TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
WE see with satisfaction that a politician of Mr. Villiers's great shrewdness and long experience,— lie has been a Member of the House of Commons for fifty- nine years,—expresses, in his interview with the delegate of the Daily Chronicle, reported on Tuesday, the same opinion which we have frequently expressed, that, as regards its individual Members, the present House is one of the very ablest, probably the very ablest, which has ever been elected since the Father of the House of Commons was first returned for Wolverhampton. We say "as regards its individual Members," but that does not by any means imply that, as a whole, it is more efficient for its purpose than many, or perhaps most, of those which have preceded it. That would not be a very happy and united nation which consisted of a race of competent leaders without followers, nor is that the most efficient of representative Assemblies which consists of men almost all of whose opinions are worthy of separate hearing, and may fairly claim to be separately heard. Mr. Villiers hastened to add that the House of Commons had lost respect in the country in spite of its Members show. ing greater individual effectiveness, though that, he said, might possibly be the fault of the country, and not of the House. We do not suppose that Mr. Villiers really takes that view ; and if he does, we should widely differ from him. The House of Commons has lest grade in the country, and rightly lost grade, partly because it is com- posed of such effective individual elements and elements so adequately representing the various shades of opinion or no opinion in the different portions of the country. In a Cabinet we can hardly have too able and too strictly representative elements, but, in a House of six hundred and seventy Members which is to govern a country as well as to represent it, we may very well have.—and, indeed, actually have,—far too much individual ability and far too exact a representative organisation. If the country is to be ruled, as it is, by the House of Commons, the House should not be composed of so many distinct groups, or so many individually capable individuals,—there should be much more crystallising capacity in it, and less distinctive constituent variety as well as less individual ambition. The House, as we have often said, is far too large and mis- cellaneous a body for its function as the supreme central authority of the Empire. It loses respect in the country because it represents the indecision of the constituencies ..00 well. In the Houses of Commons which we had between 1832 and 1867, there was no doubt far less individual mind, will, and purpose ; but for that very reason, there was a far greater strength of collective judgment. Those earlier Houses knew how to defer to the sense of educated opinion far better than the new ones, which strive to represent, and do, on the whole, effectually represent, the uncertainties and vacillations of uneducated opinion. Mr.
Gladstone has appealed from the classes to the masses, and what does he find ? A hesitating and unconvinced dis- position to follow hint, but to follow him with very waver- ing and wandering footsteps in the greater matters, but a readiness and even eagerness to give his counsels the go-by, wherever there is a good chance of ignoring these greater matters in which the constituencies lean doubtfully upon him, for those smaller matters in which their own opinion comes well to the surface again. Instead of the public opinion of those shrewd and instructed persons which the House of Commons used to reflect in all its decision and peremptoriness, the new House reflects a certain vague dis- trust of that opinion with which Mr. Gladstone has managed successfully to inspire it, but provides no effective substitute for it, showing rather a certain sense of diffident loyalty to him that is inclined to pique itself on its own fidelity in fol- lowing him with eyes half-shut, and a. deep internal quaver as to the wisdom of so doing. That is what has diminished the external respect for the House of Commons. The country is aware that its chosen leader rejects the educated instinct and judgment of nine-tenths of its abler politicians,— politicians like the Cobdens, and the Brights, and the Villierses, no less than the Palmerstons, and the Greys, and the Cavendishes,—and it does not feel easy, but, on the contrary, very uneasy, in its loyalty, though it cleaves to that loyalty with a heroic fidelity which defies its own suspicions that it is going wrong. In a word, the present House of Commons represents now not a solid conviction, on the greater issues submitted to it, but a hesitating- popular mandate which it is half-reluctant to endorse, so little is it satisfied with the kind of support it obtains from sober and prudent advisers whom it has generally been found safe to trust.
No wonder that, with a House whose popular majority is divided into many groups, caring very little about the- main issue submitted to them, and supporting their leader chiefly because he supports them on minor issues for- which they do care, we have a popular Assembly of very imperfect authority in the country, and consequently very much at sixes and sevens in spite of all its ability, as regards the order and character of its own proceedings. The Quarterly Review, in its article on "The Peril of Par- liament," makes a good many excellent suggestions for improvement, of which the general drift is that more and: more authority should be given to the Chair to ex- clude amendments which are mere feeble duplicates of other amendments, to select for discussion the more- weighty amendments, even though all the less weighty amendments are to be closured ; and, indeed, generally to exercise in the name of the House a sort of discretion which might sometimes seem arbitrary, but which is be-- coming more and more essential to a body so divided into- sections, and so little penetrated by any strong current of public opinion on the most important issues. All these- proposals seem to us reasonable in their drift, and more or less likely to be adopted by the House of Commons as' it is now constituted, for in such a House as that, demo- cracy must establish a summary and final authority which was not at all necessary during the earlier period, if it is to- carry any effective legislation at all. But none of these re- forms, however useful they may be in getting rid of unneces- sary irritation, and imposing reasonable terms on the sec- tional disputes which arise amongst the various groups into. which parties are subdivided, can cure the one great evil of the present House of Commons,—that it is elected by constituencies which feel little or no interest in the larger constitutional issues that are raised before it, and are very apt to be led away by a promise to gratify their smaller wishes, into taking a line which is more or less purely accidental (so far as their knowledge and judgment are- concerned) on these larger constitutional issues. Nothing can cure that evil but a political education, which, we fear, must be slow, and will very likely need illustration by great- disasters before that political education is completed. We- are, in fact, purchasing some few great popular measures,. which, like the education measure, may prove to be of inestimable advantage to the people, at the cost of com- mitting the guidance of the State to a democracy which has no conception of the weight and importance of true con- stitutional issues, and hardly any of the type of politicians in whom they ought, for the purpose of such issues as. these, to place the most confidence. That is the real peril of Parliament, and we do not see what remedy there. is, or can be, except the very slow, and perhaps very dangerous, remedy of learning by painful experience the immense significance of the issues in dealing with which its majority is at present so impulsive and so ignorant.
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