§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH), (Strand, Westminster)in rising to move the third Rule against "disorderly conduct," said, he proposed the Rule with great regret; but scenes that were in the memory of hon. Members, and which occurred during the last Session, showed the necessity of such a Rule. The Government felt that if the House was to maintain its ancient character, power should be given to the Speaker or the Chairman of Committee to name a Member on the spot when the conduct of the Member was grossly disorderly. He thought the Rule would recommend 1678 itself to the good feeling of hon. Members on both sides of the House, for it was not directed against any one section of Members, but against disorderly Members generally whoever they might be.
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Mr. Speaker or the Chairman do order Members whose conduct is grossly disorderly to withdraw immediately from the House during the remainder of that day's sitting; and that the Sergeant-at-Arms do act on such orders as he may receive from the Chair, in pursuance of this Resolution. But if, on any occasion, Mr. Speaker or the Chairman deems that his powers under this Standing Order are inadequate, he may name such Member or Members in pursuance of the Standing Order (Order in Debate), or he may call upon the House to adjudge upon the conduct of such Member or Members.
Provided always, That Members who are ordered to withdraw under this Standing Order, or who are suspended from the service of the House under the Standing Order (Order in Debate), shall forthwith withdraw from the precincts of the House, subject, however, in the case of such suspended Members, to the proviso in that Standing Order regarding their service on Private Bill Committees."—(Mr. W. H. Smith.)
§ MR. WHITBREAD (Bedford)said, he wished to say a few words on this proposal of the Government; and, first, with regard to the last words of the first paragraph—
Or he may call upon the House to adjudge upon the conduct of any such Member or Members.He could not understand what was the meaning of those words. There were two alternatives. First, that the Chair might order a Member to withdraw from the House altogether, which was a ready way of putting an end to disorderly conduct; secondly, the Speaker or Chairman might act under the Rule and name a Member in pursuance of the Standing Order. But he might also call upon the House to adjudge upon the conduct of the Member. The two first cases were governed by Rules which prevented debate; but this last proposal would immediately throw the whole question open, and there would be a debate as to whether the hon. Member had been so disorderly as to justify the punishment which might be given. It seemed to him, therefore, that instead of saving time this Rule would certainly waste time, and instead of quelling disorder it would rise to greater heat. Then, with regard to the latter part of the Rule, he would ask the right hon. 1679 Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) whether there had been any practical inconvenience in allowing a Member who had been suspended to remain within the precincts of the House? If in practice that had not been the case, then, he said, this was a needless aggravation of the punishment. They called on a Member to be in his place to serve on a Committee on a Private Bill, and yet they were to exclude him from all other service. He could not think that this was necessary. If the authorities of the House were to say that it was necessary, then he submitted that it should be in the judgment of the Chair, at the moment, if necessary, to order the Member to withdraw from the precincts of the House. One could hardly imagine such a case; but in case of need the decision should lie with the Speaker or the Chairman of Ways and Means. Upon the general question of this Rule he pointed out that it was a grave and new power to place in the hands of the Chair. He was not prepared to say that he did not think some cause might have arisen for increased power in this direction. It was, after all, a mitigation of the severity of the existing Rule, which ordered that, if a Member was named for disorderly conduct, he should be suspended for at least a week. The present Rule was so far a mitigation that it provided for suspension for one night and no longer. It was true that this was left entirely in the discretion of the Speaker and the Chairman; and after the best consideration he had been able to give to the subject, he was not unwilling to intrust that limited power to those high officials, believing as he did that when the responsibility rested entirely upon them, and when they were not afterwards sheltered in any way by a Vote of the House, they would be very slow to exercise these powers. And it was, after all, a question on which the Speaker or the Chairman were able at once to pronounce judgment. They were witnesses of the disorder; and, that being so, he thought they might safely be trusted never to suspend the Member under this Rule unless the disorder was gross and patent. That brought him to the consideration of a point on which he desired to address the House. He trusted that if ever this Rule were put in operation, both those 1680 high officials would have regard to the fact whether or not there had been provocation. He did feel, after what had happened in the House in recent years, that there was some necessity for making a protest on that ground. They had heard hon. Members in that House make charges against other hon. Members which he ventured to say, if such things continued, would make it impossible to hope for order in debate. They were quite aware of the decision which Mr. Speaker had given when appealed to; and he knew that it was strictly in accordance with precedent — namely, that a Member making a charge made it upon his own responsibility. That was the decision in old days; but in old days with that decision there went this security, that it was quite certain that if the hon. Member made a heinous charge against another, and failed to go to the proof, he would meet with the contempt of all Parties in the House. He was not so sure that that security existed now. Those were days when Parliament was jealous of the honour of every Member who sat in that House; those were the days before Parliament had surrendered its guardianship of the honour and character of its Members; those were the days before it was not the fashion to tell hon. Members against whom charges were made in that House— "If you think you are aggrieved, you can right yourselves in the Law Courts." He did not want, however, to rake up that controversy; that matter was settled, he thought lamentably, on a former occasion; but he did say that if the same line of conduct was to be pursued in future, and they had had some indication of it during the present Session—if hon. Members were to be allowed to make charges of the gravest and most heinous character against other hon. Members of that House, before any heat or disorder was produced on an occasion of the kind, it would be necessary for the whole House to have regard to the question as to whether provocation had been offered or not. He had thought it necessary to say these few words on a question which seemed to him of late years to have become very grave, and he hoped that in future charges of this nature would not be made unless hon. Members were ready to go on to the proof not elsewhere, but in that House.
§ MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)said, it was impossible to his mind to approach the consideration of that question without taking into view the effect which might possibly come about with regard to the relations of the Chair and Members in different parts of the House. He was strongly of opinion that the power to punish any Member of the House ought to be retained absolutely within the immediate control of the House itself, and that the liberty, credit, and position of a Member of the House ought not to be placed at the mercy of any man, no matter whether of the Speaker or of the Chairman of Committees. He did not intend to go into the matter which had been alluded to by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread), but he (Mr. Dillon) said that it was a matter of the utmost delicacy for the Chair, and one which the Speaker or the Chairman of Committees would eagerly wish to be relieved from, to decide in a time of great excitement in that House, when retorts and charges were hurled from one side to another, upon whom the blame rested. He remembered an hon. Member who never rose in that House without making the most provocative and deliberate charges against other hon. Members. That hon. Member had made charges of that character against himself which on one occasion had caused him to appeal to the Chair for the protection which he received. He had read the other day the boast made by the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Sanderson), who said at Brighton that when he rose in the House he always succeeded in provoking Irish Members to rise and reply to him.
§ COLONEL SAUNDERSON (Armagh, N.)I rise to Order. I beg the hon. Member's pardon. I did not say on all occasions. I said on some occasions.
§ MR. DILLONsaid, the observation of the hon. and gallant Member went to strengthen the argument of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bedford. The hon. and gallant Member made a boast of an achievement in that direction, and had announced that so long as he had a seat in the House he would pursue the some course. He (Mr. Dillon) said that as long as that course was persisted in, it would certainly 1682 aggravate the difficulty of maintaining order in that House. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House had stated on introducing this Rule that it was not aimed against any Party of the House. He trusted that that might be said of all those Rules. The Government stated that this Rule was equally necessary to control their adherents below the Gangway as to control Members in other parts of the House. He trusted hon. Gentleman opposite would follow out a totally different line of conduct in the future, and he might be allowed to say that if they did, there would be no need to apply the Rule to hon. Members on his side. If there had ever been disorder in the House he claimed the right to say that it had not had its origin among hon. Members on these Benches; if it had taken the shape of violence or disorder coming from the representatives of Irish constituencies, it had been the result of a set that had been made upon a certain section of the House. An attempt had been made to treat them differently from the way in which any other section of the House had been treated. Coming to the more general question of the operation of the Rule the fear he had —looking at the matter simply from a point of view of a Member of the House —was, that it would inevitably tend to make the Speaker a partizan. Let the House consider what occurred in the American House of Representatives; they saw there a fierce Party struggle being carried on and the Speaker expected to carry out the wishes of his supporters and that he was a slave of his Party in the sense of carrying out their views. Again, in one of the great Dependencies of this country—in the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, where very stringent powers were in the hands of the Speaker, they had seen every single Member of the Front Opposition Bench successively carried out of the House by the orders of the Speaker, the Secretary of State for the Home Department denounced, and the Speaker called a dirty tool of the Government. He did not say they would ever reach that point; but he did say that such an example ought to carry with it a warning to Members of that House before they went many steps in that direction. He regarded it as a most unfortunate thing that in carrying 1683 out a penal law, which always left more or less bad feeling in the mind of an hon. Member to whom it was applied, the Speaker should not have the protection of a Vote of the House, but should be compelled to execute the sentence himself. Take a case of which he had been a witness in that House, where the Speaker or Chairman of Committees named a Member to the House in mistake, being under the impression that he was the originator of the disorder. He would, under this Rule, leave the hon. Member so situated under a stronger feeling of having suffered unjustly. He considered this an unnecessary Rule, and as such he protested against it. So far from its having a good effect, he believed its effect would be exactly contrary. If Irish Members in that House were treated with ordinary decency and civility, there would, so far as they were concerned, be no need for any Business Rules whatever, and they would then be able to carry on the work of the House on those old lines which had obtained for centuries; whereas the power now sought to be placed in the Chair would, in his opinion, not only detract from the precedings of the House, but also very much detract from the authority of the Speaker.
§ LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL (Paddington, S.)said, he was sorry to hear the line of argument pursued by the two hon. Gentlemen who had preceded him, All the objections which had been raised as to the injustice of this Rule applied with far greater point to the original rule, by which the Speaker, with the consent of the House, was empowered to suspend a Member from his duty. The Rule, as now proposed, was a distinct mitigation of the very heavy penalties which followed on a Member being named by the Chair. The House, as a rule, would never refuse to support the Chair, and thus this Rule was a mitigation of the severity of the former one. With regard to the person to whom the Rule was to apply, it must often happen in an Assembly of 670 Members that some individual—overcome with intense excitement or emotion —should be guilty of some breach of Order. All this Rule did was to give power to the Chair to order him to withdraw, and thus give him time to come to a more reasonable frame of mind. 1684 With respect to the words of the Rule, he would ask the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury. It appeared to him that lines 5 to 10 of the proposed Rule were unnecessary. Three alternatives were given. The Speaker might order a Member to withdraw, he might name a Member, or he might call upon the House to adjudge upon the conduct of such Member. What the latter alternative meant he did not know. It certainly required explanation. In his opinion it would be quite sufficient for the Speaker or the Chairman to have the power of relieving the House from the presence of an hon. Member who was labouring under temporary excitement without repeating in the Rule the words which, under the existing Rule, gave the Speaker or the Chairman power to name any hon. Member. He also objected to the saving Proviso. He considered the last words of the Rule—
Subject, however, in the case of such suspended Members to the proviso in that Standing Order regarding their service on Private Bill Committeestotally unnecessary. For these reasons he would suggest the omission of lines 5 to 10, and a portion of lines 13 to 15.
§ THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES) (Cambridge University)said, he was glad that his noble Friend (Lord Randolph Churchill) had taken exception to the language of the Resolution, as his doing so would enable him (Mr. Raikes) to explain the matter to the House. The proposed Rule had been drawn with the object of placing before hon. Members at a glance the three classes of offences which the Rule was intended to deal with. In the first place, there was to be placed in the hands of the Speaker or the Chairman the power which, he believed, existed in the case of the Chairman of almost every public meeting—that of requiring a person to withdraw who, by offensive and improper conduct, was bringing scandal on the proceedings and interrupting the course of Public Business. That power did not at present exist, but it was a mitigating Resolution, because it would enable the Speaker to exercise that power of summary jurisdiction by requiring a disorderly Member at once to withdraw, in which case the withdrawal would only cover the whole of that Sitting, without being under the 1685 necessity of submitting his conduct to the House, and thereby calling down upon him a punishment of at least one week's exclusion. In the second place, that was to say, a graver breach of order in Debate, the Speaker would exercise the power given to him by the Standing Order with regard to order in Debate, and by naming a Member would submit his conduct to the House, which, if it thought fit, might then proceed to pass upon him a sentence of one week's exclusion, or for repeated offences a longer exclusion. But in each of these cases the decision might be summary. While there might be minor offences which might be thus summarily punished, there remained a graver class of offences which could not be decided in that summary manner. In the third place, it further recited the power of the Speaker or the Chairman in the event of an hon. Member being guilty of a still more grave offence to call upon the House to adjudge upon his conduct, when a more severe form of punishment might be inflicted upon him. In such a case a debate might probably arise. It had not been deemed expedient, however, to relieve hon. Members who were so ordered to withdraw, or who were so suspended, from service on Private Bill Committees. It would certainly be more consonant with the dignity of the House that a Member who had committed so gross a violation of order in Debate should bring upon himself exclusion not only from the House itself, but also from its precincts. This Resolution had been drawn with special care. The intention was not to make a change in the practice of the House, except in the one respect of giving the Speaker power to inflict minor and summary punishment in the case of minor offenders. He deprecated all suggestions that the decline in Parliamentary manners in recent years had been brought about by hon. Members sitting in any particular quarter of the House, and especially regretted the somewhat inflammatory suggestions of the hon. Member for Bedford, which seemed calculated to lead to mutual recrimination.
§ MR. JOHN MORLEY (Newcastle-upon-Tyne)said, he concurred in the remark that it was desirable to discuss this Rule in an impartial temper, but he did not think that the observations of the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. 1686 Whitbread) were in the slightest degree of an inflammatory character. It was a matter of common knowledge that there had been instances of grossly disorderly conduct, which were undoubtedly due to regrettable provocation, and it was right to ask the House to bear in mind the possibility of such deplorable contingencies. If this Rule had proposed to extend the powers of the Chair with reference merely to offences which were aimed at by Standing Order No. 12, he should have had great difficulty in assenting to it, because, although it was true they had confidence in the impartiality of the Chair, nevertheless the safeguard of the assent of the House, which had been dwelt upon by some, had never seemed to him to be an adequate one. It meant, after all, the consent of the majority, and the majority might be depended upon to assent to the punishment of a Member of the minority. [Cries of "Oh, Oh!"] He did not say that that would be a special defect of a Conservative majority. The Rule, as he understood from the explanation, was to be applied not merely to offences mentioned in Standing Order No. 12, but also to a new offence; it was aimed at the new offence of grossly disorderly conduct. It was an offence which no section of the House could approve of or sympathize with, and the punishment that the Rule alloted to it seemed to him to be a punishment not unworthy of the nature of the offence; it was not excessive, and it marked the sense of the House that offences of this sort should be promptly dealt with. But the last two lines of the Rule he did not see any necessity for. He should have thought the Rule would have been much simpler and equally efficient if the last two lines were left out. Upon the point of exclusion from the precincts of the House he had no particular feeling; but he knew there was a feeling against Members who had been subjected to censure appearing in the precincts of the House as if no decision against them had been pronounced. While he should be as jealous as any Member could be of interfering with fair liberty of discussion, he could not see why any occupant of the Chair should be deprived of that power of peremptorily repressing grossly disorderly conduct which was possessed by the chairman of every public meeting.
§ MR. T. P. O'CONNOR (Liverpool, Scotland)said, he should have thought that this Rule would have been resented by every Member of the House as an insult to his self-respect. He wished he could induce hon. Members opposite to agree that a Member of that House should be regarded in the light of something more than his personal capacity. Every man in that House was the freely chosen Representative of tens of thousands of persons outside its walls, and it was from that fact that the dignity of a Member of the House was derived. The provisions of this Rule were an insult to the House of Commons, and were a great deal more like the powers of a schoolmaster dealing with his pupils than those which ought, in his opinion, to be vested in one who presided over the deliberations of Members of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster General (Mr. Raikes) had put the case with great lucidity and with his usual courtesy, and he might perhaps be allowed to say that if all speeches were made in the same manner there would be no need at all for the Rule under consideration; but while they had Members going about the country boasting of their powers of vicarious vituperation, then he said the time had come when some such Rule might be required. Would anyone say that it conduced to the dignity of that House to enact that when a Member had been excluded from that Assembly by the presiding officer, a police constable outside should be at liberty to seize him and drive him out of the precincts of the House? He had seen the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh) seized by the police and attendants, and a more disgusting and scandalous spectacle he had never witnessed. He was not at the time on the same amicable terms as now with that hon. Member, but he maintained that by that spectacle every Member of the House was personally degraded. It was now proposed to perpetuate that which was an accidental and he hoped a unique occurrence in the annals of the House. With reference to Members serving on Committees during suspension, he put this case:—A Member of the House was allowed to take part in all private and public Committees to which he was appointed; suppose that before a Committee upstairs there was a 1688 question of great commercial magnitude, such as the Manchester Ship Canal; a Member, in spite of having been excluded for grossly disorderly conduct, is allowed to form part of the tribunal that has to decide upon that momentous question and yet he was not fit to write his letters in the Library. That he thought was a reductio ad absurdum. He had never been guilty of grossly disorderly conduct, nor had he any wish to be, but he spoke of the dignity of hon. Members who were the Representatives of the people outside, and looking at that fact, he said the Government would do well to mitigate the effect of the Rule by excluding from it this most odious infringment of the liberty of the House.
§ MR. HOWORTH (Salford, S.)said, he desired to ask if the powers of the Rule would extend to the Deputy Chairman who might be appointed. If the Rule was to bear that interpretation, then he thought that its provisions would be beyond the desires of some hon. Members on those Benches. The Speaker and the Chairman of Ways and Means were both officers elected after deliberate discussion, and in that respect stood in a position different from that of those who were occasionally appointed to fill the Chair.
§ SIR LYON PLAYFAIR (Leeds, S.)said, the House would do well to observe that the proposed Rule did not apply to ordinary debate; it was a new Rule to apply to certain disorderly conduct which the Chairman of every assembly in the world had power to put down. But it would seem that the Speaker or the Chairman has such large powers in the first part of the Order that the latter part was altogether unnecessary. In the first place, the disorderly Member had to withdraw immediately from the service of the House; then the Serjeant-at-Arms acted on such orders as he might receive from the Chair in pursuance of the Resolution; which might be that the Member should withdraw from the House or from the precincts of the House. That was a large power. But then came a much larger one —namely, that Rule 12 was brought into operation. The Speaker or Chairman might name a Member, who would then come under all the consequences of that Rule. But if he did come under them, there was no necessity for the last words of the concluding paragraph of the Rule 1689 that the Speaker "may call on the House to adjudge the conduct of such Member or Members." He considered the latter part of the Rule very offensive. Why should they order a Member to be sent out of the precincts of the House if they considered him fit to sit in Committee on an important private Bill. They gave the Speaker power to correct any disorder, and they allowed him to bring the Member under the Rule of ordinary debate, which contained strong penal powers. As he considered the portion of the Rule to which he had referred unnecessary, he should, in order to raise the question, move its omission.
§ Amendment proposed, in line 8 to leave out from the words "Order in Debate" to the end of the Question.— (Sir Lyon Play fair.)
§ SIR RICHARD PAGET (Somerset, Wells)said, he thought on consideration the right hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment would see that it did not entirely effect the purpose he had in view. Standing Order No. 12 was incorporated in this Rule only to the extent of naming a Member, and the further powers contained in that Rule, which were expressed in words at the end, would be distinctly excluded by the fact that they were in the new Rule. The expression of a certain portion of the Rule directly, would clearly be held to be an exclusion of the remaining portion, which was not so important. If these words had any value whatever, of which he had considerable doubt, he was disposed to agree with the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill) that they should leave out all the words after Resolution in line 4 so that the Rule would read—
That Mr. Speaker or the Chairman do order Members whose conduct is grossly disorderly to withdraw immediately from the House during the remainder of that day's debate, and that the Sergeant-at-Arms do act on such orders as he may receive from the Chair in pursuance of this Resolution.If the words were retained at all the addition of the words "according to ancient usage" could be introduced at the end of the paragraph to make clear what had been explained to the House by the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster General (Mr. Raikes). The right hon. Gentleman had said there were three alternatives, and that the 1690 third alternative consisted of a paragraph by which power was retained by the House to deal with Members offending according to ancient usage. These words then should be inserted at the end of the paragraph, if the concluding portion of it was retained. If he were allowed he would move to leave out all the words after Resolution in line 4 to the end of the paragraph.
§ MR. SPEAKERI must point out that as there is an Amendment before the House it would not be competent to the hon. Baronet to move now the omission of these words.
§ SIR RICHARD PAGETsaid, he would suggest that the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Lyon Playfair) should withdraw his Amendment.
§ THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Mr. COURTNEY) (Cornwall, Bodmin)said, that the point turned upon the construction of the Rule. If the Rule stopped at the word "Resolution" no doubt the existing Rule 12 would remain entire; but Rule 12 did not touch grossly disorderly conduct generally, it only applied to special forms of it. The desire was to extend the summary form of procedure under Order 12 to grossly disorderly conduct other than that which was included in Rule 12.
§ LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILLsaid, that over and over again Members had been suspended by the Speaker under Rule 12, not for wilfully disregarding the Rules of the House or of the Chair, but for wilfully disorderly conduct. He still held to the view that the words to which he objected would tend to weaken rather than to strengthen the Rule.
§ MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, that he should not have proposed the Rule if it had not been held by the Government and all who had been responsible for the conduct of Business in the House that some further powers ought to be given to the Authorities in the event of a Member being guilty of grossly disorderly conduct. If the words to which his noble Friend objected were not inserted he was advised by high authority that the power reserved under Standing Order 12 would not exist in connection with this Rule.
§ SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN (Glasgow, Bridgeton)said, he felt bound to protest against the wording of the last paragraph, which not only inflicted a 1691 new and severe punishment upon a Member guilty of a new offence, but likewise inflicted a new and very much more severe punishment upon a Member guilty of an old offence which was quite sufficiently punished already. The Rule proposed to exclude from the precincts of the House, not only Members who had been ordered to withdraw for grossly disorderly conduct, but Members suspended by a Vote of the House for a week, a fortnight, or a month. This was a very severe punishment, and very grave reasons should be given for it. He thought they ought to be extremely unwilling to interfere with the dignity and comfort of hon. Members, and that they should only do it under the teaching of experience. Now, experience showed that no inconvenience whatever had come from allowing hon. Members who had been suspended for a single evening for misconduct, for which they would often in their cooler moments be exceedingly sorry, to be present within the precincts of the House. He (Sir George Trevelyan) remembered an occasion on which a number of Members who were suspended for their conduct in the House were seen in the Gallery, and no impropriety occurred in consequence. He thought that no such large punishment as that now proposed should be instituted without a public reason being given for doing so.
§ THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Sir MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH) (Bristol, W.)said, he thought that the right hon. Baronet who had last spoken (Sir George Trevelyan) was, perhaps, sufficiently answered by the fact that the right hon. Gentleman who sat next him had expressed his intention to vote for that proposal. He had himself, unfortunately, been absent from the House for a great part of last Session, but he had watched, as well as he could the course of events during that period, and he ventured to say that many things which occurred during that time were a scandal and a disgrace to the House; that their existing Rules on the subject of disorder were proved to be utterly inadequate to deal with them, and that such scandals and disgraces, whether arising from the conduct of hon. Members on the one side of the House or the other, ought to be repressed with due severity; and that they would not be so repressed 1692 unless their Rules were amended in the way now proposed and the penalty was made a real one by exclusion from the precincts of the House as well as from the House itself.
§ MR. JOHN MORLEYsaid, he would like to explain that he had not said that he should necessarily vote for exclusion from the precincts of the House, but that he had personally no strong opinion on the matter, and that in the case of extraordinary misconduct he saw no objection to exclusion from the precincts. What his right hon. Friend objected to was to that being added to the penalties imposed under Rule 12. In regard to what the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) had described truly enough as the scandals of last year, he (Mr. John Morley) said that those scandals were not entirely confined to one part of the House. The right hon. Baronet had failed to show that those scandals had arisen in any degree from the presence of Members in the precincts of the House, and that was the point which had to be made out.
§ MR. BRADLAUGH (Northampton)said, he had a few remarks only to make on this subject of the exclusion of Members from the precincts of the House, particularly those Members who were required to attend to their duties upon Select Committees. There was nothing more painful or irritating than to be compelled by some duty to come down to that building and yet to be excluded from the precincts of the House, except so far as their duty was compulsory on them. He could speak of that with the experience of three years and he trusted he might appeal to the House not to place upon others the indignities which he had himself felt very severely.
MR. STAVELEY HILL (Staffordshire, Kingswinford)said, he rose for the purpose of referring to the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Leeds (Sir Lyon Playfair) with regard to the naming of Members; and also to the point upon which the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh) had just spoken. The words which the right hon. Gentleman proposed to leave out were absolutely unnecessary to be retained. The matter stood thus; the right hon. Gentleman admitted that they should retain the words of the Rule, which provided that the Speaker or the Chairman may 1693 name the Member. Then came in Standing Order 12, which provided in certain cases that a further punishment should apply. Those words being in the Rule, was there anything excluded from the operation of Rule 12? If not, then they were adding words which were unnecessary and which could not assist in any further suppression of the offence which he agreed with the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) they all desired to put a stop to. With regard to the second part of the Rule—namely, that which related to the exclusion of Members from the precincts of the House, he entirely agreed with the words which had fallen from the hon. Member for Northampton. There were Committees Upstairs when the House was sitting as well as when it was not sitting; a Member, although he might be excluded from the House, would, as a Member of one of those Committees be bound to attend to the Committee work, and if the Proviso at the end of the Rule were carried, that hon. Member might be dodged up and down by some Officer of the House to see that he did not remain within the precincts when his Committee was not sitting, It would be much better to allow access to the precincts of the House and to make it clear that it was only intended that the offending Member should not come within the walls of the House itself.
§ MR. BIGGAR (Cavan, W.)said, he had listened to the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach), who said that, although he was not in the House last year, he had read the accounts of what had taken place. Of course, hon. Members knew well what newspaper reports were worth; but as far as his experience went he could say that the House was not more disorderly now than it was 12 years ago. He was at that time one of a small minority, and he remembered that he used not to receive a very great amount of consideration at the hands of the majority. But things had changed since then, and he was now listened to with patience, and received a fair amount of consideration. He was himself very much opposed to these penal Rules; because, as hon. Members would be aware, the statutory power of Mr. 1694 Speaker was very much greater than the statutory power of former Speakers. Candidly, he believed that the power of the former Speaker was greater than that of the present Speaker, because a hint from him used to be sufficient to quell disorder in the House, whereas now it became a squabble as to whether a certain Rule should be brought into operation. For his own part he thought they should sweep away all these penal Rules and allow the moral influence of Mr. Speaker, which was formerly sufficient, to make itself felt. That, he believed, would be sufficient to quell any disorder that might arise.
§ SIR JOHN SIMON (Dewsbury)said, it seemed to him a most unfortunate thing that they should place in the hands of Mr. Speaker undue responsibility for the suppression of disorder in that House. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow (Sir George Trevelyan) had spoken of the hardship to a Member undergoing this terrible punishment; but he (Sir John Simon) felt much more for the Speaker himself and for the dignity of that House. Until a few years ago, Mr. Speaker was the servant of the House, but he was now becoming its master. That could not conduce to the dignity of the House, that the Chairman or the Speaker should, as it had been described, pounce down upon hon. Members and treat them like so many school boys, ordering them out and punishing them according to his will. He thought that was not consistent with the dignity of the House, nor did he think the power was one which it would be agreeable to the Speaker or Chairman to possess. It appeared to him that the Speaker had already power enough under a Rule which authorized him to name a Member for contravening the Rules of the House. He had voted with the Government on the last Rule relating to the number of Members necessary for putting the Closure Rule in operation. This was not a Party Question at all, and in that Division he had voted against his own honoured Leader. But the Question now before the House concerned every Member of it individually. It concerned the dignity of the House, and the power now sought to be given was one that ought not to be conferred, in his opinion, either upon the 1695 Speaker or on the Chairman of Committees.
§ CAPTAIN SELWYN (Cambridge, Wisbeach)said, he was unable to agree with the right hon. Gentleman opposite that there was no inconvenience suffered from a Member ordered to withdraw, remaining within the precincts of the House. He thought that those who witnessed what occurred last Session would agree with him; he referred to the fact that a Member who had been ordered to withdraw came into the Gallery of the House and kept his hat on in order to show to the rest of the world that he was a Member of the House in disgrace. He thought that scene should induce hon. Members of the House to vote that the words excluding Members under certain circumstances from the precincts of the House should be retained in the Rule.
§ DR. CLARK (Caithness)said, he appealed to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House (Mr. W. H. Smith) to compromise this portion of the Rule to some extent, because, as it stood at present, it was grossly unjust. At present a Member was compelled to attend on Committees even when ordered to withdraw from the service of the House. If the intention was to prevent the Member coming within the precincts he (Dr. Clark) said that Member ought to be discharged from attendance on Committee. It was not fair to require him to serve on Committees, and yet exclude him from the precincts of the House.
§ MR. SPEAKERThe hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread) has informed me that he wishes to move the insertion of certain words after the word "shall," in line 12; and therefore, although, as originally proposed, the Amendment was to leave out all the words after "Debate," in line 8, the Question I shall put is to omit all the words after the word "debate," in line 7 to the word "shall," in line 12.
§
Question put,
That the words 'or he may call upon the House to adjudge upon the conduct of such Member or Members, provided always, That Members who are ordered to withdraw under this Standing Order, or who are suspended from the Service of the House under the Standing Order (Order in Debate) shall ' stand part of the Question.
§ The House divided:—Ayes 135; Noes 85: Majority 50.—(Div. List, No. 18.)
§ MR. WHITBREADsaid, that in order to mitigate the severity of the Rule as it now stood, he proposed to insert after the word "shall," in line 12, the words "if Mr. Speaker or the Chairman so direct." The Question had been pretty fully debated, and he did not desire to take up the time of the House by re-stating any of the arguments. He would simply point out what he thought had escaped the attention of the Government—namely, that the Rule would add tremendously to the severity of a Rule which was applicable to other offences. When anybody was suspended from the service of the House for a week or a month, he was to be further punished by exclusion from the precincts of the House. They might, under this Rule, exclude a Member from the precincts of the House for a month for an offence aimed at by the old Rule, and so exclude him while he was attending to Private Bill Legislation. That was a monstrous state of things, and one he did not think the Government ever contemplated when they drew up the Rule. It was possible, however, under peculiar circumstances, that in order to prevent disorder, it might be necessary to order a Member to withdraw from the precincts of the House. The Speaker or the Chairman, as the case might be, would be the best judge of the necessity of such an order. He put it to the First Lord of the Treasury whether any inconvenience had been found in practice to arise from Members under suspension being allowed to enter the precincts of the House. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman could point to a single instance of inconvenience, and therefore he trusted the right hon. Gentleman would see his way to accept the present Amendment, which was intended to mitigate the severity of the Rule as it stood.
§ Amendment proposed, in line 12, after the word "shall," to insert the words "if Mr. Speaker or the Chairman so direct."—(Mr. Whitbread.)
§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
1697§ MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, he was a little surprised the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread) should propose to add these words, because the hon. Gentleman was strongly opposed on a former occasion to the proposal that the Speaker should have any voice whatever in the question of the closure—he objected to the additional and invidious responsibility thrown on the Chair. He (Mr. W. H. Smith) had no wish to make this Rule unnecessarily harsh against hon. Gentlemen who might come under its operation. It did not appear to him that the question as to whether hon. Members of the House had suffered inconvenience from the fact that hon. Members who had been suspended from the service of the House had been allowed to enter its precincts during their suspension was at all relevant to the point at issue. The question really was, whether the penalty inflicted upon hon. Members for grossly disorderly conduct, for disobeying the Speaker or the Chairman, for delaying the Business of the House, for exposing the House to contumely and reproach, was sufficient at present. It appeared to him that the only ground on which hon. Members could desire to have access to the precincts of the House was that of enabling them to discharge their duties as Members of the House. The privileges which the Library afforded, and the other privileges which they possessed, were privileges which were afforded to them solely as Members of the House; and, therefore, when they were suspended from the discharge of their duties, it was not unreasonable that they should also be suspended from the privileges. The only object the Government had in view in proposing this Rule was to prevent a repetition of the scenes which admittedly had disgraced the House of Commons. He hoped that the penalty which was now sought to be imposed upon Members guilty of disorderly conduct would be sufficient to prevent a repetition of scenes which all must deplore. He was reluctant to add to the invidious duty which undoubtedly the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman would throw upon the Chair; but if was the opinion of the majority of the House that such duty should be imposed upon the Chair, he would raise no objection to the proposed alteration. Personally, however, 1698 he thought it would be better to leave the Rule in the form in which it now stood.
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON (Lancashire, Rossendale)said, he hoped the Government would be disposed to adopt the Amendment of his hon. Friend (Mr. Whitbread), because it appeared to him to be almost the only way of escaping from a very great difficulty which had been pointed out in the course of the discussion. It was undoubtedly a very great hardship that Members suspended from the service of the House should be compelled to continue their services on Private Bill Committees, and yet, while they were sitting on Private Bill Committees, be excluded from the precincts of the House. It seemed to him that if the Rule was to be maintained in its present form, it would be almost absolutely necessary to reconsider whether Members suspended from the service of the House should not also, by the same act, be necessarily suspended from attendance upon Private Bill Committees. However, the suggestion of his hon. Friend (Mr. Whitbread) would sufficiently tide over the difficulty. Although he agreed with a great deal which had fallen from the First Lord of the Treasury, and although he could not say that the personal punishment which it was intended to inflict on Members under the new Rule was so serious that it ought to be considered as a very great aggravation of the penalty which the old Rule forced upon Members —although he entirely approved of the general scope and bearing of the Rule, it appeared to him the acceptance of the words moved by his hon. Friend would relieve the House from a considerable difficulty in which it found itself.
§ SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, he could not agree with the opinion which the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) had expressed, because the responsibility cast by the Amendment upon the Speaker, and still more upon the Chairman, would be of such an invidious character that it would materially add to the difficulty of putting the Rule in force. As the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House had said, if it was the will of the House that such an invidious duty as that proposed should be imposed upon the Chair, let it be so; but what might happen? A Member, possibly on the Ministerial 1699 side of the House, might commit some offence which might bring him under the operation of this Rule; he might be suspended from the service of the House and yet not excluded from the precincts of the House. Another Member, possibly on the Opposition side of the House, might also commit an offence bringing him under the operation of the Rule; he might be suspended from the service of the House, and also excluded from the precincts of the House. What accusations would then be made against the occupant of the Chair for partiality in the application of the Rule?
§ MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR (Donegal, E.)said, it was just as unreasonable to expect a Member to serve on a Committee, and yet be debarred from access to materials of information to be found in the Library, as it was to expect a Member to join in the debates in the House under an equal disadvantage. Suppose a Member of the Front Bench were suspended for disorderly conduct, was he to be debarred from access to his room at the back of the Speaker's Chair, where a great deal of the work of a Minister was carried on? If a Member on the other side of the House was suspended, it was conceivable that he would not be excluded from the precincts of the House by the Speaker; whereas it was conceivable that if a Member on the Opposition side of the House, was suspended, he would also be excluded from the privileges of the House. That was a very unfortunate illustration of the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach); but it showed the danger there was lurking in this tinkering with the Rules of the House, which had a history going back through centuries. He did not believe much in any of these now Rules, but it did appear to be a piece of perfect absurdity to say that a Member should be suspended from the service of the House in the House itself and excluded from the precincts of the House—from the Library, for instance, where all records were kept—and yet expect him to serve on Committees upstairs. At the same time he did not at all like the Amendment of the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread), because it was moving in the direction of danger which he thought boded ill for that Assembly. He quite recognized that if disorder arose in such a place as that, 1700 the inevitable result was to throw more and more power into the hands of the presiding official. That, in itself, was a mischief; but he did not see how it was to be avoided. It was one of the penalties attaching to disorder, and the House was under the necessity of protecting itself against disorder. But the mischief to which he had referred ought to be reduced to the very lowest possible point, and, therefore, he disapproved of the suggestion of the hon. Member for Bedford, that discretion should be placed in the hands of the Chair.
§ Question put.
§ The House divided:—Ayes 89; Noes 117: Majority 28.—(Div. List, No. 19.)
§ SIR HENRY TYLER (Great Yarmouth)said, he wished to make a suggestion with regard to what fell from the noble Marquess the Member for the Rossendale Division of Lancashire (the Marquess of Hartington), to the effect that when Members were suspended from the service of the House and required to withdraw from its precincts, they were yet to be permitted to serve on Private Bill Committees. It had been pointed out already in the course of the debate that it would be a matter of great indignity to hon. Members if they were subject to interference on the part of the police in going to and from a Committee Room. He (Sir Henry Tyler) would, therefore, move an Amendment to omit all reference to Standing Committees from the Rule. If some words were not added to the end of the proposed Rule, it might be taken that the existing Standing Order No. 12 would still have force, and, therefore, he would move to add those words: "and shall ipso facto be exempted for the same period from service on the Committees." That, he thought, would get over the difficulty, because if that were adopted there would be no conflict between the new Rule and the Standing Order No. 12, "Order in Debate."
§ Amendment proposed,
§ In line 13, to leave out from the word "House" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words, "and shall, ipso facto, be exempted for the same period from service on Committees."—(Sir Henry Tyler.)
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
1701§ MR. HENEAGE (Great Grimsby)said, he thought it would be highly inconvenient to adopt the proposal, because it might happen that a Select Committee had been sitting 9 or 10 days when a Member serving on it was suspended from the service of the House. To take that Member off the Committee and put a new one in his place who knew nothing whatever about the matter before it would be grossly unjust to the parties. No doubt, they had to choose between two evils—that was to say, they must either relieve an hon. Member from service on Committees, or enable him while serving on a Committee to have access to the precincts of the House, although excluded from the House itself. If the Amendment were necessary to bring about good order in the House, he should be the first to support it; but he thought that under the new Rules, taken as a whole, they would not be at all likely to have scenes of disorder such as had been witnessed in the past. He thought that if the words proposed to be left out were omitted the place should be supplied, not by the Amendment moved, but by the words "during the remainder of the Sitting." What was wanted was to prevent any opportunity of fresh provocation on the part of a Member who had left the House in a bad temper, and the adoption of these words would give him 24 hours to cool, and if an hon. Member on the following morning was cool enough to attend on a Private Bill Committee he was surely cool enough to meet hon. Members in the precincts of the House.
§ COLONEL NOLAN (Galway, N,)said, he agreed with the right hon. Member who had preceded him (Mr. Heneage), as to the inconvenience of appointing a jury of four or five Members to consider a Private Bill, and then to withdraw one of them during the hearing of the case. He pointed out that sometimes the parties in fighting a Private Bill spent as much as £24,000 on the case, and that it would be grossly unfair to them to withdraw a juror in the manner proposed. In some cases one Member would be sufficient to turn a case, and it was not impossible to conceive that a Member having a considerable interest in the progress of a Private Bill might exert his influence to get a certain Member suspended in the House, so that he 1702 might be turned out of a Committee. Members might vote on a Division for a Member's suspension, not to punish him for his conduct in the House, but to shut him out of a Committee on which he was known to be hostile to a particular Bill or scheme. If the Amendment proposed were adopted, the House would have to adopt altogether new arrangements for Committees. The hon. Member for Yarmouth (Sir Henry Tyler) had acted with a good-natured desire to get the House out of a difficulty; but if his Amendment were to hold good, they might just as well hand over Private Bill legislation to the House of Lords, or to a Committee of Judges.
§ MR. BRADLAUGHsaid, he had put to the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury the grave side of the matter, and he would now put to him the ridiculous side. Supposing that it were necessary for a Member of a Committee to go to the Library of the House in order to refer to certain authorities to guide him in his deliberations—was he to be allowed to go there, or was he to have the books brought out to him, a thing which might be physically impossible if the House were not sitting, as the Librarians would not be in attendance?
MR. STAVELEY HILL (Staffordshire)said, he trusted that there would be no attempt to exclude Members from Committees on the ground of anything which had happened in the House. Members of Committees were selected by independent authorities, and at the time a Member was suspended he might have sat upon a Committee throughout the consideration of the Preamble of a Bill. Because that Member came into the House, and in a moment of excitement did something which placed him under the penalty of suspension, it would be very unjust to the parties interested in the Private Bill before the Committee if 25 per cent of the judicial force were withdrawn from the consideration of the measure. Such a proceeding might throw the parties into an expense of many thousands of pounds. He thought it only right to exclude a Member from the House itself if he were guilty of disorderly conduct, but he would not deprive him of his other privileges in the precincts of the House.
§ MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, he had listened to all the arguments which had been offered, and was bound to say that he thought the balance was in favour of retaining the Rule as it stood—that was to say, that Members serving on Private Bill Committees should not, in consequence of their suspension, be relieved of the duty of serving on those Committees. He hoped and believed that the Rule would be very rarely employed—so rarely that it would not operate at all on Members serving on Private Bill Committees. It was impossible to guard against every contingency that might arise in the case of hon. Members becoming amenable to the Rule. It was an exceedingly unfortunate thing at any time that an hon. Member should come under the censure of the House; but when he did so an Order of the House was more important than consideration for a Member's feelings; therefore it appeared to him (Mr. W. H. Smith) that they should adhere to the words on the Paper and reject the Amendment of his hon. Friend (Sir Henry Tyler). He had carefully weighed all the arguments which had been advanced with the strongest desire to meet the susceptibilities of hon. Members.
§ SIR HENRY TYLERsaid, that, under the circumstances, he would ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave,withdrawn.
§ Main Question put.
§ The House divided:—Ayes 134; Noes 74: Majority 60.
1705| AYES. | |
| Addison, J. E. W. | Chaplin, right hon. H. |
| Agg-Gardner, J. T. | |
| Amherst, W. A. T. | Charrington, S. |
| Ashmead-Bartlett, E. | Clarke, Sir E. G. |
| Atkinson, H. J. | Coghill, D. H. |
| Baring, T. C. | Colomb, Capt. J. C. R. |
| Bartley, G. C. T. | Commerell, Adml. Sir J. E. |
| Barttelot, Sir W. B. | |
| Beach, right hon. Sir M. E. Hicks- | Cozens-Hardy, H. H. |
| Currie, Sir D. | |
| Beach, W. W. B. | Davenport, H. T. |
| Beadel, W. J. | De Cobain, E. S. W. |
| Beaumont, W. B. | De Worms, Baron H. |
| Bentinck, Lord H. C. | Dimsdale, Baron R. |
| Birkbeck, Sir E. | Dorington, Sir J. E. |
| Blundell, Colonel H. B. H. | Duncombe, A. |
| Dyke, rt. hn. Sir W. H. | |
| Bristowe, T. L. | |
| Brodrick, hon. W. St. J. F. | Egerton, hon. A. de T. |
| Elliot, hon. H. F. H. | |
| Brookfield, A. M. | Ellis, Sir J. W. |
| Burghley, Lord | Eyre, Colonel H. |
| Caldwell, J. | Fellowes, A. E. |
| Campbell, Sir A. | Ferguson, R. C. Munro- |
| Fergusson, right hon. Sir J. | Lafone, A. |
| Lees, E. | |
| Field, Admiral E. | Lewisham, right hon. Viscount |
| Fisher, W. H. | |
| Fitzgerald, R. U. P. | Llewellyn, E. H. |
| Folkestone, right hon. Viscount | Long, W. H. |
| Macdonald, right hon. J. H. A. | |
| Forwood, A. B. | |
| Fowler, Sir R. N. | Madden, D. H. |
| Fraser, General C. C. | Matthews, rt. hn. H. |
| Fry, L. | Maxwell, Sir H. E. |
| Fulton, J. F. | Milvain, T. |
| Gedge, S. | Morley, right hon. J. |
| Giles, A. | Morley, A. |
| Gilliat, J. S. | Morrison, W. |
| Goldsworthy, Major General W. T. | Mulholland, H. L. |
| Muntz, P. A. | |
| Goschen, rt. hon. G. J. | Noble, W. |
| Gray, C. W. | Norris, E. S. |
| Grimston, Viscount | O'Neill, hon. R. T. |
| Hamilton, right hon. Lord G. F. | Pearce, Sir W. |
| Pelly, Sir L. | |
| Hamilton, Col. C. E. | Penton, Captain F. T. |
| Hamley, Gen. Sir E. B. | Playfair, right hon. Sir L. |
| Hastings, G. W. | |
| Heathcote, Capt. J. H. Edwards- | Pomfret, W. P. |
| Powell, F. S. | |
| Heaton, J. H. | Raikes, rt. hon. H. C. |
| Heneage, right hon. E. | Rankin, J. |
| Herbert, hon. S. | Rasch, Major F. C. |
| Hermon-Hodge, R. T. | Rathbone, W. |
| Hill, right hon. Lord A. W. | Ritchie, rt. hon. C. T. |
| Robertson, Sir W. T. | |
| Hill, Colonel E. S. | Sellar, A. C. |
| Hill, A. S. | Sidebotham, J. W. |
| Hoare, E. B. | Sidebottom, T. H. |
| Hoare, S. | Sidebottom, W. |
| Holloway, G. | Smith, rt. hon. W. H. |
| Howard, J. | Stanhope, rt. hon. E. |
| Howorth, H. H. | Stephens, H. C. |
| Hunt; F. S. | Temple, Sir R. |
| Isaacs, L. H. | Thorburn, W. |
| Isaacson, F. W. | Trotter, H. J. |
| Jackson, W. L. | Tyler, Sir H. W. |
| Johnston, W. | Webster, Sir R. E. |
| Kelly, J. R. | Whitbread, S. |
| Kenyon, hon. G. T. | Whitley, E. |
| Kerans, F. H. | Wortley, C. B. Stuart- |
| Kimber, H. | Yerburgh, R. A. |
| King, H. S. | |
| Knatchbull-Hugessen, H. T. | TELLERS. |
| Douglas, A. Akers-Walrond, Col. W. H. | |
| Knowles, L. |
| NOES. | |
| Abraham, W. (Glam.) | Dillwyn, L. L. |
| Abraham, W. (Limerick, W.) | Dodds, J. |
| Ellis, J. | |
| Acland, A. H. D. | Ellis, T. E. |
| Allison, R. A. | Fenwick, C. |
| Asquith, H. H. | Finucane, J. |
| Barran, J. | Flower, C. |
| Biggar, J. G. | Fox, Dr. J. F. |
| Broadhurst, H. | Gill, T. P. |
| Byrne, G. M. | Haldane, R. B. |
| Campbell, H. | Hayden, L. P. |
| Carew, J. L. | Hayne, C. Seale- |
| Clark, Dr. G. B. | Hooper, J. |
| Cobb, H. P. | James, hon. W. H |
| Corbet, W. J. | Kenny, C. S. |
| Cossham, H. | Kilbride, D. |
| Craven, J. | Lalor, R. |
| Crilly, D. | Leahy, J. |
| Leake, R. | Rowlands, J. |
| Macdonald, W. A. | Schwann, C. E. |
| M'Donald, P. | Sheehan, J. D. |
| M'Ewan, W. | Stack, J. |
| Mappin, Sir F. T. | Stewart, H. |
| Montagu, S. | Sullivan, D. |
| Mundella, rt. hn. A. J. | Sutherland, A. |
| Newnes, G. | Thomas, A. |
| Nolan, Colonel J. P. | Tuite, J. |
| Nolan, J. | Wardle, H. |
| O Brien, J. F. X. | Warmington, C. M. |
| O'Brien, P. J. | Wayman, T. |
| O'Connor, A. | Will, J. S. |
| O'Connor, J. | Williams, A. J. |
| O'Kelly, J. | Wilson, H. J. |
| Parnell, C. S. | Woodhead, J. |
| Pease, H. F. | Wright, C. |
| Pickersgill, E. H. | |
| Power, P. J. | TELLERS. |
| Reid, R. T. | Bradlaugh, C. |
| Roberts, J. | Gourley, E. T. |
| Roberts, J. B. |
§ Resolved, That Mr. Speaker or the Chairman do order Members whose conduct is grossly disorderly to withdraw immediately from the House during the remainder of that day's sitting; and that the Serjeant-at-Arms do act on such orders as he may receive from the Chair, in pursuance of this Resolution. But if, on any occasion, Mr. Speaker or the Chairman deems that his powers under this Standing Order are inadequate, he may name such Member or Members in pursuance of the Standing Order (Order in Debate), or he may call upon the House to adjudge upon the conduct of such Member or Members.
§ Provided always, That Members who are ordered to withdraw under this Standing Order, or who are suspended from the service of the House under the Standing Order (Order in Debate), shall forthwith withdraw from the precincts of the House subject, however, in the case of such suspended Members, to the proviso in that Standing Order regarding their service on Private Bill Committees.