The general debate on Procedure took up three whole sittings
of the House, though there was hardly anything fresh to say upon it that had not been said ad nauseam either in recent years or in the debate on the Address itself. Mr. W. H. Smith was, indeed, very brief in intro- ducing the discussion, and did little beyond deprecating the treatment of the subject in a party spirit, and pointing out that to fix a definite hour (half-past 12), as the Government proposed to do, for the termination of debate, would (as, indeed, on Wednesdays it does) facilitate obstruction, unless the House were to secure the power of putting a termination to discussion at its own discretion. Mr. Gladstone expressed great doubts of the advantages of taking Procedure as a mode of expediting the business of the Session, considering the great difficulty and delicacy of getting Procedure resolutions passed. Then, again, if Procedure were to be taken, Mr. Gladstone attached much more importance to devolution ' than to the Closure, or to any interferenee with Members' private privileges, and on this he insisted with some emphasis. He also painted out the incon- venience of the rule that no question could be discussed on a motion for adjournment on which a notice of motion stood for some future day, and remarked that by a little management it would be possible to exclude all discussion on matters deeply interesting to the public, by giving notice of Bills dealing with various subjects. He expressed his opinion that to demand the
consent of the Speaker to a motion for the Closure would involve the Speaker much more directly than to give him power, as we do now, to declare the obvious sense of the House that the debate ought to be closed ; and he dreaded the danger of identifying the Speaker with partisan views under the new proposal.
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