The Government of England Part 27

[Sidenote: Privilege in the Courts of Law.]

Sir William Anson remarks that "The Privileges of Parliament, like the Prerogative of the Crown, are rights conferred by Law, and as such their limits are ascertainable and determinable, like the limits of other rights, by the Courts of Law."[245:1] This principle has not always been accepted by the House, which has on several occasions come into collision with the courts; but the latter have always maintained, and maintained successfully, that when a question involving a privilege of the House comes before them for decision, it is their duty to ascertain whether the privilege exists or not, and to determine its effect upon the case before them. They have further maintained that they must decide the question for themselves, and that a claim to the privilege on the part of the House is not conclusive.

In one respect the authority of the courts is incomplete; for the House has a right to order a man committed to prison for contempt, and the question what const.i.tutes a contempt is so far within the discretion of the House that the court will not order the prisoner set at liberty on _habeas corpus_ where the return to the writ simply states that he is committed for contempt by order of the House. Referring to this subject, Professor Dicey says: "The powers exercised by the Houses, and especially in practice by the House of Commons, make a near approach to an authority above that of the ordinary law of the land."[245:2] Such a power, however, is exceedingly unlikely to be used in any dissension with the courts to-day; and if it were used, the courts would be almost certain to win, because the commitment by the House terminates with the session.

[Sidenote: Summons and Dissolution.]

There remain to be considered only the methods of calling Parliament together, and of putting an end to its labours.

Parliament can be summoned and dissolved, and its sessions can be opened and closed by the Crown alone, the only legal restraint upon the arbitrary power of the sovereign in the matter being the Act of William and Mary, which provides that a new Parliament shall be summoned within three years after a dissolution.[245:3] This statute is now, of course, unnecessary; and, in fact, the same proclamation which dissolves one Parliament always announces the issue of writs for the election of another. If Parliament is not dissolved by the Crown, its term expires at the end of the seven years prescribed by the Septennial Act of 1716; but, as a matter of fact, Parliament never dies a natural death, and if its life is not cut off earlier, a dissolution takes place shortly before the end of the seven years.

Until 1867 the death of a sovereign always wrought a dissolution of Parliament; but this rule, which depended more on ancient theory than on modern convenience, was abolished by the Reform Act of that year.

[Sidenote: Prorogation and Adjournment.]

[Sidenote: Effect on Unfinished Business.]

While a session can be brought to a close only by prorogation, either house may adjourn for any period at its pleasure, subject only to the right of the Crown to terminate an adjournment of more than fourteen days. Although a prorogation is made by the Crown, and adjournment by the House itself, practically both are virtually in the hands of the ministry to-day, and the really important difference between them is that a prorogation terminates all unfinished business, while an adjournment does not. For that reason a government which has business that it cannot put through during the regular session, and does not want to abandon, will sometimes resort to an adjournment instead of a prorogation. This was done, for example, in 1902 in order to complete the stages of the Education Bill in the autumn, and again in 1906 chiefly in order that the House of Lords might consider the pending government measures. The wisdom of the rule that the close of the session puts an end to all measures that have not finished their course in both Houses is not so clear in the case of Parliament, as in that of legislative bodies where a vast number of measures are brought in by irresponsible members. In such bodies the rule may result in killing a great many bills that had better die, but in Parliament this is far less true. Almost all important legislation relating to public affairs is now introduced by the ministers; and every year measures to which both they and the House have devoted much time and thought are killed by the close of the session. A day comes when the leader of the House arises and states what bills he is obliged by lack of time to drop, a process commonly known as the slaughter of the innocents. The necessity would seem to be unfortunate.

In fact the House of Commons spends so much time in debating each bill that it gets through its work slowly; and whereas many other popular chambers are reproached with legislating too much, Parliament is accused of legislating too little. Moreover the House of Commons suffers less from an excess of the easy good nature, which, in America at least, is the parent of many ill-considered and unwise laws; yet the present rule does act as a serious check upon the persistent member with a mission, and perhaps it kills off, on the whole, more bad bills than good ones.

[Sidenote: Suspending Private Bills.]

There is, however, a cla.s.s of measures on which the rule, if carried out strictly, would have a distinctly injurious effect. These are the private bills--a term applied to projects which relate to private or local interests, such as bills for the extension of a railway, or for authority to supply water, gas, tramways and the like. Legislation of that kind is, as we shall see, conducted in Parliament by a semi-judicial process, and as it is highly expensive for both sides, it would be unreasonable that the closing of the session, for reasons quite unconnected with these matters, should oblige the promoters and objectors to incur the cost of beginning proceedings all over again. In practice this seldom happens, for in the few cases where such a bill cannot be completed before the end of the session it is usually suspended by a special order providing that the stages it has already pa.s.sed shall be formally taken at the opening of the next session, so that the bill really begins its progress again at the point it had already reached. When, as in 1895, Parliament comes to an untimely end in the midst of a session, a general provision of this kind is made suspending all unfinished private bills, and thus a great deal of unnecessary hards.h.i.+p is avoided.

FOOTNOTES:

[239:1] In a couple of instances natives of India have been elected.

[240:1] The question was raised in 1801 in the famous case of Horne Tooke, and set at rest for the future by an Act of that year: 41 Geo.

III., c. 63. The provision in regard to the Roman Catholic clergy was made in 1829: 10 Geo. IV., c. 7, -- 9.

[240:2] 33-34 Vic., c. 91.

[240:3] A cause that disqualifies will not always unseat. For the latter purpose bankruptcy and lunacy must have continued six months. Rogers, II., 43, 44.

[240:4] 6 Anne, c. 7, ---- 25, 26. Referred to in the Revised Statutes as 6 Anne, c. 41.

[241:1] Statement by the Attorney General, Hans. 3 Ser., CLXXIV., 1236-37.

[241:2] Todd, "Parl. Govt. in England," 2 Ed., II., 331-39.

[242:1] 30-31 Vic., c. 102, -- 52, and Sched. H.

[242:2] This became obsolete by long-continued disregard. It is said to be the only case of a statute which is deemed to have been annulled by "contrarius usus." It was afterwards expressly repealed by statute.

Rogers, II., 38.

[244:1] 9 A. & E., 1.

[244:2] 3-4 Vic., c. 9.

[245:1] "Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution," I., 175.

[245:2] "Law of the Const.i.tution," 5 Ed., 56, note.

[245:3] Anson, I., 287-88.

CHAPTER XII

PROCEDURE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

_The House, its Rules and Officers_

[Sidenote: Small Number of Seats.]

To the traveller who cares for history, either of the past or in the making, there is no place more interesting than the long sombre building with a tower at each end, that borders the Thames just above Westminster Bridge. Apart from occasional meetings at other places during the Middle Ages, the Mother of Parliaments has sat close to this spot for more than six hundred years. Except for old Westminster Hall, almost the whole of the present structure was, indeed, built after the fire of 1834. Yet if it contains little that is really venerable, save memories, the smoke of London has given to the gothic panelling of the outer walls the dignity of apparent age. The interior has a more modern air, for it is not only well planned with a view to its present use, but in some parts it expresses with peculiar fitness the purposes it serves. From opposite sides of the large central lobby corridors lead to the two Houses, but the hall of the Lords seems designed for ornament, that of the Commons for doing work. The House of Commons is seventy-five feet long by forty-five feet wide and forty-one feet high, panelled in dark oak, and lit by long stained gla.s.s windows and sky-lights in the ceiling. From the main entrance a broad aisle runs the whole length of the chamber, with the clerks' table filling nearly the whole upper end of it, and beyond this a raised chair for the Speaker with a canopy over his head.

Facing the aisle on each side long rows of high-backed benches, covered with dark green leather, slope upward tier above tier to the walls of the room; and through them, at right angles to the aisle, a narrow pa.s.sage, known as the gangway, cuts across the House. There is also a gallery running all around the room, the part of it facing the Speaker being given up to strangers, while the front rows at the opposite end belong to the reporters, and behind them there stands, before a still higher gallery, a heavy screen, like those erected in Turkish mosques to conceal the presence of women, and used here for the same purpose. The structure and arrangement of a legislative chamber are not without influence upon the mode of transacting business. The whole number of seats in the House of Commons is far from large, not large enough for all the members. The two side galleries are reserved for them, but they are very narrow, containing only a little more than one hundred seats apiece, and although they are occupied on very crowded nights, they are practically useless for any one who intends to take part in debate. A small portion of the s.p.a.ce under the strangers' gallery is also appropriated for visitors, and the rest of the floor contains only three hundred and sixty seats, enough for little more than one half of the six hundred and seventy members of the House. During the greater part of the time even those seats are not filled, for they are adapted only for the transaction of the business of the House. They are merely benches with no means for writing. If a member wants to carry on his correspondence, he goes to the library, or to one of the other rooms near by. In the House he can only speak, listen, and applaud.

[Sidenote: Attendance Often Small.]

On a great occasion, like the introduction by Mr. Gladstone of his first Home Rule Bill, every seat in the House is taken. At the opening of an ordinary sitting, also, while questions to the ministers are asked and answered, and at a time when the leaders of the two great parties are speaking about a measure of general interest, most of the seats on the floor are occupied; but as soon as the lesser lights arise the members begin to drop off, going to the lobby, the library, the smoking-room, the dining-room, or the terrace. Nor is it always the lesser lights alone that speak to nearly empty benches, or rather to the reporters'

gallery. The writer well remembers, on the first occasion when he saw the House, now more than twenty years ago, that Sir William Harcourt, then Home Secretary, made a speech an hour and three quarters long upon a bill which he had brought in to reform the government of London, and that, during a great part of the time, the only persons present besides the officers of the House, were the Lord Mayor, the Chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works, and a casual who sat on one of the upper benches behind the minister. This is the smallest number of members the writer has ever beheld in the House, but to see only a score or two on the benches is by no means unusual. Many more, however, although not within ear-shot, are potentially present. Forty members const.i.tute a quorum, but if any one suggests that they are not there, electric bells are rung all over the building, summoning the members into the House, a two-minute sand-gla.s.s is turned, and the members are not counted until it has run out. The same process takes place whenever a division--that is a vote by count--is challenged.

[Sidenote: Effect of This on Debates.]

The small size of the chamber makes it easy to hear an ordinary tone of voice; and this, coupled with the still smaller attendance, discourages flights of oratory or popular eloquence, and gives to the debates a businesslike and almost conversational character. Moreover, the very fact that members do not stay in the House if not interested in what is being said, prevents the distracting hum of conversation which is sometimes annoying in other representative bodies. All this makes the spectator feel that the members are present for public business and nothing else. Except for occasional scenes enacted for the most part by the Irish members, the proceedings are orderly, and respect for the dignity of the House, and the authority of the chair, are almost universal.

[Sidenote: The Arrangement of Seats.]

Even the arrangement of seats in the House is not without its bearing upon political life; and although a small matter, it affords another ill.u.s.tration of the principle that an inst.i.tution which, instead of being deliberately planned, is evolved slowly, will develop in harmony with its environment, or force its environment into harmony with itself.

The front bench at the upper end of the aisle, close at the right hand of the Speaker, is called the Treasury Bench, and is reserved for the ministers; the corresponding bench on the other side being occupied by the former ministers of the party now in Opposition. Behind these two benches sit for the most part men whose fidelity to their respective parties is undoubted, members whose allegiance is less absolute generally preferring seats below the gangway on either side.

Of course, on a crowded night members cannot always find seats that express their exact sentiments. Still, the arrangement is fairly well preserved, especially in the case of prominent men, with whom it is sometimes a matter of no little consideration.[251:1] Any group that desires to emphasise its freedom from regular party control always sits below the gangway. The Fourth Party, for example, sat in 1884 below the gangway on the Opposition side, the Labour Party has sat there since the election of 1906, and the same position is occupied by the Irish Nationalists under every ministry; while the Liberal Unionists at the time of their breach with Mr. Gladstone over his first Home Rule Bill took up their seats below the gangway on the government side. The House at a great debate resembles a martial array, with the leaders face to face in the van, supported by their troops in ranks behind them. The minister leans over the table, and points in indignation or in scorn at the "honourable gentlemen opposite." All this expresses the idea of party government, and lends a dramatic effect to parliamentary warfare.

[Sidenote: Mode of Treating the Subject of Procedure.]

Nowhere in the whole range of British inst.i.tutions does the interaction of law and custom baffle any attempt at logical description so much as in the case of procedure in Parliament. The cabinet, which is becoming more and more exclusively the motive force in all important legislative action, is not, indeed, so completely unknown to the rules of the House as it is to the statute-book; and yet a study of the rules alone would give but a faint idea of the authority of the Treasury Bench. On the other hand, it is impossible to understand how the government is attacked, and how it carries through its plans, unless one is familiar with the rules themselves. At the present day the discussions connected with appropriations, for example, turn little on financial questions, and are used mainly as an opportunity for criticising administrative conduct; but to understand how this is done, and to what extent the government has sought to limit the practice, a knowledge of the process of granting supply is essential.

The actual working of the House of Commons involves three problems: first, the regular forms of procedure; second, the action of the cabinet and of private members, operating subject to those forms; and third, the methods by which the cabinet maintains a control over its own supporters, and through them over the House itself. To deal with these three matters together would involve so much confusion, that it has seemed better to take up one of them at a time. This chapter and the two succeeding ones are, therefore, devoted solely to the organisation of the House and the forms of procedure on public matters, the relation of the government to the work of the House being described in the chapters that follow, while the machinery for keeping the majority compact and under the lead of the Treasury Bench will be dealt with at a later stage under the head of "Party Organisation in Parliament." Legislation for private and local objects, which has had a peculiar and instructive development, is treated in a chapter by itself.

[Sidenote: The Method of Voting.]

[Sidenote: A division.]