cries out against it. It oppressed the Liberals and Radicals when used by an Imperialist Ministry, and M. Thiers and other eminent men denounced it bitterly. It oppresses the monarchical and religious—that is the Conservative minority under the Republic. It has over and over again stifled debate in the most obnoxious and unjust and premature way. Nor has it been found impossible for France, as the right hon. Gentleman assumed it would be found impossible in this Parliament, that a presiding Officer, equivalent to our Speaker, should favour the majority, and be supported in his favouritism. Nor has he been hurled from Office because of such favouritism. I hold that one of the surest results of this 1st Resolution—which devolves on the Speaker the initiation of the clôture—will be to lower and deteriorate the character of the occupants of that Chair. The argument of the Premier upon this point was of the flimsiest description; indeed, Sir, it consisted of a series of impassioned appeals to the impossibility of your Successors degenerating from your own high impartiality. He went so far in hyperbole as to denounce the idea of any Speaker ever being such a—I almost tremble at repeating his word—fool as to deviate from the strict path of right and fairness in his appeal for the clôture. It is necessary to remind the right hon. Gentleman that those who will have most responsibility in the future will be, not Speakers of high character and dignity, but the Ministers and the majority in whose power the choice of Speakers will rest. Supposing, for example—and it is by no means a strained supposition—that the Speakers of the future are chosen with a special view to their Party usefulness, what a tremendous temptation the new power which this Resolution is placing in their hands will be to those who manage the dominant Party in this House! Why, a compliant Speaker, who would interpret the "evident sense of the House" in favour of his Party for the purpose of closing a dangerous discussion, would be more valuable to a Government than a score of fluent orators. The taint of original sin is too strong in our political nature to enable such a temptation to be long resisted, and this House will have partizan Speakers, just as the Legislatures of other countries have had them. It is said that any Speaker who misused this power ever so slightly would find his position untenable by reason of the indignant hostility of the oppressed minority. This is the purest assumption of all. It does not so happen in France, or in the United States, whose Chambers have been more often than not presided over by partizan Chairmen. The unjust Speaker may have the minority against him, but he will have the majority at his back. You ask who will protect him in case of injustice against an indignant minority? I ask you, in reply, who will protect him—the Speaker—against an irate and overweening majority? What will become of an occupant of that Chair who ventures to disregard once or twice or thrice the interested but unjust clamours, even of a hare majority, for the clôture? If he resists their pressure, will he not be denounced by those who will, indeed, have the power to make his position untenable? Will not the Speakers of the future be compelled to hazard the indignant, perhaps the passionate, but still the helpless outcry of the downtrodden minority, rather than incur censure and—what is sure to follow—deposition by an all-powerful majority. The presiding Officers of foreign countries have in too many instances degenerated into political partizans. When I see the conduct of those who have of late years dominated the Liberal Party, of those who have introduced and manipulated, without stint or scruple, the machinery of the Caucus, when I read their avowed projects and their insolent Circulars threatening Members of this House with condign punishment if they do not promptly obey the dictation of an ambitious Minister and an obscure clique, I ask this House whether it is at all unlikely that these persons will in the future be over-scrupulous, either as to the kind of Speaker they appoint or as to the pressure they will put upon him to do that which finds favour in their eyes? A very conspicuous instance of such premature clôture, to which I have already referred occurred this year in the debate upon the anti-religious Bill, which was the great Charter of French Radicals and Atheists. When the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister assured the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin that he would be the first to help him if any such repression of discussion as we anticipate was tried under this Rule, we feel deeply obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. But, for my part, I dread the gifts of the right hon. Gentleman. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. We have not forgotten the golden promises of the Prime Minister and of the late Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Bright) with regard to the Land Act and the Sub-Commissioners, and we remember how they were fulfilled. Cold comfort have the victims of the iniquitous de- cisions of those partizan officials obtained from their appeals to the right hon. Gentleman. The real fact with regard to this clôture is, that it is part of a large scheme of political manipulation which is to hand over this great and ancient country, with its splendid traditions of freedom and independence and amplitude of discussion, bound hand and foot to the mercy of the self-seeking and unscrupulous men who wish to obtain power by these novel and unhealthy methods. First, we have seen the establishment throughout the country of an elaborate organization arranged in hierarchical grades. It is, in fact, a copy of the American Ping, with its agents, its leaders, its Ring, and its Boss, who drive the game of politics. We have seen specimens of the dictation and tyranny this organization has sought to exercise over Members of this House who have dared to be a little independent. Hon. Gentlemen have been instructed by an obscure clique of Birmingham wirepullers how they are to vote. They have been threatened with penalties if they do not vote in a certain way. Who are these obscure persons, these Schnadhorsts, and Harasses, and Kenricks, and Snagges, and Nuttalls who dictate their votes to the Liberal Members of Parliament? They are the exact counterpart of what is called in America a Eing—that is, a small circle of otherwise obscure men, who make politics a profession, and who think, move, vote, and elect for the people. They are the persons in whose hands, according to Mr. Herbert Spencer's warning words, "the sovereign people are fast becoming a puppet, which moves and springs as the wire-pullers determine." At the head of this Ring, and behind the scenes, sits the great Boss, the Supreme Head of the political machine. Who he is, and where he is to be found, we need not too closely examine. But, Sir, like a celebrated personage, the author of all evil, he is probably not very far from that Bench. The hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Broadhurst) end others have said that the Caucuses are really Representative Bodies, and that he never experienced any dictation from his own Caucus. Well, Sir, the hon. Member is always asserting his independence, though nobody obeys the Government Whip with greater docility. But it is a singular fact that the hon. Member for Stoke was one of the few Members of this House who were sufficiently influenced by the insolent Circular of the Caucus with regard to this gag. He did respond to their directions, and tried by public speeches to stimulate the mechanical agitation which they ordered. But the appearance of election is only on the surface. The "hundreds" are chosen by districts in each constituency, and these delegates form the local Caucuses. So far so good. These Caucuses each elect an inner ring or council. These councils send representatives to the Central Council, which is itself ruled by a small clique at Birmingham, to whom I have referred. Thus, the Central Caucus has its inner ring, which is at the head of all. Behind this ring, and in close connection with it, is the "Boss," or Supreme Head, who shall be here nameless, but who really directs its movements. Orders can thus be transmitted from the top throughout the whole hierarchy down to the electors in the constituencies, who are driven like sheep to the polls. There is no appeal to the individual judgment or knowledge of the electorate. Orders are issued from the Supreme Ring upon every political question, great and small, and they have to be obeyed. It is not a question of political organization. That may be necessary and desirable. But the action of the whole of the Liberal Party is now dictated from above upon every question. Not only votes, but opinions, agitations, even thoughts, are now arranged by the central wirepullers at Birmingham. Even the votes of Members of this House are dictated by these obscure persons. Thus all individuality, spontaneity, and independence in English political life is being destroyed. How, then, does all this apply to the proceedings in this House? I will endeavour to show. At present there is one sanctuary, not wholly free from the dictates of the Boss and the Ring, but still comparatively free from its control and its dominating power. The British House of Commons, for centuries the home of freedom of speech and fulness of discussion, yet retains its unshackled independence. Careful debate and liberty of speech are fatal to this Caucus system. It cannot stand the criticism and dissection to which itself, its manipulators, and its works would be subjected by a free Parliament. Like the owls and the bats, it lives in darkness and prowls about amid the shades of night. To enable the Caucuses to control Parliament and to stifle discussion and criticisms, which are fatal to its movements and its aims, the clôture has been invented to hand this House over to its dictators. The Prime Minister may not recognize its dark operations; but it is the wire-pulling of the Caucus which has put upon him the pressure that forced him to abandon the fair compromise which he offered to the Leaders of the Opposition last May, and which he has so clumsily withdrawn. The clôture is to be worked by the "evident sense of the House"—that is, by organized clamour, which has been fatal to the freedom of political Conventions in America, and which will destroy not only order and courtesy, but fair discussion in this House. The combined system of Caucus, clamour, and clôture will be fatal to English liberty. The great point upon which terrible and, I believe, irremediable abuses will spring up is the attempt to determine "the evident sense of the House." The manufacture of this "evident sense of the House" will, as I have said before, soon be turned by the Government agents in this House, acting under outside direction, into a fine art. It will be so convenient, so desirable, so invaluable in a partizan sense to close awkward debates after one night or, perhaps, half-a-night's discussion. There is no lack of material. It would be very easy to organize a certain number of hon. Members into an "evident sense of the House" brigade. There are the hon. Members for Brecknock (Mr. Flower), and Bucks (Mr. Carington), and North Northamptonshire (Mr. Spencer), and Stoke (the senior Member I mean) (Mr. Woodall), and Gateshead (Mr. W. H. James), West Aberdeenshire (Dr. Farquharson), and East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes), and especially the Members for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood), and for Cheltenham (Baron de Ferrieres), who have already shown their high capacity in this direction. These hon. Members would be led, aptly and boldly, by the hon. Member for Stockton (Mr. Dodds), and whipped in, if any reluctance were shown, by the hon. Baronet the Member for the North Riding of Yorkshire (Sir Frederick Milbank), who, indeed, has already received a handsome reward for his distinguished services in this direction. These would altogether make an admirable and effective force, armed and equipped at all points for the campaign of the clôture. I can imagine how ingeniously they would be distributed over those Benches, and how irresistible, but, at the same time, innocent, would be "the evident sense" they would create. It might have been some security to require that before this clôture was put to the House, the judgment of the Speaker should be re-inforced, as was proposed on Monday last, by an hon. Member opposite, by a certain number of Members rising in their places to support it. In that case the House would have seen, and not been impressed by, the familiar and amiable faces of the Brigade, whose powers of argument are in inverse ratio to the vigour of their lungs. Even the hon. Members, to whom I have referred, might have blushed to show themselves frequently. But the proposers of this scheme were too clever to accept any such limitation on their project, and it was incontinently rejected. But, says the right hon. Gentleman, the majority of this House would never support such an unworthy clôture, or, indeed, any hasty finish of a debate. I wish we could feel at all sure of that. There have been several striking instances of late when not the majority of the future House of Commons, elected, perhaps, by universal suffrage and managed by the Caucus; but the present majority would, if they could, have closed important—nay, vital—debates after a single night's discussion. The case of the Arrears Bill has been referred to. It is notorious that this most grave measure, in principle, the most novel and dangerous, perhaps, ever submitted to Parliament, was nearly hustled through its second reading after a few hours' debate; nor has the House forgotten the desperate clamour which was raised by the supporters of the Government on the first night of the debate upon the censure on the House of Lords to close the discussion there and then. Can anyone doubt that if this Clôture Rule had been in force that it would not have been constantly applied, as in similar cases it is always being applied in France? Or, supposing the majority in their hearts believe that a debate has not been sufficiently debated, but that they are ordered by their Whips and by the Caucus to vote for the clôture. Dare they refuse? What said the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) on the debate on this very question last summer? Why that, but for the strong pressure put upon them by their Leaders and their Whips, not 100 Liberal Members would have voted against the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Brighton (Mr. Marriott). That I believe was quite true. If such results have already been accomplished by disciplinary coercion in this House, what is there impossible, or even improbable, in the idea that under this Rule a majority will always, on important questions, be made ready to vote for the clôture? The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade is the principal supporter of this clôture, and has done more than any other man, by means of the organization which he controls, to force it upon the Prime Minister and upon the House. No English Member has made so free a use of Obstruction as that right hon. Gentleman. Last night, it is true, in reply to the charge of the hon. Member for Wilton (Mr. Herbert), he (Mr. Chamberlain) denied point blank that he had been guilty of Obstruction. But, Sir, his memory must have singularly failed him. The quotations from the right hon. Gentleman's speeches on those occasions prove his complicity beyond a doubt. The hon. Member for Wilton quoted one passage from a speech of the President of the Board of Trade in 1879— If there was any threat in that House or out of it of anything like Obstruction, they must not lose sight of the fact that the Government only made reasonable concessions after four days' discussion—in fact, they could get nothing from the Ministry except by what was commonly called Obstruction; and, therefore, the Ministry had no right to complain if opposition were carried further than previously they had been accustomed to carry it."—[3 Hansard, ccxlvii., 206–7.] But there was even more significant language used by the right hon. Gentleman. On the same Bill, speaking on the 5th of July, 1879, he said— If Irish Members were guilty of Obstruction, he said English Members were decided to adopt the same course—call it Obstruction, or systematic opposition, or what they would."—[Ibid. 1554.] The course he adopted then, and in which he gloried, was precisely that adopted by hon. Members from Ireland during the past two years, which has been denounced by the Prime Minister and every occupant of the Treasury Bench as Obstruction. Reiterated speeches, constant Motions to report Progress, innumerable divisions, braggings of "no surrender," all-night Sittings—these were the methods which the President of the Board of Trade then found consonant with his sense of Parliamentary propriety, but which he—now in Office—seeks to repress. He spoke over 150 times in one Session, nor was the right hon. Gentleman then the Leader of even a section of the Liberal Party. Indeed, when he was rebuked by the then Leader of the Opposition, the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India, his present Colleague, for his conduct, he at once threw off his allegiance to the noble Marquess and spoke of him in the most contumelious and insubordinate terms. He sneered at the noble Marquess as "the Leader of only one section of the Liberal Party." If the President of the Board of Trade were consistent he could now not only vote with us, but speak against this odious innovation. One of my principal objections to the power of clôture, especially when it can be put in force by a bare majority, is that it must tend to produce in England, as it has produced in foreign countries, the appeal to revoutionary violence, instead of to peaceful and Constitutional methods. A minority defeated, after a fair struggle, in which every opportunity of stating its case has been afforded, and after it has enjoyed the invaluable privilege of exposing to the mind of Parliament and of the public all the arguments that ability and ingenuity can urge on its behalf, bears defeat in such a case with resignation and without rancour. No sense of gross injustice rankles in the breast of the beaten Party, for they have been defeated in a fair field and on their merits. But once let a minority have ground to feel that they have been treated with injustice, that their criticism has been stifled, and their arguments refused a hearing, and you will before long completely revolutionize not only the spirit with which the great Parties in this country have hitherto regarded each other, but—what is more serious—you will revolutionize the practice and the methods of political struggle. Premature repression will be met by violent resistance. The secret societies and conspiracies and desperate factions which, owing to similar causes, prevail among Continental nations, will in time obtain hold of English political life. Freedom of speech and unrestricted discussion have been alike the main charter of British liberty and the chief safety-valve of popular opinion. You are about to close this safety-valve. You will have no right to be surprised if explosions ensue. And for what is this dangerous risk to be run? Are the laws which England has obtained under the good old system which you are now abrogating, perhaps for ever, so much worse than the enactments of other peoples who have not possessed your privileges? Is the freedom enjoyed by the people of these Realms less genuine and less widespread than that which the conscription-ridden and revolution-ridden nations of the Continent fitfully possess? Is the progress which we have made less real and less stable than the revolutionary cataclysms and reactions of foreign despotisms and Republics? Supposing the gentlemen of Birmingham and their dependents do find, in the work of rushing through Parliament their drastic measures of wholesale change, a little more delay than their avidity is disposed to brook, will the evil, after all, be so very intolerable? If the leaders of the Caucuses do not find themselves masters of a gagged Parliament and a wire-pulled country quite so soon as they desire, will the majority of Englishmen be so grievously injured or disappointed? No, Mr. Speaker; it is not the country that is crying out for this new legislation, which hon. Members opposite are for ever using as the stalking-horse to conceal their tyrannical aims. We are, as a nation, not suffering from want of laws, but from over-legislation. The country wants individual action and enterprize, spontaneity of thought and deed, and less of officious and grandmotherly legislation. I am not at all sure that the country would not benefit if this House, as at present constituted, were to be adjourned, not for three months, but for three years. It is not in the interests of the country at large, of the British, people, that freedom of debate is to be strangled. It is that a small coterie of ambitious politicians, who despair of winning to their views by open Constitutional methods the existing electorate, may establish their own power that they are seeking for this novel and foreign political weapon. It is no paper Constitution with, which the Government are now tampering. It is not one of those mushroom schemes of Government which the political adventurers of the Continent can produce by scores from their pigeonholes at every opportunity. The British Constitution has been the slow growth of the wisdom of centuries, its matchless privileges have been the most hardly won, and up to the present time the most dearly prized heritage of your race. It is the parent of all free institutions of modern civilization. It is the exemplar upon whose model other peoples have moulded their efforts after liberty and order. The keystone of that Constitution has been freedom of speech, absolute, and untrammelled, for the Representatives of the people in Parliament. Every measure submitted to the Commons of England—no matter by whom, or how powerfully supported—has had to endure the most searching, the most complete, and even the most protracted criticism. It is this full and uncontrolled discussion, combined with perfect freedom and independence of speech for every Member of this House, however humble, which has secured for England just and equal laws, sure and moderate progress, and those general liberties, which are at once our pride and our happiness. It is at this freedom of speech and fulness of discussion at which you are now aiming a dangerous, perhaps a deadly blow. You are attacking not an outwork, or a limb, or a branch, of the Constitution; your assault is aimed at the very keystone, and basis, and mainspring of the liberties of the British people. And into whose interests and by what necessity are you impelled to this threatening, this injurious innovation? Is there any legislation so urgent that it cannot brook a slight or even a considerable delay? Can any impartial mind affirm that the country is suffering from a want of legislative change? Is it not clear that the risk we run is the risk of hurried, fussy, inconsiderate, and partizan legislation, rather than that of a dearth of beneficial laws? Is it not clear that debate in this House is to be stifled, not in the interests of the people of England, not for the sake of sound and deliberate legislation, but to enable a body of reckless and unscrupulous politicians to secure their own future by means of a series of revolutionary and drastic changes which shall enable them to keep political power in their hands? What matters the fate of a Ministry even if its Chief be the eloquent Prime Minister? What matters the fate of a Party even if it consider itself uniquely gifted, in comparison with the independence of Parliament and the freedom of speech? Shall it be said of this Parliament, as it was said of the Nobles of Venice, that they forged the chains of their own servitude without a struggle and without a blush? I cannot, and I will not, believe it till that fatal vote is cast which shall for all time poison the very source and I lifeblood of our Parliamentary freedom. Mr. Speaker, I shall record my vote with all the sincerity of profound conviction against a scheme which will degrade public life in this country, which must tend to degenerate your high and impartial Office, which will be fatal to the independence of hon. Members and to the fulness of discussion in this House, and which will destroy what has been alike the pride and the bulwark of our Constitution life—freedom of speech in Parliament.

MR. STEWART MACLIVER

said, he would not have risen to take part in the debate had it not been for some remarks which were made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Whitehaven (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck). In the course of a speech he had delivered a few days ago, the right hon. and learned Member did him the honour to refer to a letter he had written on the subject of these debates, and evidently thought that letter so admirable that he had kept it in his pocket for a period of eight months. If he had been able in any way to oblige the right hon. and learned Member by writing that letter he was very glad, and if another letter would be equally useful he (Mr. Macliver) would be very glad to write it. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, and others who had spoken on the same side, seemed to think that Members on the Liberal side were labouring under the bogey of a Caucus system; but, so far as he was concerned, he could assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman he was perfectly free from any pressure of the Caucus, and that the votes he had given, as well as those he should give, were entirely free and unfettered. A great deal had been said about the silence maintained by Members on the Liberal side of the House; and the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill), with his usual good taste and profound judgment, described them as mutes engaged at the funeral of free speech. Well, the noble Lord might have extended the remark by saying that the same mutes had been engaged at the last General Election in burying a good many of the noble Lord's political friends; and he might add that when another occasion came the same service would be performed again. Liberal Members had been taunted with their devotion to their Leader. At any rate, they did not require two Leaders in the Liberal Party. One sufficed for them; and they on that side of the House would feel alarmed at the appearance of a second, not to say a third. So far as he could judge, they who sat on the Liberal Benches were content to support the Prime Minister, whose object they believed was to promote, not to curtail, freedom of speech; and they would support him in the measures he had brought forward to place restraints upon licence of debate, and to reform the Procedure of the House in the manner necessary for the due performance of its duties.

MR. H. S. NORTHCOTE

said, he could not think, in spite of the remarks just made, that the conduct and speeches of certain Radical Members, particularly the hon. Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), were characterized by implicit confidence in, and loyalty to, the Prime Minister. He hoped the debate would not close without their obtaining from the Prime Minister a definite statement on one point—namely, the sense in which Her Majesty's Government wished to apply this Resolution when they had got it passed. It was necessary that they should have such a definition; because the Government had objected to the ruling which the Speaker had given the other day being formally recorded. He also wished the Prime Minister to inform the House whether his contention was that this measure was required because the conduct of certain. Members of the House had been such as to render it necessary; or whether it was because so much time was now consumed in debate that legislation had become impossible? If the former, the Constitutional Opposition had the right to ask the Prime Minister whether he complained of them; if he did, he ought to make a charge and substantiate it; if he did not, they were entitled to honourable acquittal as a Party. If the Prime Minister said the Rule was necessary because legislation had become impossible, a practical difficulty arose. Hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway on the Ministerial side said—"You can trust us not to apply the Rule unfairly," and expressed surprise at that being doubted; but what would be their position when the Rule was passed? Now, when they visited their constituents they were able to say that such and such a measure, which they loyally supported, had not passed because of the opposition it encountered, and that was now a valid excuse; but under the New Rule the constituents might reply—"You have made a Rule which was to put down Obstruction and enable you to carry legislation; if you do not avail yourselves of it we must seek Members to represent us more faithfully." When it came to a question of a Member losing his seat, or assuming an unscrupulous attitude towards the Opposition, there was really serious danger that Members would prefer to keep their seats at the risk of restricting debate unfairly. Then it was possible that the Speaker of the future might suffer from the tyranny of the majority in the event of his strictly maintaining the traditions of the Chair. If the Speaker did not fall in with the view of the extreme Party, represented by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), a cry would be got up that he was the Speaker of the minority, and pressure would be used to prevent his being reelected. It was suggested that the dissatisfied minority might appeal to the country. But he understood that appeals were to be made to the electors on questions of policy, and not on matters relating to the internal discipline of the House. It could hardly be desired that a Member would go about the country advertising that he had been put to silence. And what could be more undignified than to have Members running about the country debating in a one-sided manner every question again, and asserting to ill-informed electors the dangerous doctrine that the Peoples' House was tyrannical? The Leader of the Opposition was now held responsible, to a certain extent, for the way in which the Business of the House was conducted. He was occasionally reminded of his duty, and was taunted with inability to keep the free lances of the Party under control. The effect of carrying the Resolution would be to increase the power of the free lances as against the Constitutional and regular Leader; because, if power were taken away from the regular Leader, any unscrupulous follower would say—"You are relieved from all responsibilities; the Government and the Speaker have now taken the exclusive control of debate upon themselves, and I may just as well go on and get myself suspended, and then go and stump the country and say I am the victim of the tyranny of the majority." He hoped there were few hon. Gentlemen who would take that course; but there was a danger that some would, and it was quite possible that a very unreasonable, but not a very formidable, cry might be got up on that account. This question was argued as if it were whether the minority or the majority should prevail. That was not the case, because the majority had certain powers. They decided when a Session was to begin and end, what Business should be laid before Parliament, and what days in each week should be devoted to each question. All the minority's power was to insist on a debate not closing till they had said their say. Was it reasonable to affirm that they had equal powers to the majority? If the minority were left the power of continuing a debate, could the majority want a better cry than Obstruction, should the minority, as a body, abuse it? It was probable that this Rule would expedite legislation, and if he did not believe that the other Rules would so far expedite legislation as to render the first one unnecessary, he should feel much difficulty in voting against it. He had abstained from voting against the Government on two important Amendments, and had voted with them on a third, and had thus done what he could to show that he approached the question in a fair spirit; and he had now said enough to show why, on reasonable and moderate grounds, the younger Members of the House, who were specially interested in the future conduct of its proceedings, might oppose this Resolution.

MR. MARJORIBANKS

observed that, in the very fair and temperate speech to which they had just listened, the hon. Member had asked two questions. One was as to the sense in which Her Majesty's Government intended to apply this Rule. He thought that the hon. Member would find the answer to that within the four corners of the Rule itself. He did not think Her Majesty's Government intended to apply the Rule at all, but that it lay with the Speaker when he thought proper to apply the Rule. On this point he would suggest another way in which the sense of the House would become very evident to the Speaker, and that was on the division taken on the adjournment of the debate. Supposing a very large number of Members voted against the adjournment, and there was a small minority in its favour, he thought it would become very clear that the majority of the House wished the debate to be closed. Then the hon. Member asked whether this Resolution was intended to put down Obstruction or to promote legislation? Well, he did not think this Resolution ought to be separated from the whole mass of the Resolutions. It was part of a general scheme. There was and had been Obstruction; but that Obstruction was only one incident of the block of Business, and this was only one, and by no means the most important, of the Rules, though it stood first, and from its being first, perhaps, an undue importance had been given to it. Members who had been in the House that morning had listened to a somewhat lengthy speech from the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett), and, at any rate, he had given a good measure of words to his Party. He would not follow the hon. Member in his wanderings East and West and South and North in search of the clôture; but he would say that when the hon. Member challenged the Prime Minister to find one single instance of the clôture answering and acting well, he should, at least, have brought forward some single instance of its not answering well. He made certain assertions of the way in which it had worked in certain countries; but he never for one moment gave a single instance where it had worked in practice badly. The hon. Member was good enough to pity poor Liberal Members for the way in which they were domineered over by the Caucus. Now, they did not accept that pity at all. The Liberal Members were very well able to take care of themselves, and they and their constituents would understand one another very well in the future; but if there was any weight in the utterances of the Leaders of the Party opposite, at Glasgow, Inverness, and elsewhere, they would say that there was a very great desire among the Leaders of the Party to establish a system very similar for the benefit of Members of the Conservative Party. Perhaps the objection of the hon. Member for Eye to the Caucus might be gathered from one of the greatest powers to be found in it, which was "that directions come from the top" to the lower representatives of the Caucus. He could well understand that the hon. Member for Eye should think, with many other Members of the Conservative Party, that directions should not come from the top. They had seen instances of this pretty often in the last year or two in the House; and the letter of the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) was a very good instance of that at the present moment. He should not go into the various points touched upon in the speech of the hon. Member for Eye. It was a speech, no doubt, admirable for the purpose for which it was made, which was to give the House an instance of the forcible keeping open of a debate; because that was what they were suffering from now. That was a point which it was only right should be impressed upon the country. This, he believed, was the 17th day on which they had been discussing this Resolution, and they were yet to have two more days' discussion on it. They had heard a great deal about liberty of speech from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) yesterday, who laid great stress upon the ancient liberty of speech claimed by Members of that House. Well, what was that liberty of speech which the Speaker claimed at the commencement of every Parliament when he went to the House of Lords? It was not the right to talk at interminable length; it was not the right to force opinions on the House; but it was the right to say without fear within the walls of the House words that Members might be in danger for if they uttered them without the walls of the House. That was not what hon. Members opposite contended for now. What they were contending for was the right to delay the measures of the majority, if they could not defeat them openly; to delay them, put them off, veto them by interminable and useless discussion. In old days, it was the fear of any encroachment on this real ancient liberty of speech which made the House so jealous of any attempt to publish its debates; but that very publicity, then so greatly feared and now so fully established, was, perhaps, the greatest safeguard they had that this Rule and other Rules would be enforced fairly and temperately, and used and not abused. Argument had been used more than once during these debates that the country was opposed to this Rule, because it had not agitated in favour of it. At least as strong an argument might be found in the fact that the constituencies had not agitated against it, and they might say that "silence is the perfectest tone of joy." [Mr. WARTON: Oh, oh!] It might not be the case of the hon. and learned Member for Bridport. All who had argued against the clôture, however, had seemed to assume the co-existence of three conditions which had not existed in the House heretofore; and those three things were—a partial Speaker, who was the tool of an unscrupulous Ministry; a Ministry without scruple, backed by a violent majority, weak and subservient, and with no sense of its proper duties. Now, he admitted at once that if these three conditions existed there might be an abuse of this closing power; but what right had they to suppose that they would exist in the future? They had not existed in the past. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for North Lancashire (Colonel Stanley) had said that, no doubt, in the case of the present Speaker and his Predecessors these objections would not be feared. If he admitted that in the past Speakers had not failed in their arduous duty, but had always supported the dignity and impartiality of the Chair, why should he argue that in the future all would be changed? He saw no reason for it whatever. He quite admitted there was a possibility, even a probability, in the future that there would be a strong and all-powerful Ministry; but in proportion as that Ministry abused the powers granted to it, just in that proportion would the Opposition gain strength and power, and in equal proportion would the country feel bound to pull down the Ministry if they abused their powers. It seemed to him that the true definition of freedom, whether it was of speech or of action, was the liberty to do that which was right and fitting and decorous. He did not consider that to be true liberty, the liberty to do what they liked, without any care for the wishes of others, without any respect for right and decorum. It was because he believed that these Rules, and this Rule in particular, would conduce to real liberty of speech in the House and to the facilitation of their Business that he gave it his hearty support.

BARON HENRY DE WORMS

said, he would admit that it was extremely difficult to carry on that debate, not, indeed, so much for want of arguments which might be adduced against the proposition with which they had to deal, but mainly from the fact that they had few arguments to answer adduced on the opposite side of the House. That fact gave them a foretaste of what they might reasonably expect when that Resolution was adopted. It was an anticipation, and a very evident proof, of the assertion of the force of that numerical majority which considered itself strong enough to disregard arguments in support of the propositions it brought forward. He should not have risen to address the House upon the question at all had he not felt, in common with many other Members on that side, that after the Resolution had been passed the opportunities for addressing the House would be extremely limited. Nor should he have ventured to address the House even for that, if he had not felt that they were on the advent of a period when might would triumph to a great extent over right. But, actuated by these feelings, which were shared by a very large number of persons outside the House, he considered that he should not be doing his duty to his large and important constituency if he did not intrude for a few moments on the attention of the House. They had seen all through the course of the debate marked inconsistencies on the part of the Representatives of Her Majesty's Government. One flagrant inconsistency occurred a few days ago, and he was glad to see that attention had been called to it by one of the leading Liberal journals. They were told that they ought to approach this question without the slightest bias of Party feeling, to regard it as intended only for the benefit of the House, and to treat it in a judicial spirit. Yet the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir William Harcourt), in the debate on the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Brighton (Mr. Marriott), made use of these remarkable words— It is necessarily a Party question. I cannot look at it otherwise than as a Party matter. I believe the Government of this country can only he conducted by Party. And then the right hon. and learned Gentleman went on to warn the House that the rejection of the clôture would bring about the overthrow of the Government. But, afterwards becoming more alive perhaps to the real feeling of the country, the right hon. and learned Gentleman, in a speech at Burton on Saturday last, said that "he took that opportunity of saying that the Cabinet had no desire to make a Party question of this matter of Procedure," and that "it was out of the question that they should wish to do anything of the sort." He was aware of the skill of the present Ministers in changing the ordinary meaning of phrases; but he thought that even the Prime Minister, with all his ability, would fail to convince the House and the public that those statements were not diametrically opposed to each other. One of the most remarkable phases of this question was that the Ministry only seemed now, for the first time, to discover, not only the danger, but the existence of Obstruction; whereas Obstruction was evidently the child of the Opposition under the late Government. During the time of the late Government Obstruction was born, and its parents were those who now occupied places on the Treasury Bench, but who then occupied a conspicuous position below the Gangway on the Opposition side. At that period they never heard the Prime Minister or his Colleagues say that it would be necessary to introduce those stringent Rules which they were now endeavouring to force down the throats of hon. Members. He believed that if any such proposals had been made by the late Government, they would have been met with uncompromising opposition by the then Opposition, who would have been loud in their denunciations of this fresh proof of the tyranny of the Tory Party, who were endeavouring to crown their political crimes by stifling free speech. They would have also been opposed by many hon. Members on that (the Conservative) side of the House. The aspect of affairs was very different now. Then the right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues were looking for power; now they had got it. It was a striking fact that in his remarkable Mid Lothian campaign the right hon. Gentleman had not included clôture in his varied Liberal programme; and the reason why he did not do so was because he knew that if he had, he would have alienated an enormous number of those who then enlisted under his banner. How, then, did this idea originate in the teeming and fertile brain of the right hon. Gentleman? That was a problem it would be interesting to unravel; and, having reflected on the matter, he (Baron Henry de Worms), had come to the following conclusion. When the right hon. Gentleman commenced his Radical campaign, he produced the old Liberal banner with the motto "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform," and that banner was carried in triumph through England and Scotland; but when the right hon. Gentleman found himself once again at the head of the Government, the words on the Liberal banner were changed into "War, Increased Expenditure, and clôture." The right hon. Gentleman, in addition to "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform," had inscribed on his banner a programme of 30 odd Liberal measures, which he promised to carry if returned to power; but it seemed that this playbill of political varieties was subject, like other similar productions, to alteration, for scarcely any of these promised blessings of Liberal legislation had been yet vouchsafed to them. Was there anyone who could honestly say that the means now at the disposal of the Speaker would not have been sufficient to silence Obstruction? But what they would not be sufficient to do would be to gag the minority in their resistance to Radical measures being rushed through the House. When the right hon. Gentleman had to explain to his supporters why his Liberal programme was not carried out, a happy thought struck him—namely, to say that he would have carried those measures, had it not been for the Obstruction of the Tory Opposition. And now for the remedy. A further happy thought struck him—"Gag the Tory Opposition, and by that means we will be able to carry Radical mea- sures." The House was entitled to some further explanations from the right hon. Gentleman of the extraordinary change of front which he had shown on this question. In May last, after the discussion on the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Brighton (Mr. Marriott), a terrible calamity befell the country in the assassination of Lord Frederick Cavendish. The question of clôture was consequently postponed, and the Prime Minister, having had an opportunity for mature reflection, came to the decision—at least temporarily—that it would be advisable to accept in a modified form, if not in its integrity, the Amendment proposed by his (Baron Henry de Worms's) right hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson). He should like to ask how it was that that Amendment, which the Prime Minister was at one time prepared to accept, suddenly appeared to him to be worse than useless for the purpose for which it was intended? He (Baron Henry de Worms) was at liberty to put his own interpretation on that remarkable change; and, in his opinion, it was caused by the following considerations. In the month of June the fortunes of the Liberal Party were somewhat clouded. They were then discussing whether they should have an Expedition to Egypt. That Expedition took place, the Peace-at-any-price Party was thrown over by the Government; and, somewhat unexpectedly, their success was remarkably speedy. But the change in the condition of Egypt was not more remarkable than the change in the Prime Minister. Before that the right hon. Gentleman was a man of peace; then he became a man of war; and from being an unsuccessful statesman he became a successful general. It was then that, imbued with military ardour, he adopted military tactics, and, instead of being willing to agree to a compromise, he insisted on unconditional surrender. Clôture would be one of the worst forms of despotism, because the Minister who was able to command a large majority at the hustings could always command the blind support of his followers in that House; and if that majority had the power of silencing the minority whenever the Prime Minister wished it, they might depend upon it that the minority would be silenced. Then, again, they could not blind themselves to the fact that the Caucus was becoming a power in the country. The Birmingham Caucus bore the same relation to true public opinion that the Birmingham manufactures of spurious gold and spurious jewellery bore to the genuine article; but if the Caucus became a power in the land, and the Radical Millennium desired by the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) was established, they would be then reduced to this condition, that they would be governed by a Prime Minister obedient to the dictates of the Birmingham Caucus. Up to that time, every Member of the House was so thoroughly imbued with a belief in the fairness and impartiality of the Speaker, that there had been no feeling of rancour entertained by anyone when the decision of the Chair was adverse to his views; but the moment clôture was introduced there would be a latent feeling of distrust, as concerned the Speaker, on the part of the minority. Indeed, it was impossible to believe that, if this Rule were passed, a Speaker would ever again be chosen from the Opposition. He asked what would be the feeling of the minority, who, before going into the Lobby to record their votes, felt that during the debate much of what they wished to have said had been left unsaid, because they knew that they could have been silenced by the simple veto of the Prime Minister? Some hon. Members had stated as an argument that the clôture worked very well in Foreign Assemblies. Could those hon. Members look forward with equanimity to a repetition in this country of the scenes that disgraced the French Chambers, and to the prospect of being muzzled as Members of the German Parliament were? He asked the Prime Minister to read the Liberal organs of public opinion in Germany, France, and Italy. He would then learn how greatly astonished foreigners were at the proposal to introduce into this country a system which was so decried abroad. The clôture was not an English institution, and he protested against copying in the House of Commons the practices that existed in Foreign Representative Bodies. He regarded this measure as the death-knell of political liberty and freedom of speech. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Depart- ment had said that this weapon which the Government were forging would be used but seldom, and never abused. That he (Baron Henry de Worms) claimed as an argument against the Ministerial proposal, because if the clôture was to be used so very little, it must be so dangerous an expedient that they feared its use, and, therefore, would be better without it. But if they feared its use, why did they ask the House of Commons to sanction it? In his opinion, the introduction of the clôture was a mere arbitrary act—as furnishing a more speedy and effectual means of forcing through the House measures which the Government could not pass except after gagging the Opposition. It was intended to carry out the programme of the Prime Minister, to redeem all those pledges which he had left unredeemed, and to satisfy the Radicals that no one but a Liberal Ministry could carry out beneficial legislation. He was astonished that hon. Gentlemen who sat on the Liberal Benches could possibly lend themselves to a measure of this kind. If this Rule should pass, the Liberal Party would have immolated themselves and their principles in the arena of Party strife; and their "Ave, Cæsar! morituri te salutant," uttered in their subservient and blind admiration of the Prime Minister, would meet with no more sympathetic response than the harsh "Habet," which was the death-warrant of the wounded gladiator, as it would be the death-knell of Constitutional freedom.

SIR JOSEPH PEASE

said, that the hon. Member who had just spoken (Baron Henry de Worms) had used but few arguments, and a great deal of declamation about the death-knell of Constitutional liberty. All that was proposed, in his (Sir Joseph Pease's) opinion, was that by the Resolution they were about to place in the hands of the Speaker such powers as were possessed by every chairman of public meetings, He held that there must be some limit to discussion, and that the House should have the power to fix the time when discussion should result in action. The Rule accordingly had been introduced to prevent the undue licence of speech, such as had been indulged in at one time by certain English Members, and latterly such as the Irish Members had indulged in, and not for the purpose of interfering with that freedom of speech which was the privilege and pride of the House. A system of Obstruction had grown up which had not only prevented the legislation which the Minister of the day proposed, but had rendered it impossible to carry measures of social improvement such as those connected with the extension of the franchise, the drink traffic, and other matters, to which many of them had devoted much of their Parliamentary life. Many of these important questions had to be left over for years, to the great detriment of the country, and the great annoyance of their constituents. It was to deal with that evil that these Resolutions had been proposed, and he believed that the constituencies generally were strongly in favour of passing them in their entirety. They were mistaken who supposed that the constituencies did not know what was going on in the House of Commons, and did not understand the Rules of Debate. Many hon. Members had heard their constituents reproach the House for not having the same Rules of Debate which they were subjected to in their Charitable Associations, Boards of Guardians, and Town Councils. The great bulk of the people were undoubtedly at the back of the Government in this matter. If there was one subject, at the present time, in which his constituents took an interest, it was the passing of these Clôture Resolutions in their entirety; and Memorials had been sent up by them, both to the Premier and to himself, supporting the Resolutions. It was impossible that these Resolutions could ever be used as a Party weapon; and if he thought for a moment that they could be so used he should decidedly vote against them. It would be a suicidal policy to forge a weapon which would be more likely to be used with effect by a Conservative majority than by the present one, for he could not conceal from himself that the Conservative Party might, by again stealing the clothes of the Whigs, or by out-Heroding the Radicals, recommend themselves to the country, and again come into Office, when it would be a formidable weapon in their hands, if it really were of that dangerous character which was represented. But he was satisfied that it would not be so used; indeed, it was impossible that it could be used, in any way which would be distasteful to a large or even a respectable minority, so long as debates were properly, fairly, and honestly conducted; for in order that it might be used as a Party weapon there must be an unscrupulous Minister, together with a demoralized Speaker and a demoralized Chairman of Committees—two conditions which he could not believe would ever exist in that House. The ruling of the Speaker on Monday night that the "evident sense of the House" must be the "evident sense of the House at large" would be handed down from Speaker to Speaker, and would be the line on which their decisions would be based. He could not, in practice, imagine any Speaker venturing to put the Rule into operation without having first satisfied himself that it was approved of by the two Front Benches and by the majority of both sides of the House. Much had been said about the possible deterioration of that Assembly; but he would beg of them not to compromise the dignity of that Institution by rejecting a Rule devised to protect it, and to add to its usefulness. It was in a great degree losing its position in the country because it was unable to control its own debates within proper limits, and it was in order to restore to it that necessary power that he felt bound to vote for the Resolution.

MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY

said, he thought it might be said of the Irish Members lately that if they showed themselves, as the previous speaker (Sir Joseph Pease) had said, able to talk, they also showed, in the course of the present discussion, that they had the faculty of being able to sit silent. He was not surprised to find, however, that among certain sections of the House the silence of the Irish Members seemed to give as little satisfaction as their previous talking had done. Strive how they would, they could not elicit the approbation of the English and Scotch Members. If they spoke, they were stigmatized as Obstructionists; if they sat silent, their silence was as little to the taste of the House as was their loquacity. He did not intend to break that silence, such as it was, by occupying the time of the House for any lengthened period; but he wished to express his opinion, which he believed was the opinion of those hon. Members with whom he habitually acted, on the propositions of the Government as they now came before them, and he wished to express the reasons why they remained absolutely unchanged in their opinion with regard to the main question they had to discuss. He need hardly say that in neither the vote they gave last week, nor the vote they were about to give soon, they were influenced, in the slightest degree, by any manner of negotiations or arrangement with the Government whatever. In fact, there were none to influence them, as none such existed. The hon. Baronet who had just spoken declared that he supported the Resolution because he believed that it never could be used as an instrument of Party. The hon. Member, no doubt, was an authority in that House; but not so great an authority as the Members of Her Majesty's Government, who had already expressed a different opinion. For instance, they had heard the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department—not, he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) thought, in the House, but outside it, and to some extent, also, in the House—say that he regarded this strictly as a question of Party, and as the instrument of Party, and that it would be used for Party purposes. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the other night distinctly said it was all a question of majorities; that the work of enforcing the clôture principle must be the work of the majority of the House; and he seemed to attach a meaning of his own to the word "majority." He reminded him (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) of the worthy Parson Adams, in Fielding's novel, who said— When I speak of Christianity I mean the Protestant religion, and when I speak of the Protestant religion I mean, of course, the Church of England. The Home Secretary seemed in the same way to say—"When I speak of the country I mean the House of Commons, and when I speak of the House of Commons I mean the Liberal Party." He did not see how a weapon of that kind could be used otherwise than as an instrument of the majority, and, therefore, the weapon of the Government in power for the time being. The recent definition of the manner of applying this Rule—namely, that given by the Speaker, that the "evident sense of the House" meant "the evident sense of the House at large," which had been received with so much Exultation by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote), would not have the slightest effect in protecting the rights of the small minorities of the House. He (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) supposed that many hon. Members considered that these small minorities were not to be termed Parties at all, but merely nameless fractions of sections, and not entitled to any protection against the rude and sharp pressure of a Rule like this; but he submitted that they were the very Parties who ought to be protected. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) the other night spoke of the existence of a certain Party in the House, which was perfectly reckless what harm it brought on itself, so long as it brought harm on the interests and traditions of the House of Commons; and, as an instance, he quoted what his (Mr. Justin M'Carthy's) hon. Friend the Member for Carlow (Mr. Dawson) had said about Samson pulling down the Temple of Dagon to overwhelm his enemies. It was new to him (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) and his Friends to recognize in the hon. Member for Carlow a terrible anarchist of that description. He thought the words used by his hon. Friend had a much more simple and less startling meaning. So far as his acquaintance with any small minority in the House was concerned, he must say that he never heard of the existence of any such Party, and he did not believe it ever did exist. That sort of policy, which on some occasions had been carried on in that House, and to which the familiar name of Obstruction had been given, was a policy having a definite end—namely, to oppose and ever to delay the passing of certain measures which the hon. Members who pursued that policy believed to be injurious, not only to their country alone, but to the interests of the whole country. That was a kind of Obstruction which he held to be, in the highest degree, legitimate, and without which the House of Commons would be very different to what it was at present. He was tired of hearing of what was being done in foreign countries. They were continually being told—"Look at what Austro-Hungary is doing, what Spain is doing;" and perhaps some day, when Russia had a Parliament, they might hear of what sort of model they would find in Russia. He, however, had always understood that the great name and influence of this Parliament consisted in the fact that it was unlike those foreign Parliaments in the way of doing its Business; and that one great point of dissimilarity which strengthened its influence was, that the rights and voice of small minorities would never be suppressed. It was owing to the struggles of these small minorities that all the great reforms had been introduced into the House of Commons; and revolutions had been averted by those who had had the courage to stand up in that House and speak the truth without fear or favour. He was somewhat surprised to hear the hon. Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) treat this question last night with what seemed to him (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) a needless amount of levity. He had thought that his hon. Friend was exactly one of the men who would most have felt it necessary to secure the old principle of protection for small minorities. His hon. Friend was a man who himself was in charge of various questions which did not commend themselves to the "evident sense" of the majority of the House. It seemed to him (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) that it was a very easy step from the position at which they had now arrived, and not by any means impossible that hereafter the Speaker might take on himself to say that a measure which had been debated over and over again in successive Sessions of Parliament, without making new converts in any Session, had been discussed adequately; that further discussion would be a mere waste of time; and that the evident sense of the House would be in favour of getting rid of what would seem to them a dull and dreary discussion, and bringing the clôture to bear upon the Member who had re-introduced the discussion, it might be on his hon. Friend himself. Accordingly, he might bring the debate to a close with the speech of the Mover and the Seconder, and the simple reply of an opponent. In such a case there would be a positive temptation to the Speaker to exercise his power somewhat sharply; and, indeed, it was difficult to see how a Speaker could preserve the rights of small minorities in a case of that kind. How, in the future, was any Speaker to resist the obvious and earnest demand of the majority to silence the small minority? There would be no escape for small minorities under the pressure of a Rule like this. Again, they were told future Speakers would be impartial like the present, and willing to do what they could for the small minorities of the House. But let them recollect that it would be by no means unlikely that the election of Speaker or Chairman of Committees might be made under different conditions, when this Rule was adopted, from those that now prevailed, and that, under such Rules, there would be an obvious and practical advantage to either side in securing the Speaker or the Chairman as one of their own. The result must be that the election of a Speaker or Chairman would, in the future, be disputed and made a matter of Party struggle. There would be preparations for the event-coming on, canvassing and agreements, and stirring up of the Members on this side of the House and on that, and the election would be the occasion of unseemly struggles and unworthy faction-fighting in the House. And the result would be that the Speaker or the Chairman would go to his place distinctly marked and ticketed as an agent of a Party. That alone would change the whole condition in which they had hitherto carried on their debates. He had already repeatedly said that he did not think there was, or ever had been, any Party in the House anxious to obstruct for the mere purpose of Obstruction. But, supposing there was such a Party, they would still, by the exercise of a little ingenuity, be enabled to carry out the objects they had in view. Such a Party, not of open Obstruction, as had been shown, could, by interposing Questions and interfering not unjustifiably with debate, make their presence so felt as to delay Business without coming under the Rule. Obstruction would be carried on with a subtlety which would defy the efforts of the Speaker to characterize it as Obstruction; only a small minority, an honourable minority, carrying on an open struggle, and anxious to attain its own ends, would have their freedom of speech endangered. Obstruction was a very precious weapon of Parliamentary warfare, which ought to be used rarely, but which in no case should be altogether suppressed. It seemed to him that in putting this Resolution first the Prime Minister had made an obvious, and he might say the vulgar, mistake of putting the cart before the horse. If he had put the other Resolutions first—which he (Mr. Justin M'Carthy) would call the horse—it was quite possible that he might draw the cart, and if the cart was too heavy or cumbrous to be drawn, the cart could be left behind and the horse could go his way without it. There might be no necessity whatever for crushing the liberty of freedom of speech. It was idle to tell them that this instrument, once brought into efficacy, would not be used. It would be often used, and it seemed a certainty that, once the instrument was used, it never could be laid aside. One Session it would be employed in a case where, perhaps, some necessary Business was impeded, then for some measure on which the Government had set their hearts, until Members would come at last to accept without protest their position. They had often heard the familiar quotation from the Poet Laureate, which described the liberty of this country as "slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent;" but, under the operation of the clôture, that would be reversed, and they would see freedom slowly narrowing up from precedent to precedent, and the certain result would be the curtailing of the rights of minorities. That, he thought, was a consequence which might cause the most light-hearted of Her Majesty's Government to pause before agreeing to the passing of the Resolutions. He wished hon. Members on the opposite side, who had Tip to that time been mutes, would take courage and follow their conscientious promptings regarding the Resolution; but if they refused to assert their individual independence, they must bear with others who warned the House against the consequences they foresaw would follow. The Liberal Government had, indeed, done many strange things. They had been told again and again that they need not fear anything, because, under a Liberal Government, it was impossible for any harm to come. He, for one, from recent experience, found it hard to say what was impossible under a Liberal Government after what had happened. He had heard it said by an hon. Member, of their old programme, that they had given the country neither peace, retrenchment, nor reform. Certainly, they had not given them peace; they were also wasteful of the public money; but he could not agree that they had failed in retrenchment as regarded one point, for their liberty of speech was to be greatly retrenched. As to the reforms, they heard of reform in the dim and distant future; but the only reform they knew of at present was that change by which they were reforming off the face of creation one of the best and most useful possessions of a Parliament which called itself free, that which occasioned its debates to be free also.

MR. BAXTER

said, that, as one of the oldest Members of the House, and one who for many years had believed it not only to be desirable, but absolutely necessary to alter the Rules of Procedure of that House with a firm and unsparing hand, he wished to say a few words before the debate closed. The mild, carefully-guarded, very studiously, and scrupulously-limited Resolution which they were now discussing—["Oh, oh!"]—well, that was his deliberate description and opinion of it—would, perhaps, do something to expedite legislation in this House, although, in his opinion, it would not do very much. Therefore, he was prepared to vote for it with pleasure. ["Hear, hear!"] Yes; because he believed that Business in the House at the present moment was at a deadlock; and, therefore, it was no strong statement to say he was prepared to vote for anything which would expedite legislation. He had been for 10 years an advocate for clôture. He advocated clôture when most of those who were now its present supporters would have nothing to do with it; and all the predictions of the awful results which would follow upon its adoption appeared to him, therefore, the veriest chimeras and imaginations of the brain. Why, they were only following, in a very feeble and hesitating way, the example set them by every Legislative Assembly in Europe and America, except those of Sweden and Hungary. An hon. Gentleman (Mr. Dixon-Hartland) last night said Spain had no clôture; but that statement showed he had not read the Paper issued last Session, which contained, on page 16, amended Rules for putting into force the clôture in the Spanish Chamber. The hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett) said a good deal about the bad working of the clôture in the various European countries; but if those countries had found it work so badly, why had they not repealed it long ago? An erroneous impression prevailed in the public mind that the Government had been driven to alter the Rules of the House simply and almost exclusively in consequence of what had been called Irish Obstruction. Now, that was far from being the case. During the 28 years that he had had the honour of a seat in that Assembly, complaints had been constant and loud that that House of Commons, in consequence of obstinate adherence to antiquated and obsolete Rules, had not been able to overtake its admitted Business. Committee after Committee had been appointed to investigate the subject, with most lamentable, and he thought not very creditable, want of success. He had watched the discussions and read the Reports of those Committees with great care, and he must say he had always been struck with, two things—in the first place, with the want of courage on the part of those Committees in proposing alterations and changes that it was obvious to many of them were inadequate, and some of which were incorporated in the Resolutions submitted by the Government; but what struck him most of all was that the leading statesmen on both sides of the House had failed entirely to appreciate and understand the great change which had come over the House of Commons during the last quarter of a century. Why, during the last 25 years, that House had undergone a complete and radical change; and, as he thought, probably the country was not fully aware of it. In former times, it was a sort of club, which was governed in many respects by a sense of unwritten law. The Members belonged chiefly to the aristocratic and landed classes. They were not brought nearly so often into contact with their constituents as now. They did not attend in their places as hon. Members did now, and the great majority shirked work instead of doing as hon. Members now did—going about in all directions to find a grievance to attack or an abuse to reform. They had changed all that. There had come into the House of Commons of late years a great number of earnest, vigorous politicians—men of business, men of common sense, who had been accustomed to speak in their localities, and they had not the slightest intention to come there to sit mute and inglorious upon these Benches. He had ventured to tell his constituents half-a-dozen years ago that the House of Commons would require to take measures of protection against these patriots; because it was quite out of the question to suppose, it was a mere venerable superstition to imagine, that Rules and Regulations which acted very well in the time of Pitt and Fox would be sufficient to guide a House of Commons constituted as it was now. Why, Rules which were amply sufficient to control a House where 40 Gentlemen desired to speak were entirely insufficient where there were 400 anxious to address the Assembly. Now, a great deal had been said about liberty of speech; and if he thought that one-fiftieth part of the dire consequences prophesied by the hon. Gentleman who spoke last would happen in consequence of this Resolution, he would be the last man in the House to vote for it. Could anyone who had sat for 28 years in that House, and could compare its state now with what it was then, when he (Mr. Baxter) entered it, stand up and be able to say that liberty of speech had not been grossly abused, and not by one Party only? He did not allude to the Irish. Party alone. The "patriots" who sat on the Radical Benches, and who advocated great measures of reform, were apt to speak a great deal too long also, and probably there was too much long speaking by both the Front Benches likewise. The rights of minorities were excellent things; but he denied altogether that it was one of the rights of a minority to control and prevent the action of a majority. Now, there were great measures, no doubt, before them in the immediate future. They would be called upon to redistribute seats, to extend the borough franchise to counties, and probably to disestablish the Church. But he did not believe for one moment that any Resolution or set of Resolutions which they could pass would have the slightest effect in preventing all those great questions giving rise to prolonged debates and great Party conflicts. But he put it to every candid mind in the House, apart from those burning political questions altogether, was it not a fact that a vast number of social questions had been shamefully neglected of late years—not by one Party, or the other Party, but simply and solely because of the antiquated Rules of the House, enabling hon. Gentlemen to substitute superfluous, useless, irrelevant talk for useful legislation? The time of the House had been occupied by garrulous people instead of by those in charge of measures which the country ardently demanded. Would not hon. Gentlemen admit that, if the Rules had been altered, as they ought to have been long ago, they should not now have been in this position, that they could not get important Bills of a social character—such as Bills to alter the Bankruptcy Law, to put an end to Corrupt Practices, to supply our cities with water, to alter the Licensing Laws—not only passed, but even the opportunity for discussing them at all? He thought they were all very much to blame that the question of revising and reforming the Rules had not been made a first and a foremost question long ago. He did not think that was a blame which pertained to any particular Party. Their Leaders ought to have placed this question first years ago. Nearly 30 years ago Sir Erskine May published a most interesting article in The Edinburgh Review, in the course of which he said—hon. Members would forgive him for quoting a few sentences— Very many circumstances have contributed to enlarge the powers and increase the activity of Parliament, which of late years has been continually working at high pressure. A vast arrear of legislation has long been accumulating upon us. After a century of inaction, and three and twenty years of war, the statesmen of our own time have to do the work of many generations, to unmake as well as to make laws, to check as well as to expose abuses, and to break down monopolies. But much as they have had to accomplish, and however speedily and well it has sometimes been done, the necessities of our age and country have still kept in advance of their utmost endeavours. Here was another remarkable sentence in the same article— In case, however, the question of clôture should come under consideration, we are able to offer what will be much more persuasive with the House of Commons than any argument—namely, a precedent. On the 9th May, 1604, or nearly 300 years ago, when an hon. Member offered to speak on this matter, it was resolved by the House that no more should speak. The idea that, by means of what he presumed to call again that peaceable instrument, any Ministry would be able to gag the Opposition, would enable any one political Party to put down another, appeared to him utterly preposterous. The country would never for a moment permit such curtailment of debate. Any Minister attempting it would be at once hurled from power. That was not the danger at all. The danger was entirely in a different direction. The danger which the constituencies saw staring them in the face—and they understood the question perfectly, notwithstanding the imputations of ignorance on the other side—the danger which the great majority of the electors of this country saw staring them in the face was this—that the Rules of the House would enable Obstructionists to oppose a measure, and would allow loquacious people who were its friends to talk at such length as to prevent the passing, in any reasonable time, of any measure which the people of the country believed would be for the well-being of the Kingdom at large.

MR. O'CONNOR POWER

said, he objected to the description of the Resolution given by the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Baxter). He denied, as the right hon. Gentleman alleged, that it was a Resolution drawn to protect the rights of minorities in that House. If he (Mr. O'Connor Power) had any strong impression at all about the character of the Resolution, that impression was in a totally opposite direction. Ho looked upon it as most absolute in its terms, most arbitrary in its character, and as likely to be most capricious and crushing in its effect on many occasions where it would be most desirable to prolong debate. Since the first day of the Autumn Session, the Government had shown, in regard to these Rules, the most unconciliatory spirit and attitude. It had rejected every attempt made, not only by private Members, but by the responsible Leaders of the Opposition, to modify this stringent provision. If the House was entitled to draw any inference from that attitude of the Government—as to the exercise of this power in the future—it would be very different from that which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose had deduced. A most important proposal was made to exempt Committees of Supply from the Rule; but it was objected to, and Liberal after Liberal Member rose and tried to persuade the House that discussions in Committee of Supply were not at all matters of so much importance; and those declarations proceeded from hon. Gentlemen who, within his own recollection, in the last Parliament, held a very different opinion as to the duties of hon. Members when the Estimates were before them. All attempts to modify the Rule in the direction of proportionate majorities had been stoutly resisted by Her Majesty's Government. An attempt had been made to give Members dissatisfied with the closing of a debate an opportunity of recording a collective protest against the action of the majority, and that was treated in the same harsh and unconciliatory manner; and they were told that there was no use in relying on the power of a collective protest, because the system of protest was now growing obsolete even in the other branch of the Legislature. The attitude, therefore, of the Government, as regarded the manner in which they had treated the proposals of the Opposition, had afforded only too strong an indication that when they were armed with the clôture, it would be impossible for any part of the Opposition to fairly or fully record their objections to any proposal emanating from the Ministerial Benches. The Secretary of State for the Home Department, the other night, asked, could the House of Commons really do its work? That question had been answered a thousand times from the Irish Benches. He agreed with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the House of Commons, as at present constituted, could not do its work. He never knew a time during his Parliamentary experience when it was really equal to its work; and the question was not whether it could perform its work with the present Rules, but whether the change proposed would enable it to do its work satisfactorily for all the great interests committed to its charge. In his opinion, the Government had approached the settlement of this question at the wrong end. The noble Viscount the Member for Barnstaple (Viscount Lymington), in describing the great material growth of the United Kingdom, said that growth had increased ten-fold the material for legislation. If that was so, did it not follow that it was necessary for the House to relieve itself of the burdens which were now needlessly thrown upon it, in order that it might be free to cope with the increased demands made upon its time? The true remedy was not to be found in restricting the liberties of hon. Members of that House, which were essential alike to the proper transaction of Business and to the protection of the House; but in such a development of the principles of local self-government as would enable local public bodies, not only in Ireland, but in England and Scotland, to transact a large mass of Business which was now thrown upon the hands of the Imperial Parliament. He was opposed to clôture in every shape, but more because of the effect it would have upon political action outside of Parliament, than the effect it would have upon the debating power of the House. The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce) objected to a comparison of the Caucus system in this country with the Caucus in the United States. The only difference he (Mr. O'Connor Power) saw between formal political action in England outside the House of Commons and formal political action in the United States was that in the latter country they had perfected the machine, whereas in England they were but experimenting with a new invention. But, he would say, let the policy of closing debates in Parliament once be combined with that of intimidating Members outside by Caucus organizations, and things would soon wear a very different aspect. In that case, they might prepare themselves to hear the people asked to abolish the system of appointing gentlemen to public offices, and to vote not only for the election of those who were engaged in the Military, Civil, and Naval Departments of the country, but those who were engaged in the grave and solemn duty of administering the Law. When that time arrived and the Caucus had been fully developed, they would see then what the democratic millennium meant, in the perfect approximation of our political system to that of the United States, which he presumed not even the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets would venture to defend. No doubt, the House of Commons would survive the clôture; but it would not preserve, under that system, the dignity of character, and that consideration for the opinions of those who differed from them, which had hitherto characterized their public action in this country. As the result of the clôture, political action of all kinds would be deteriorated. There was one subject in connection with this proposal upon which he had found it utterly impossible to arrive at any idea as to the mind of the Ministry, and that was the subject of Irish Obstruction. The right hon. Gentleman who had preceded him stated that the Obstruction of the Irish Members had not at all been a chief agent in inducing the Government to adopt this policy; but other hon. Gentlemen on the Ministerial side of the House took a totally different view. The noble Viscount the Member for Barnstaple said it was the presence of the Irish Party in the House, constantly talking about legislative independence, that induced him to support the proposal of the Government; but he (Mr. O'Connor Power) trusted that the noble Viscount had taken that unfavourable view of the action of the Irish Members through a want of knowledge of the objects they had in view, and of the results which had heretofore followed their policy, he would not say of Obstruction, but of determined resistance to proposals of which they did not approve. Their opposition was of an impartial character as between Liberals and. Conservatives. He asked English Members, who regarded their action in that light, to try and realize that they had been sent into an Assembly which was not composed in any large degree of their own countrymen, which was composed of men who were separated from them by a hundred considerations, differing from the ordinary sympathies and motives of action which stimulated the people of Ireland. Then they had a minority, coming from a country where freedom of speech and freedom of the Press had been banned, a country which during the 82 years of legislative union had scarcely for one twelvemonth been free from coercive legislation. They saw that minority, in the first instance, trying to interest Members of that Parliament on Irish questions, after having first interested them by desperate efforts; then trying to induce them to accept the conclusions of the majority of the people of Ireland on questions exclusively affecting that country. That had been the position of the Irish Party ever since the Union; and it was only now and again fitfully, and after a period of excitement in Ireland, which it was not desirable should be made a necessary condition of legislative action, that Parliament had shown any disposition to concede the Irish demands. Looking at the matter in that way, he thought, on a fair and full consideration of the whole facts of the case, that the Irish Members would not be seriously blamed by candid and honest politicians for the determined action which they had occasionally adopted in that House. But if he tried to justify their position in that respect, be had still a higher claim upon the sympathies of Members of the Liberal Party. He invited them to look at the reforms which bad been accomplished through the determined action of the Irish Members. To whose action were they indebted for the public attention which was directed to the question of flogging in the Army, and for the reform in the punishment of untried prisoners? He might go through a long list of cases in which similar effects had been secured through the same agency, and he might mention more than one case in which the English Government would have been saved from disgrace, if they had sense and foresight enough to regard the protests of the Irish Party. As an instance, he might justifiably refer to the case of the Transvaal, when nine Members of the Irish Party fought all night to save the House from the consequences of a mistake, their views, if not their tactics, being strongly supported by the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Courtney), at that time a private Member. Looking at the unbending attitude of the Government in reference to every proposal coming from that side of the House, he was afraid that his hon. Friend the Member for the City of Durham (Mr. T. C. Thompson) told the truth when he said that a great deal of this policy had been stimulated by hatred of the Irish. ["No, no!"] Then if it was not stimulated by hatred of the Irish, it was stimulated by fear of the Irish; and, although they knew they could easily relieve themselves from all the embarrassments of Irish Obstruction, by allowing the people of Ireland the privilege of managing purely Irish affairs, they preferred to soothe their own fears, they preferred to indulge their own prejudices, than to do justice to those for whom the Irish Party had vainly pleaded for the privilege of managing their own affairs in Ireland. If the Government were wise, they would have done better by embracing that opportunity of doing something to develop the principle of local self-government, when they had the attention of the whole country directed to the Business of the House of Commons, rather than to seek to put the House in a strait-jacket. They would have seized this occasion for making some concession to the principle which the Irish Party had advocated in that House, and which all the evidences of political action in Ireland showed must be substantially recognized in some form or another before contentment could be established in that country. He did not oppose the Resolution from any unworthy suspicion of the use to which it would be put; he had only to deal with the logical consequences of the policy initiated. If the Government passed that Resolution, they might depend on it, the thing would not stop here. There would be further and further encroachments from the outside. Fresh attempts would continually be made to dictate to Members of Parliament, and in that way Members of Parliament would lose their freedom. There was no end to the passions which they were arousing out-of-doors. It was said the Prime Minister had received bundles of Resolutions; but that would not justify the House in fettering itself. In any city, if politicians were willing to pay the price—if they only stooped low enough, and gave up everything like principle and conscience—they could always get a crowd of brutality and ignorance at their back. That being so, he did not think much weight should be attached to the opinion of the machined politicians outside, to whose noisy outcry the introduction of the clôture was so largely due.

MR. GLADSTONE

The proposition before the House, Sir, is that, having considered the 1st Resolution relating to Procedure for 17 nights, and having taken 17 divisions upon it, we shall, on the Motion of the right hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote), dismiss that Resolution to oblivion and lose the fruit of all our labours; and on this proposition we are engaged in a lengthened debate. I rise, Sir, to take part in that debate, rather than wait for another day of its prolongation, upon the simple ground that my Colleagues do not, and I do not wish, by waiting for its termination in the more ordinary course, to become even tacitly committed to the proposition that we think the prolongation of the debate to be an expedient or useful expenditure of public time. The right hon. Baronet stated last night that there were a large number of Members anxious to address the House, and that statement was true; but it was not the whole truth. It was undoubtedly true that there were a large number of Members, if the reports which have reached me as to the lists in existence on the other side be correct, pledged to address the House; but it was equally true and no less important that there were an extremely small number of Members anxious to hear them. For, Sir, I have had the curiosity—having been, I believe, a patient auditor of this debate for, I will not say absolutely for the whole of the time, but I think for a larger portion of time than any Gentleman whom I now address—[Mr. WARTON: No.]—well, except, perhaps, the hon. and learned Member for Bridport, and I am by no means sure that I may not compete with him in the share of time I have devoted to this debate; but I have taken the opportunity, Sir, of noting, as the interest in the prolongation of the debate is supposed to rely upon the opposite Benches, I have noted the number of Members present on the opposite Benches at different periods of the debate, and at different hours of the night, taking care that the whole of my particulars shall relate to periods when Opposition speakers were addressing the House. Every one of these particulars is during the speeches of opponents of the Resolution. Well, now, on Monday night—I begin with half-past 11 on Monday night—the number of Members on that side of the House was 21 above the Gangway and five below—26 in all. And that was the bloom and flush and youth of the debate, which produced the number of 26. But yesterday at 7 o'clock—not a very bad period—I will not give the distinctions of above and below the Gangway, though I have taken them all down—at 7 o'clock there were 24; at half-past, 20; at 8—no wonder they were then sinking—there were 10; and at half-past 10, notwithstanding that one very distinguished Gentleman on the opposite Bench who is always heard with interest, was speaking, I only observed 28. At a quarter to 12 there were 23, and at midnight there were 18. To-day, at 1 o'clock, there were upon the opposite Bench five Members above the Gangway, and one below the Gangway, and the one below the Gangway was the Member who was addressing the House. At 2 o'clock the total had fallen from six to five; at 3 o'clock, I admit, it had risen to 16, at half-past 3 it was as high as 17, and under the great attraction of the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down 36 hon. Gentlemen were gathered upon the opposite side of the House. Now, this is the manner in which, in those quarters of the House where it is announced that the clôture is the death-knell of Parliamentary freedom, that a serious encroachment on public liberty is being perpetrated, and that the gag is going to be inflicted, the audience displays its interest in the fears which it professes to entertain. In these circumstances, I think I am entitled to say, on behalf of those hon. Members who do think it worth while to attend the House, that there is a good deal of misunderstanding as to the interest taken by the other side of the House in this dilatory rather than useful debate. I admit that, though I always had a high opinion of the speaking powers of the other side of the House, that opinion has been decidedly raised during this discussion, for I did not believe it possible for human ingenuity to have infused so much of at least galvanic life into topics so thoroughly exhausted as the present, and to have established plausible connections between the subject before us and others at what I should have deemed an immeasurable distance; to say nothing of the use of arguments which went far to show that when a numerous body of Members desire the indefinite extension of the debate there is plenty of power for the accomplishment of their end. The right hon. Baronet the Member for Mid Kent (Sir William Hart Dyke) disposed of this question with great facility by alleging that the difficulties of the House were all owing to the mismanagement of the Government. I admit that great authority must attach to the words of a right hon. Gentleman who has so much con- fidence in his own experience; but some of us on this side have sat in the House as long as the right hon. Gentleman—some of us, perhaps, sat here before he was born—and have had something, if not as much, to do with the conduct of Public Business, and we happen to differ from the right hon. Gentleman in our ideas of good management. However, if the matter is to be settled simply upon an ipse dixit, I will not waste the time of the House in discussing cases in which we think the right hon. Gentleman wrong and he thinks himself right. I heard yesterday the speech of an hon. Gentleman to whom, by reason of the blood that runs in his veins as well as his own personal merits—I mean the hon. Member for Wilton (Mr. Herbert)—I can never listen without interest and emotion. The hon. Member stated that people outside the House do not know its Rules—I think he said that not 3 per cent of the people outside knew them—and if that be so, it is a very heavy blow to the noble Lord opposite (Lord Randolph Churchill), who proposed that we should take the judgment of the constituencies on this question. 1 am disposed to admit that people outside are woefully ignorant of the Rules of the House; but there is no such widespread ignorance of the fundamental conditions of the matter. They know that the House has duties to do, and that those duties are not done; they know that in the meantime debates are carried on to a length that they are unable to measure; they cannot, in short, reconcile the redundance of our talk with the paucity of our actions. Therefore, they have made up their minds to instruct the House of Commons to this effect—"Do more and talk less; talk less in proportion to what you do." They know that we are generously expending our mental and physical forces on their behalf; but they know also that the expenditure is so mismanaged as to be attended with no adequate practical results. They wish that the results shall be in proportion to the labour, and my belief is that they have set their hearts on the accomplishment of this great reform. They know nothing of the details of the matter; but they do know that every subordinate assembly in the country has the power and capacity to regulate its own rules of procedure. They give us credit for a similar capacity, and they expect us to act according to the position in which we are placed. I need not dwell at length on the various arguments which have been urged in the whole course of this debate; but I will answer the question put to me by the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Northcote). He asked, in substance—"How do the Government intend that this Rule shall be applied?" Well, of course, it is not a question of our intentions, and the better phrase would be—"How do we expect the Rule to be applied?" I expect that it should be applied according to the mind and discretion of the Speaker, honestly and intelligently interpreting the Resolution of the House, and that his interpretation will be accepted with respect and confidence by every section of the House. The noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton) said last night that the repeal of the Rule would always be impossible. He only gave that as his opinion; but he stated that he would demonstrate that proposition. Singularly enough, after he had made that statement, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) rose and adopted a totally contradictory line of argument, and said—"Pass the Rule you may; but it will afterwards produce a frightful reaction, which cannot fail to sweep the Rule away." Now, I do not anticipate any such frightful reaction. My belief is, that if this Rule passes, as it will, and works badly, if it is found to alter the character of the House and to affect the traditions of the Chair, which are, in my judgment, an absolutely vital and inseparable portion of the traditions of the House, the House, as long as it continues to reflect, as it now does, the spirit of the nation, will find a speedy remedy for the mischief, and will take care that no such evil shall prevail. Our belief is that it will not prevail. But in face of all the intimidating prophecies with which we have been inundated, I say—"Have you no faith? You seem to have none in the Party to which you belong, or in the constitution of the House of Commons. Have you no faith in the people you represent, and do not you know, if these evils follow, the people, when they have to choose their Representatives, will find an effectual remedy?" Complaint has been made that the Resolution is not like a Bill, and that there are not the same repeated opportunities of discussing it. Well, Sir, if it is not like a Bill, it is still less like an Act of Parliament. It is quite true that two votes make a Standing Order of the House—that is, after a series of Amendments have been disposed of, there is a vote on the Resolution and a vote to make it a Standing Order; but there are thus three stages at which hon. Members can speak, and it should not be forgotten that a single vote suffices for the repeal of a Standing Order. It is not like an Act of Parliament, and the alarms and fears of irreparable mischief proceed, consequently, from an entire forgetfulness of the elementary conditions of the case. It is assumed at once that the greatest evils will be introduced by the Resolution, and that the House of Commons will never have the intelligence or the virtue by a single vote to apply the remedy. The noble Lord opposite (Lord Randolph Churchill) says that the Tory Party have a good war cry. I take this opportunity of thanking the noble Lord for the public service that he has done in his excellent argument as to the trafficking between the two Front Benches which must be the inevitable result of a proportionate majority. One great good has certainly been attained in the course of this debate, long as it has been; and that is the result that the proportionate majority, as a means of dealing with the subject of the closing power, will not, after what took place the other night, be heard of again. I thank the noble Lord for the contribution which he made to bringing about that result. But the noble Lord says that freedom of speech is a good war cry for the Tory Party. Free speech an excellent war cary! When has the noble Lord's Party wanted a good war cry? Was it not a good war cry against the Dissenters to plead the English doctrine of Church and State? Was it not a good war cry against the Roman Catholics—the interests of Protestant institutions in danger? Was it not a good war cry during the passing of the Navigation Laws—the Fleet, the ships, the Colonies, and commerce, which constitute the greatness of the Empire? If these inventions of war cries are to be the test of political wisdom and success, I at once bow to the noble Lord, and I grant that no- thing can be more perfect. But we have two things to do—we have to inquire, not only whether freedom of speech is about to be invaded, but also whether it now exists. Our contention is that freedom of speech does not now exist, and that the House is in a very great degree enslaved; because by the use made of its Rules by a portion of its Members—I draw no invidious distinctions, I make no selections from one quarter or another—the House is incapacitated from working out the ends which it was sent here to accomplish. Therefore the House, as a whole, has not freedom of speech, insomuch as it has not the means of attaining its own essential purposes through the regular and legitimate organs of debate. But, Sir, I may make a protestation on behalf of a large portion of those who sit on this side of the House, and who, I do not hesitate to say, have been compelled, to a degree such as I have never known equalled, to forego the privilege, and even to compromise the duty of speech, for fear they should still more aggravate the difficulties of the situation. Sir, it is the unbounded licence of a few which has riveted this yoke upon the shoulders of the House, and the question is whether the House will make the necessary effort to break down that yoke. Now, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Kent (Sir William Hart Dyke) used a most extraordinary expression, and I do not know whether he had considered the meaning of his words—"It is not the question," he said, "whether injustice has been committed, but whether the minority think that it is committed." That, Sir, is a portentous declaration; that the criterion of proper actions is not to be found in the inquiry into the question whether the thing done is just or unjust, but is to be found simply in ascertaining the effect it has upon certain persons. I hesitate to accept that doctrine. If it is good for one portion of the House, it is good for all portions of the House; and I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, who has so much confidence in the opinions he delivers, and does not seem to think they can be in any respect the subject of question—I appeal to him to be allowed to enter a modest plea against that doctrine. We must, after all, have the power of examining into the bases of all these dismal prophecies—of everything that has been said about the Caucus, about the death-knell of Parliamentary liberty, about freedom of speech, the degradation of the Chair, and all the dismal topics which have been laid before us. They are but the different limbs of a body which has but one neck. Let us see whether that neck is a real neck, or a merely visionary one. What is the proof that freedom of speech is going to be interfered with? What says the hon. Member who has just addressed us on the part of the Irish Members. He says he does not understand in what respect his Party are charged in this matter. I am much surprised that he does not understand it. I should have thought, observing the speeches of the Government, observing that we have in no way founded ourselves upon the supposed misdeeds of any particular number of persons in the House, he must have known very well that we did not consider the basis of this measure to be the action of himself or his Friends—that is to say, the action of himself and his Friends as contradistinguished from all other Parties in the House. What we consider is that this disease is spread so far and wide that it has come to affect the general tone and manner of discussion in the House. Certainly, we thought there were gross and aggravated cases in that quarter of the House. But, looking back upon those cases in the calmness of historical retrospect, we are free to confess that the Gentlemen who hold such a position on behalf of the Sister Island are entitled to be judged in this matter with a peculiar indulgence. What is really the position of Ireland with regard to this matter? No doubt, if there is going to be a suppression of free speech, Ireland will suffer with the rest. But let us look at the question for a moment from another point of view. I will speak with frankness what is my own mind with respect to those Irish Representatives who are accustomed to term themselves the Irish Party. Among them it appears to me it is possible to discern two currents of feeling. They are all of them what is called Home Rulers. Their object is to establish, in some way or other, what they sometimes call a National, sometimes an Independent, it may be a separate, Legislative Assembly. Upon that point they are united. Now, Sir, let me make this frank admission. It has sometimes appeared to many of us that there is a portion, at any rate, of that Party who, to attain their end, wish to make the transaction of Business in this House, while they are in it, impossible; whereas there are unquestionably others—and it is our duty to believe that that is the prevailing current of feeling—who, believing it to be vital to the existence of their country that they should attain legislative independence, yet are extremely desirous to turn to the best account the machinery that exists, in order to supply, as they best can, the legislative wants of Ireland. Now, looking at the matter from that point of view, what are we engaged in? I venture to give my own opinion upon the interests of Ireland. About the Irish vote, I have no business, and very little inclination, to speak. But I have had to do for many years with Irish affairs, and perhaps I am entitled to give my opinion without being guilty of an undue amount of arrogance or presumption. And I submit this opinion—that a more complete or perfect system of Rules for the improvement of the conduct of the Business of this House is essential for meeting the wants of Ireland. If there be no time for English and Scotch legislation, there will be no time for Irish legislation. The English and Scotch Members are now exerting themselves to the uttermost as Representatives of the people for the purpose of enlarging the fund of time at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of legislation. I wish to ask those Irish Members whom I have described as anxious to turn to the best account the legislative machinery of the House, what will be the effect upon the interests of Ireland, what will be the effect upon the claims of Ireland to a large allowance of time from the limited fund which is at the disposal of the House, if, while English and Scotch Members have striven and done their utmost to increase that fund, the Members for Ireland have done their utmost to diminish and contract it? That is my view of the interests of Ireland. It appears to me, not only equally with England and Scotland, but even more than England and Scotland, it is essential to Ireland that there should be a better arrangement of Business in this House, in order that her demands may be particularly considered and intelli- gently met. Was the hon. Member (Mr. O'Connor Power) in jest when he said—"Why do you not take advantage of this opportunity to advance the power of local self-government in Ireland?" Well, Sir, I tell the hon. Gentleman there is not a subject which I could name on which I personally feel a more profound anxiety than on the establishment of local self-government in Ireland, and local self-government upon a liberal and effective basis. But it is a mockery to say—"Establish local self-government in Ireland"—that is a great and difficult subject—and then to say, "I will, by my vote, by my speech, and by my influence, do my best to narrow the time during which alone you can give local self-government or any other boon to Ireland." I need not detain the House long with this question, which is capable of being brought to an issue more satisfactorily than by prophetic dispute and discussion. We say there will be no damage from this Rule establishing the principle of a closing power, and the answer of the Opposition is that that is no argument. They say there will be very great difficulty from the exercise of this closing power, and that they consider a very good, argument. Our anticipations of the future are, I admit, only anticipations; but they are as good as those which come from other quarters. But I submit to the House that this matter does not depend on anticipation alone. We have had some trial of it, and we know what the House can do, and what the House does, under the operation of a closing power. It is not a matter of speculation or prophecy. We had the closing power enforced last year. Now, I call the attention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Gibson) to this. The right hon. Member and his friends have been freely applying to our measure for establishing a closing power the invidious name of the gag. Some have even gone the extraordinary length of absorbing to us—and especially to my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Dodson), as his own account of this measure, that which he quoted from a speech from the other side. Now, I want to know if hon. Gentlemen on the other side admit that last year, when they placed the Regulations of Procedure in the Speaker's hands, they assisted in applying the gag to Members of this House? [Cheers from Irish Members.] I am not arguing now with the hon. Members from Ireland, but with hon. Gentlemen opposite, who have freely bestowed this invidious and offensive name upon the measure which we propose. Last year they assisted us most cordially to put into operation a far more severe system of closure than this. It is quite true that the assent of three-fourths of the House was required; but that is nothing whatever to the purpose. ["Oh, oh!"] Before you determine by your murmurs whether it is to the purpose or not, perhaps you will allow me to say what the purpose is. The purpose is not to compare the means of putting this power in force; but simply to test the operation of the power, and ask the House whether it was a gag or not. I admit the means of putting it into operation were different; but with that I have nothing to do. I want to test the severity of the power we put in operation. Well, the power of last year was a far severer power than the power which is now proposed. [Mr. WARTON: It was only temporary.] Why does the hon. and learned Gentleman interrupt me with totally irrelevant remarks? I am only showing the actual effect of the power in operation. No doubt it was temporary. But I want to know whether hon. Gentlemen opposite did or did not impose a temporary gag upon freedom of speech? [Mr. WARTON: Yes.] Well, I am extremely grieved to hear that he did it with that intention. I have no such intention. But I want to show whether, in point of fact, the gag was in force, because that is the purpose with which I speak, and the test to which I wish to bring your prophecies—the test of fact and actual experience. The gag of last year was more severe, because while the first point, that of putting the Question, was in operation it was very much the same as it is now, yet the most stringent Rule was introduced that in Committee—a tremendous Rule—no Member might speak on any point more than once; and not only so, but a closure was introduced into that Rule—for which I am responsible—applicable not only to single debates, but to actual stages, so that those two vitally important stages of a Bill, the Committee and the Report, were liable to be closed by an arrangement under which a time was fixed, and if all the Amendments were not disposed of when the hand of the clock pointed to that hour, every Question must be put and decided without debate. So that the severity of that Rule, when it was in operation, was infinitely greater than that of the Rule now proposed by the Government possibly could be. Do not let it be said I am now pointing to the operation of that Rule as a measure of what the operation of the Government Rule will be. I am pointing to it as something infinitely beyond the measure of what the operation of the Government Rule can possibly be; and yet, so approaching it, I ask hon. Gentlemen opposite, I would almost ask the Representatives from Ireland whether it was really a gag? [Mr. HEALT: Of course it was.] Well, Sir, then I must say that if it was a gag it was an instrument more humane than I had been led to suppose, and the whole of this system is much more genial and approachable—not "harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose"—but less cruel and more humane than I think anyone would admit. We have never spoken of it as a thing in itself desirable. Then, Sir, it comes to this. Let us see what has happened under the operation of this infinitely severer system of last year. Last year the question of Irish coercion, it will be remembered, was discussed for 11 successive days upon the Address to the Crown, and many more days were spent on the very beginnings of the question. But at a certain date the Rules of Urgency were introduced, and then 16 days more were occupied in the discussion of the Bill under those Rules. It certainly was, Sir, a peculiar Bill, and one demanding the closest and most careful discussion. But it was a short Bill—it was a Bill the enacting part of which was comprised in two pages of the Statutes and in two clauses, certainly not complex in its provisions, but of a comparatively simple character. And 16 days were given to the discussion under the Rules of Urgency. Do not let it be supposed for a moment that I am now making this a matter of accusation. I am not doing anything of the kind. I am only showing the time spent on the Bill. There were four days on the second reading, eight in Committee, three on Report, and one on the third reading, making 16 days in all for the discussion of these two pages, under a system of clôture infinitely more severe than the terms of our 1st Resolution can by any possibility bring into action. Well, Sir, I say that though on that occasion it had become necessary, in the judgment of the vast majority, for the House to limit the freedom of speech in a degree in which I fervently hope we may never be driven to limit it again, yet, under these Rules so limiting it, 16 days were given; and it would, in my judgment, be absurd to say that those 16 days did not, on the whole, give to the Irish Members a fair opportunity, a considerable opportunity—I will not say a full one, for that would seem too much to recognize the arrangement as normal, but a fair and considerable opportunity of making known the merits of their case, and the wants and wishes—as they Interpreted them—of their country. Therefore, the test of experience, applied to the actual case which we had in operation under our eye last year, reduces to insignificance and to futility the prophecies which we have now so freely indulged in as to the application of a far milder scheme to a far more powerful and a far more numerous Party. Well, therefore, Sir, looking at this as a matter of business, and endeavouring to get rid of all heat and passion and prejudice in the matter, I hold that our proposals have been justified from first to last. It is charged against us that we admit no Amendment. Yes, Sir; but whenever we admit an Amendment we are charged by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote) with vacillation and with want of decision. We have been glad to be able to admit certain Amendments; but, undoubtedly, we have steadily and stoutly refused, and shall steadily and stoutly refuse, to admit Amendments which appear to us to be inconsistent with the great purpose of these Resolutions. I may say, Sir, it is no longer a matter of mere prophecy and anticipation. We know what we are dealing with. We know it from experience. We know it from the experience of something more stringent and worse by far than anything that can be extracted from these Resolutions; and I fall back upon the striking passage in which Lord Salisbury, in 1877, described, in the House of Lords, the state of Business in the House of Commons, when, in language of the greatest power and vigour, he went over the whole circle of our mischiefs and our difficulties, and expressed his full and confident belief that the great Assembly intrusted with the representation of the interests and wishes of the people of this country would never suffer its traditions of 600 years to be lost in an. atmosphere of futile talk.

MR. E. STANHOPE

said, the Prime Minister had remarked that he did not think the prolongation of this debate had served any useful purpose; and, certainly, from the manner in which he had spoken of the speeches of Members on the Opposition Benches, without advancing any argument in reply to them, he should be disposed to agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Something had been said about so few Members being present during the discussion, a very dangerous argument from the Prime Minister, who knew that, as in the case of Indian affairs, the interest of the House ought not to be measured by the attendance; but the reason why so few Members were present was because, in consequence of the action of hon. Gentlemen opposite, the debate was an unreal one, no attempt being made to answer the arguments advanced against the Resolution. The Opposition must think not only of the small number of Members who came forward—of the small number who came forward to answer their arguments—but they were bound to think also of the country, which was listening to the debate with very great interest. If the debate did nothing else, it would help to clear away the confusion with which the question had been surrounded by the speeches of the Government. The Opposition agreed with the Government to the fullest extent in the desire to carry forward as satisfactorily as possible the Business of the House; but they denied that the particular proposal now under discussion was either the best or the wisest method, or, indeed, an adequate method, of dealing with the existing evil. The Prime Minister had told the Opposition that they had a very good war cry. Well, he agreed with the right hon. Gentleman. He thought they had a good war cry. Freedom of discussion was about as good a war cry as they could have. It was a pretty safe war cry too, and, for his own part, he felt inclined to stick to it; but the right hon. Gentleman had in the speech just delivered raised a very dangerous war cry. The Prime Minister had spoken of the support which the Conservative Party gave to the closing power in the proposals of last year. He did not expect that they would have been taunted for having done so. [Mr. GLADSTONE: I used no taunts.] It was true that they supported that closing power. They supported the Government in carrying out what they had declared to be absolutely necessary in the interests of the country; but, so far from desiring to increase that power, he believed it was owing to their action that it was not applied in Committee of Supply. But with regard to the still more dangerous war cry the Prime Minister had put forward, the right hon. Gentleman had made, if not a bid, certainly a very good argument in favour of the proposition that the Irish Members should now come and vote with the Government. He had told them that if the proposal of the Government was carried their demands would be more easily considered and met; and he had put in the foreground of what should be considered the question of local self-government in Ireland. He had stated that no one regarded this question with more profound anxiety for its settlement upon a liberal and effectual basis. Why should the question of local self-government be put forward in this discussion on the question of Procedure?

MR. GLADSTONE

It was by the and learned Member for Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power), who immediately preceded me, that the question was introduced.

MR. E. STANHOPE

said, that that did not make it more relevant to this discussion; and, at any rate, he could not understand why the right hon. Gentleman's pointed answer referring to local self-government was made unless it was for the very obvious purpose to which he had alluded. The affection of the right hon. Gentleman for local self-government in Ireland was of somewhat recent birth, because during his previous years of Office the only proposal his Government had voluntarily brought forward was one to enable the Local Government Board in Ireland to compel the Board of Guardians to pension their officers whether they liked it or not. The right hon. Gentleman said that there was no time for the discussion of Irish affairs, but that they might leave the Irish Members to find opportunity for such a discussion; but he had not the slightest doubt, whether this Resolution were passed or not, the Irish Members were quite capable of taking care of themselves. The Prime Minister had, on a former occasion, referred to the statement made by him (Mr. Stanhope) that the effect of the Resolution would be to put down the Tory minority. Well, it had not been disguised that, in the opinion of many Members, the Resolution had that object in view. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) and the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Jesse Collings) had asserted that in the most pointed and conclusive manner. Of the Government itself, no two Members had put forward the same reason for the adoption of this Rule; and not an individual Member of the Government had maintained the same ground in the different speeches they had made. At the Mansion House last year the Prime Minister had said that its object was to enable the Government to pass a Bankruptcy Bill and a Floods Prevention Bill. Then he said it was to be introduced as an experimental Standing Order; then that a two-thirds' majority was to be accepted; then he backed out of that proposal; and now it appeared there were two classes of measures before the House, Party and non-Party measures, and that the object of the Resolution was to pass the Party measures. Then it was said that its object was to put down bores and to restrain the licence of a few. With that they agreed; but the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Broadhurst) told them that the clôture was to stop other people, and let robust Radicals have their way. Again, they were told that it was to put down prolix; speeches and compress debate. They agreed with that, too; but that result would not be obtained by the Resolution before the House. The Speaker now chose those who were to address the House; and how, under this Resolution, were they going to keep out the more pushing Members in favour of the more modest Members, such as the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere)? They would not have any shorter speeches, though they might have fewer speeches. Then it was said that it would put a stop to dilatory Motions. It would have no such effect whatever. Then they came to Obstruction; but this Resolution went far beyond the necessities of the case. The absurdity of the whole proposition was that Obstruction was admitted to have been practised by a small minority, and this Resolution was drawn to protect a small minority, and to silence a large one, which had never been accused of Obstruction at all. It was said that small minorities would be protected by the Speaker; but the fact remained that absolute power was to be placed in the hands of the majority. In his opinion, there was nothing to stand in the way between the Tory Party and the Radical Millennium except the Speaker, and that appeared to him to be one of the most serious dangers with which they had to contend. So long as the present Speaker sat in the Chair they knew they would be protected; but, as he had said, they were in the hands of a mere majority, and Parliamentary life would undoubtedly change; indeed, it had changed already. It had been already urged that when this Resolution was passed the Speaker must at once use the clôture in order to pass the remaining Resolutions. When the progress of degeneration had once commenced its progress would be rapid, and it would be impossible for either the Speaker or the Chairman to resist a pressure brought to bear upon him. He should have liked to hear from the Prime Minister any proposal or suggestion that some time would be allowed to elapse before making this Resolution a Standing Order. The Resolution, if passed in its present form, must make a permanent change in the character of the House, and it would be the first step in the downward course of the House of Commons.

And it being a quarter of an hour before Six of the clock, the Debate stood adjourned till To-morrow.

House adjourned at fourteen minutes before Six o'clock.