[BY a MEMBER OP PARLIAMENT.]
OLD Members of the House of Commons are usually of opinion that the debates, compared with twenty or thirty years ago, are now more businesslike and less oratorical than they were. Some welcome the change, and rejoicing in the greater efficiency of the House as a governing assembly, praise the conversational style of speaking now so much in vogue, as less stilted than the old. Others, regretting the loss in the picturesque, distressed that the House should be Tess attractive as a show, condemn the new manner as more slipshod. There is agreement that the average Member takes less trouble with the form and phrasing of his speeches. And the easier, less careful style, if it conduces to greater directness, often leads the fluent speaker into unsuspected pitfalls.
To the House, listening for long hours to the unending flow of talk, the occasional mixed metaphor comes as a happy relief, greeted uproariously if there is excitement in the air and the audi nice is alert, welcomed with quiet smiles when men are jaded. The public seldom hears of these incidents. The newspaper reporters treat such lapses with a kindly neglect, and they are beneath the notice of the descriptive journalist. But seated on my back bench, during last Session I noted several of them down, un- willing that gems of unconscious humour should be lost for want of record.
The discussions on the London Education Bill furnished a number of admirable specimens. It was in one of the debates on that measure that Mr. Walter Long said : "Sir, we are told that by this legislation the heart of the country has been shaken to its very foundations"; and it was one of its clauses that an active educationist on the Liberal side declared to be "a burning blot on the Bill." An ex-Minister of Education, rejoicing at the elimination of the Borough Council representatives from the central Education Committee, expressed his relief by saying "I am only too thankful that we have removed one of these miserable barbed-wire entanglements, and that we find our- selves in smooth waters at last." A Liberal Member, who ought to have known better, seeing that he is a manufacturer, denounced the scheme of this Bill for "making a perfect net- work, a perfect mosaic, of wheels and cogs and pinions"; and it was in one of the education debates that a member of the Opposition, well known as a zealous advocate of international peace and arbitration, rose to a climax of confusion by saying: "The Secretary of the Education Department was the father of a statement of which the bottom was knocked out by those
Army reform was only second to education in its yield of mixed metaphors to the industrious collector. The very first sentence in one of Mr. Brodrick's speeches—I think it was on the reorganisation of the Army Medical Corps—told us that "among the many jarring notes heard in this House on military affairs this subject at least must be regarded as an oasis." But this was evidently not the view of a. Conservative military Member, for on the same day he denounced the Secretary of State for his tendency to say, "Let sleeping dogs lie ; it will last our time." And not long after a member of the same party, outspoken in his demands for Army reform, and indignant at the lack of independence on the part of the majority of those who sat on the Government benches, declared that the real reason for their silence was that "they were atrophied by the crumbs from the Ministerial table."
It was not a mixed metaphor, but it was none the less delightful, when a representative of an industrial con- stituency, in a debate on the legal position of Trade-Unions, said : "The interests of the employers and employed are the same nine times out of ten,—I will even say ninety-nine times out of ten." In the same debate, Mr. Asquith, who is rarely guilty of such lapses, said that, owing to the discussion being very strictly limited by one of the Standing Orders, "our tongues are tied, our hands are fettered, and we are really beating the air to no purpose." They were not mixed metaphors, again, but the House appreciated the remarks at their full value, when Mr. John Burns, in a discussion on the Children's Employment Bill on June 23rd, said, in a weary, protesting tone, "I will now repeat what I was about to say when the honourable Member interrupted me"; and when an ardent supporter of the Sugar Convention Bill declared that "the West Indies would now have a future which they bad never had in the past." Mr. Ritchie on one occasion spoke of a "thorny subject which had long been a bone of contention among us " ; a Member described the West African territories in the neighbourhood of Lake Tchad as "a slumbering volcano which at any moment a spark might set aflame" ; and a Conservative Member, in an eloquent speech which aroused much attention, denouncing the repeal of the Corn-tax, and complaining of the plight in which he was placed by being called upon first to defend and then to condemn that tax, reached the height of his denunciation in the following sentence :—" The Chancellor of the Exchequer has denuded us of every rag of the principles which we have been proclaiming from the house-tops." But I am inclined to think that the best blunder of the Session stands to the credit of another Ministerialist who noticed while he was speaking that a Liberal Member was showing signs of dissent. " Ah !" he said, "the honourable Member opposite shakes his head at that. But he can't shake mine !" One sees so well what he meant.
It is not a little strange that, of all the Irish " bulls " which I heard during the Session—and those quoted here are only a selection—not one was perpetrated by an Irish Member. It was an Irishman, however, though not a Parliamentarian, who said to me not long ago, speaking of a mutual acquaintance, that "the worst of So-and-so is that he never opens his mouth without treading on somebody's corns." This, of course, recalls the famous bull—attributed, is it not, to Sir Boyle Roche ?—" Blank never opens his mouth without putting his foot in it." My specimen may be less perfect, but I can guarantee it to be genuine. For sheer con- centration of mixed metaphors there is no recorded instance, perhaps, which surpasses a paragraph in a telegram from the Paris correspondent of the Daily News, printed in that news- paper on November 24th, 1900. "To-night the Prefect of Police," it runs, "is taking strong measures to prevent up- roarious scenes in front of the Hotel Scribe, but will hide his hand. It would be better to show it. The enemies of the Republic are making use of Mr. Kruger to kick it over. The Republicans, afraid of going against the stream, tack. The Socialists alone have blood in their veins, and even they are too liable to run off the rails." The House of Commons, with all its aptitude in this direction, never rises to such heights as that.
Previous page
