THE SPEAKERSHIP.
WE do not wonder that the minds of some of the greater statesmen of the Unionist party have been much exercised on the subject of the Speakership. The election of Mr. Gully was in some respects a scandal. Never before has there been a case in which the absence of all the kind of experience specially adapted to fit a man for the discharge of the great judicial office of Speaker, has almost appeared to be the main reason for his selection to fill that office. We are not advancing any charge against Mr. Gully. So far as the experience of only twelve weeks of office can enable us to judge, there is no reason at all to believe that he will make a bad Speaker, —there is, indeed, some little reason to think he will make a good one. But obviously the reason for that view is almost as near to no reason at all as a small fraction is to zero. A new Speaker is guided, and is rightly guided, by the counsel of the permanent officials of the House of Commons,—by the advice of the experienced clerks at the table. If Mr. Gully had not been so guided during the very earliest weeks of office, we should have had some reason to believe that he would be a bad Speaker, and not a good one. He has been so guided, and he has done well. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that what we want in a Speaker of the House of Commons is teachability and nothing more. That is the quality which is the best for a beginner ; but it is not the quality which we need for a great crisis, when party passions run high, and when we want a man fully pos- sessed of that firm self-confidence, that profound sense of justice, that swift insight into the errors made on both sides of the House, which would make the country proud of its Speaker. It is perfectly true that there is no kind of experience which could adequately assure us of the presence of these great qualities. But at least we might have some presumption, such as we had in the case of Lord Peel and Lord Eversley, that the man intended for this office is well master of all the forms of the House, is a man of general force of character on the one hand, and is not a vehement partisan on the other. Of presumptions of this kind we had absolutely no sort of evidence in the case of Mr. Gully. He was certainly not a master of all the forms of the House, for he had never taken any serious part at all in its debates. We believe that the speech in which he submitted himself to the will of the House was only the second speech he had made there, and that even his personal appearance was not known to the leaders of the Unionist party. Whether he was either a man of considerable force of character, or one of cool and impartial judgment no one not personally intimate with him knew, and no one not personally intimate with him knows now. All we can say is that he comported himself with dignity in accepting the office, and that he did not begin the discharge of his functions by any great blunder. That is satisfactory as far as it goes, but it evidently could hardly go less far. Under these circumstances, if he had been chosen by lot, we should hardly have much less reason than we have to expect that he would make a, good Speaker. All we know is,—and it is something, though very little,—that he has shown prudence and savoir faire enough not to trip during his first essays at his work.
This being so, it may fairly be said that when the ques- tion of his re-election in the new Parliament came to be considered, it was exceedingly natural to assume that the House ought to reopen the question of fitness and choose somebody of whose knowledge of the forms of the House, of whose firmness of character, and of whose impartiality of judgment it has at least had some experience. There can be no question that we have such men. Mr. Courtney, judged even by the voice of his political opponents, is one such, and a very distinguished Member amongst those of the largest experience in the special duties of the office. No man who has sat in the last or the previous Parliament doubts for a moment his strength of purpose; or his impartiality of judgment. The only thing that can be said of him is that the Conservatives had the chance of elevating him to the Chair, and that they deliberately re- jected it, so that it might be injudicious to press it on them again. And we quite admit that that is a for- midable objection. On the other hand, there is the present Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White-Ridley, whose fitness and whose calm and sober judgment is generally admitted on his own side of the House. But also in his ease it is known that the other side dis- liked the idea of his election, and preferred to him an utterly untried man of their own party. It is therefore very natural that he should be, as he is said to be, unwilling to be forced into the Chair. Moreover, there is no doubt at all that for many purposes it is far better that the Speaker of the House should have been chosen by the party which is not in power, rather than by the party which is. Whenever his judgment is given against the Opposition, that opinion will have more weight than it could have if he had been selected by the friends of the Government. And whenever his opinion is given in favour of the Opposition, it will have weight too, for it will be recognised that his very natural wish to prove his im- partiality would have prevented him from showing any excess of favour to his own party, especially if his judgment were likely to displease the great majority of the House.
This is indeed the consideration, and the most important consideration, which induces us to hope that Mr. Gully will be re-elected to the Chair, now that the opportunity for replacing him by some more conspicuously well qualified candidate has occurred. There cannot be a doubt that, rightly or wrongly, his rejection would excite great irrita- tion in the minds of the minority, though that irritation would be, in our opinion, unreasonable. Still, the irrita- tion would certainly be felt, and would greatly prejudice the Opposition against the new candidate selected, how- ever carefully the selection might be made. It would hardly be fair to expose any candidate, unless it were Mr. Courtney, to whom the Gladstonians themselves offered the position, to the invidious accusation of having consented to oust Mr. Gully ; and, as we have already said, Mr. Courtney would probably very much dislike the double disadvantage of superseding a Speaker who, though chosen without any public evidence of fitness, has still filled the office satisfac- torily for a few weeks, and also who is personally a favourite with the Gladstonians who chose him. The question is whether we shall not do more harm by super- seding him, even though we have but little evidence of his capacity, than we shall by adhering to the pre- cedent of renewing his official career and trusting to that evidence of our sincere wish not to irritate the minority at the very outset of the new Parliament, for strengthening Mr. Gully's determination to be the strong and impartial judge we really seek. Of course, no determination, how- ever resolute, can transform an unfit man into a fit one. But we have no right at all to pronounce Mr. Gully unfit, since the little knowledge of him that we have, tends in the other direction. For once we regard Mr. James Lowther as a wise counsellor of the Conservative party when he expresses his opinion that to set the example of holding by the elect of the opposite party is now at least a course that will tend better to keep the Speaker's office above partisan passions, than any attempt to revise a choice that was made with so much haste and so little to show that it would be a wise one.
After all, we must not forget that even indifferent Speakers,—and we may fairly hope that Mr. Gully may turn out a good and not an indifferent one,—do very respectable work when the House over which they preside shows its determination to be just and firm. We have had more than one Speaker even since the great Reform Bill who did not earn the reputation of Lord Eversley or Lord Hampden, still less that of Lord Peel, but who nevertheless, with a wise Government in office, brought no sort of discredit on the House of Commons. We may hope higher things even of Mr. Gully than this rather negative and modest sort of achievement. But even if he does not surpass it, we may still have reason to rejoice that the new Parliament begins,—as we trust it will begin, —its career by a signal indication that it does not wish tc pass any needless censure on the acts of its predecessor, even though they may not have been all that the wisest Gladstonians, to say nothing of the most impartial Unionists, would have desired and approved.
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