THE SPEAKER AND THE MINISTRY.
WE have never concealed our own strong conviction that the proposal to close a debate ought to originate with the responsible Ministry of the day, and to be subject only to the veto of the Speaker, if in his opinion, as the guardian of free speech and free deliberation, there be still some section of opinion to the expression of which the House is bound, in the public interest, to listen. Thus far we agree with several of the Members who spoke or voted on Monday with Mr. O'Donnell ; but assuredly we could not have supported Mr. O'Donnell's amendment, or the amendment of Lord George Hamilton, both these amendments appearing to us to combine in a very unhappy manner the disadvantages of the Ministerial with the disadvantages of the preferable proposal. As the resolution at present stands, the Government may justly say that the proposal is not a party proposal at all ; that the Government cannot set in motion a proposal to close the debate, and that, if the Speaker makes that proposal, he makes it in the interest of the whole House, and with a view to increase the influence and dignity of the House, because he believes that the deliberation has already been sufficient, or more than sufficient, for the purposes of a great deliberative Legisla- ture. The objection to the Rule, as it stands at present, is this,—that it will be much too sparingly used. The Speaker has a great reputation for impartiality to sustain, and he will be obliged to exhaust all the adverse possibilities, before he ventures to commit himself to the opinion that the great majority of the House are anxious for the close of a debate. On the other hand, the Minister who is responsible for the due administration of the time of the Legislature,—which the Speaker, of course, is not and cannot be,—would, of course, be obliged to consider everything that the Speaker must consider, but would be spurred on by other considerations also. He would be bound to ask himself whether, having regard to the public business before the House, more time ought to be given to a particular debate than had already been
given. The Speaker has no right to take that into account directly at all. All he is entitled to consider is, the actual state of opinion amongst the great majority of Members on the point of further spinning out or at once concluding the debate. Now, the opinion of the great majority of Mem- bers on such a point is a very fluctuating affair, and might well be subject to considerable change, on hearing a short state- ment from the Minister as to the duties which lie before Par- liament, and which urge promptitude. It is easily conceivable that before Mr. Gladstone got up to propose a prompt decision, a majority, or, at least, a very large minority, of the House might be anxious for further debate, but that when he sat down, the great majority would feel that the condition of public business required, in the interests of the whole community, that a debate already adequate should not be continued till it was absolutely exhausted. This is why we hold that the Minister should have the responsibility imposed upon him of deciding, in the interests of the public generally, whether further debate be wise or unwise ; and that the House should decide on this proposal as it decides on others of his proposals, clearly understanding that an adverse decision, if it be necessary, would amount to a censure on the Ministry. We can see no reason in the world why a Minister who is bound to decide what reforms he ought to propose to the House of Commons, should not also be bound to decide what time, in the general interests of free and full deliberation, and of the strength and dignity of the Legislature, ought to be allotted to the discussion of those reforms.
But when you combine this plan, as Mr. O'Donnell and Lord George Hamilton proposed to do, with the plan of leaving the decision to the Speaker, and make it a proposal for which the Minister is responsible, but which the Speaker him- self has personally adopted—and we must remember that his personal adoption of it is a very different matter from the non- exercise of a veto, since the non-exercise of a veto only implies that he has, within his own knowledge, no sufficient reason for disapproving the proposal—you combine the disadvantages of both plans. It could no longer be said that the Government were proposing the matter on their own sole responsibility as chiefs of the Administration and leaders of the House, for the Speaker must personally adopt their proposal, and therefore a rejection of it would not only censure the Ministry, but censure the Speaker also. The effect of that would undoubtedly be to ally the Administration and the Speaker of the House in a very unusual and dangerous fashion, to ensure their taking counsel together,—to place them, as it is called, in the same boat, and make them feel that they must sink or swim together. That, if you like, really would tend to turn the Speaker into an ally of party, which neither of the other proposals does. The objection to the present Ministerial proposal is that it makes the Closure of debate a great deal too difficult and exceptional a measure for efficient use, but at least it rather adds to the security for a judicial and impartial Speaker, by increasing his authority, and by rendering him, of course, justly jealous of any attempt by the Administration to suggest to him how he should exercise it. The proposal that the Minister should appeal to the Speaker for a decision, and that on that appeal the Speaker should decide, would deprive him of all right to feel any such jealousy, and make it a matter of course that he should take counsel on the matter with the Minister of the day. Yet that plan, while it would deprive him of all the separateness and impartiality of his position, would not in
any way secure the prudent use of the Closure for the pur- pose of expediting urgent business, which, in it. The ought to be one of the regular motives for applying t. The Minister, of course, would not like to appeal to the Speaker, and then only get snubbed by the Speaker. The Speaker, on his side, would say that he had no direct responsibility for economising the time of the House with a view to the due transaction of public business, and that he was bound to think of one thing, and one thing only,—the absolute adequacy of the debate to the wishes of the House. Hence, as it seems to us, the amendments of Monday night, far from tending, as Mr. Labouchere seemed to think they did, in the direction of simple Ministerial responsibility for the proposal of the Closure, really struck into a via media far more objectionable than either the plan of the Government or the plan which we should have preferred. The two plans are quite distinct. The present plan secures the Closure as an extreme measure, when the Speaker feels quite sure of the state of opinion in the House. The plan we should prefer makes it a matter of Ministerial responsibility, to be decided af ter taking into account a number of complex considera- tions, amongst which the urgency of public business counts for a good deal. But the plan rejected on Monday was a plan un- happily combining the evils of both these distinct suggestions, and not securing the special advantages of either of them. One of the oddest features of the debate was Mr. Leighton's feint of a violent attack on the Speaker for confederating him- self with the Government in the arbitrary closure of the mon- ster sitting of last year,—an attack which, as rumour says, Mr. Leighton really meant not for the Speaker, but for the Government. Certainly, it was singularly irrelevant to the debate, if intended, as it appeared to be intended, to support Lord George Hamilton's amendment, for the very essence of that great crisis of last year was that the Speaker had no clearly- defined power to put an end to the debate under the existing orders of the House ; and therefore, of course, that he was com- pelled to assure himself that he would have the support of the Government of the day in what he proposed to do. But the new Rule, as the Government propose it, would have given him the formal right to do what he did, and, therefore, would have exempted him from any necessity for taking counsel first with the Government of the day. Mr. Leighton is making a credit- able attempt to infuse a little historical learning into the speeches of the Squirearchical party. Such learning, no doubt, adds "dignity to debate." But be would be wise if he used his historical lore with a little more practical logic than he did on Monday night, when be achieved the happy result of per- suading everybody that he was making a personal assault on the Speaker, without, as it is asserted, intending to do so ; and also of persuading those most opposed to the resolution of the Government, that the Ministerial resolution was conceived in the interests of the dignity and independence of the Chair, whereas he imagined himself to be demonstrating how com- pletely it would undermine that dignity and independence.
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