SIR L. PLAYFAIR ON PROCEDURE.
THE grand difficulty of reforming Procedure in the House of Commons is this. The work cannot be done, or at all events done thoroughly, unless the constituencies will take an interest in it ; for the second party in the kingdom, supported by the Parnellites, is resolutely opposed to change. A few
Conservatives, like Sir Henry Maine, believe Obstruction to be a safeguard of liberty ; but the majority are opposed to legisla- tion in itself, and favour Obstruction, therefore, as a positive good.
Mr. Stanhope goes quite that length, maintaining that, with Radicals in power, the check is indispensable; and Lord Salisbury and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in their talk about the freedom of debate, really mean the same thing. All the Irish of the extreme school avow that Obstruction is their weapon, and the allies are on such a subject so strong, that to pass a sufficient measure of reform without direct support from outside would probably consume a Session, and perhaps exhaust the initial momentum of the new Parliament. The constituencies must, therefore, be in- structed, and this is a work of most unusual difficulty. The theme is so "technical," so dependent on detail, so wearisome, in fact, that Members and journalists alike shrink from devoting them- selves to the discussion. "It bores them to suffocation," as they say, and their audiences are equally bored. It is impossible to be either lively, or agreeable, or eloquent about questions, and amendments, and divisions, and readings, and discussions in Committee, and closure, and devolution, and all the rest of the devices by which discussion, or an end to discussion, are usually assured. Except when a man like Mr. Morley condenses the situation, as he has done this week, into a brilliant literary
epigram ; or a man like Lord Rosebery, who is disinterested—
for the Peers are at once too fond of ease and too fastidious to stand Obstruction—calls their attention to it, public meetings fret under the subject, and even if patient, cannot be excited to enthusiasm about it. Indeed, the people cannot understand why Obstruction is allowed to continue. They would not bear it in their own popular assemblies for an hour, but would shout " Timel" till the obstructive speaker left off worrying, or that failing, would try whether a few shat- tered chairs and an ink-bottle or two flung with good aim would not reduce him to decency and quiescence. They hardly recognise the difficulties ; and though they are perfectly ready to put Obstruction down, even by making it treason, if need be—which is what it really is—they do not insist that it shall be put down, or dismiss a candidate for calling it freedom of debate. If they would refuse seats to Sir M. Hicks-Beach and Mr. Stanhope on this ground alone, urged at every meeting without reference to party, they would soon be obeyed ; but they stop short at a languid acquiescence in the statement that the evil must be abated.
We therefore honour a man who, like Sir Lyon Playfair at Leeds on Thursday, will miss a great opportunity of ingratiating himself with his electors in order to convince them, or try to convince them, of the imperative necessity for this reform As it happened, he got a hearing. He knows this subject as no other Member knows it ; and as usual, when a man accus- lomed to speaking speaks from complete knowledge, he not only interested, but even excited his audience. It was a pretty picture he drew of the condition of the House. Labourers are fighting for eight hours' work a day ; but an ordinary Member of Parliament, in addition to all the other work of his life, slaves twelve hours a day in the House, and a member of the Government seldom gets off, his office duties being included, under fifteen hours. That may not matter as regards him, at least in the eyes of cynics, for, even if five years' labour used up a Secretary of State, six hundred surviving Members would be ready to accept the office ; but it matters as regards the nation. The national work is badly done, and so is the work of Parliament, till the Speaker, though necessarily reti-
cent on the subject, says "he notices that work is performed defectively, and that as the Session progresses the work is
slurred, that the debates show signs of weariness and irrita- bility." The Members get "cross," to use the expressive children's word, jaded, and unhappy, until the Speaker's time is consumed in checking breaches of order. "In the year 1881," says Sir L. Playfair, "the Speaker had to exert his authority on points of order in debate no less than 935 times, and I, as Deputy- Speaker, 122 times. As Chairman of Committees, I had to interfere on points of order 817 times, or altogether the Chair had to exercise its authority 1,874 times. Now, in a well- ordered Assembly the intervention of the Chairman should be exceedingly rare." Granting only five minutes for each interruption of the kind—and it often occupies much more—one hundred and fifty hours of the short working-time of Parliament is consumed in sterile and undignified collisions between the Chair and the obstructive Members. This is, of course, independent of the time wasted in ridiculous questions, in motions intended only to obstruct, in divisions upon the motion to adjourn, in speeches deliberately uttered in order to waste working-time, and in the rare, but disgraceful, efforts to make the progress of business impossible by overt obstruction on the part of a minority "using the forms of the House" so as to paralyse its action. The total result is, of course, to render Parliament powerless, and compel the people either to do without the legislation they desire, or to secure it by threatening agitation out of doors. The Government goes on, for obstruction is not censure, but Parliament is arrested like a locomotive in the mud.
Sir Lyon Playfair, we are happy to see, does not propose childish remedies for the evil ; but while suggesting a limita- tion on the length of speeches which would, we fear, do little good, and approving devolution and some other reforms, he demands unhesitatingly the only cure which will be in any suffi- cient way effective —namely, the Closure pure and simple. If the House thinks it has had enough of Obstruction, it should be permitted to say so, and then pass or reject the measure before it, be it Bill, or Resolution, or Vote of Approval; without more talk. This is the rule of the French Assembly and of Congress ; and in both Legislatures it is admitted that without it business could never get done. It is the rule observed, though not formulated, in every public meeting, and enforced sometimes, as we have observed, by the effective sanction of flying brickbats ; and it has, in the House of Commons, become indispensable. All the palliative sug- gestions have failed, and the electors are driven back upon two alternatives. Either they must allow the majority to close debate by a silent vote, or Parliament must cease to act, and remain paralysed till the suspension of its functions produces either a great catastrophe or a man strong enough to make Obstruction treason, and inflict its penalties. It may be necessary, we fear it will be, to make insult to the Speaker a legal offence, like insult to a Judge ; but the true Closure is indispensable, even if it takes the waste of a Session to get it passed. An army might as well consent to march in fetters, as Members try to conduct business under the present forms. A radical reform in Procedure is indispensable ; and we trust the constituencies, whatever else they do or neglect, will, even at the eleventh hour, reject every candidate, even if he be Mr. Gladstone him- self, who does not on this subject give an explicit pledge. Every such candidate is an open enemy of the existing Con- stitution, which cannot last unless Obstruction be finally put down.
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