WORKING OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
ATTENDANCE. •
ON the subject of our Supplement on the Working of the House of Commons, we have received the following letter from Mr. RIGBY WASON, the late honourable Member for Ipswich. The envelope is dated Carlisle, December 2.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
SIR.—It was not until this evening that I had an opportunity of seeing your "Key to Political Knowledge ;" of which it is not possible for me to speak too highly. This, however, was not my motive in addressing you but to point out the inaccuracies which occur respecting my attendance. And on this point you will excuse my being a little j-alous,for I have long been impressed with similar views to your own upon thisi :nportant subject, and have strictly adhered to my resolution of never suffering any other engagement to interfere with that which a representative should consider as paramount to all othets, viz, his daily attendance in Parliament.
You have marked me as being absent on the second reading of the Reform Bill, and on Mr. HERRIES'S Motion of censure : on both occasions I was present, and voted in the majority. In your second table you have also marked me as being absent on the division on the motion for retaining thirty boroughs in schedule B, for the ten-pound household clauses, and for going into Committee on Schedule A: upon each of these occasions I was present, and voted in the majority. I beg to avail myself of this opportunity of suggesting a mode by which the attendance of Members may be easily known—it isby each person delivering to the door-keeper his printed card as he enters the House. The lists of those present and the absentees to be published with the Votes the next morning, and the latter to be fined one sovereign for each day's non-attendance. This, and meeting, as you propose, at twelve o'clock (perhaps eleven would be the better hour), would, I think, secure a proper attendance. I remain, Sir, your very obedient servant,
RIGBY' WASON.
We find from a copy of the Carlisle Journal of the 1st instant, which has been forwarded to us, that the same Supplement has been the subject of a controversy between Mr. GEORGE WHEATLEY on the one side, and Mr. P. H. Howann, late M.P. for Carlisle, and the respectable editor of the Journal, on the other. We extremely admire the zeal which is felt by Mr. WASON, and that which, from Mr. WHEATLEY'S letter, seems to have been felt by Mr. HOWARD, in vindicating their claims to a close and constant attendance on their public duties. If we have been the means of misleading the constituents of either of these gentlemen—whose efforts in the cause of Reform are well known—touching their " activity," we shall be exceedingly sorry. But we need not tell Mr. HOWARD, or Mr. WASON, Whose plan of insuring attendance, with the exception of the fining part, we long ago suggested, that they—not individually indeed, but certainly in common with the other members of the House—are alone to blame for errors the consequences of which they are now suffering. The public are too much alive to the importance of Parliamentary proceedings, not to earch into the conduct of their representatives with most acrutin.zing eyes; and if those representatives, out of a blind and stu reverence to forms which common sense at no time sanetioa A, and which respect for the advanced intelligence of the age ought long ago to have taught them to despise,—if, from respect to these forms, members will still attempt to shut out the public from accurate means of knowledge, they must be prepared to submit without grumbling to the inaccuracies of which they are he parents and fosterers. Let the House keep a list of attendflee, according to the form suggested by Mr. WASON, or any ther that may be deemed fitting ; let its divisions, all important. as they are confessed to be, be noted in the way that we have repeatedly suggested, or any other; let the attendances and the divisions be open to the public ; ova then no newspaper can misrepresent either, unless from design. If any newspaper do so from design, let its conductors and proprietors suffer as they deserve.
We need hardly repeat what we have often told before,—the method by which divisions are, at present, recorded. We owe them entirely to the zeal and diligence of a few members; perhaps we should say we owe them to the zeal and diligence of one member, whom we hardly point out in a more marked manner when we mention his name—JOSEPH HUME—than when we mention his well-known characteristics. To suppose that the divisions can ever be given with perfect accuracy by the present method, especially when they are large, would be to suppose that Mr. HUME had a hundred hands and a hundred eyes. From the divisions as furnished by Mr. HumE our tables were made up; and it is a proof of their being well made up, that only in the two instances which we have been considering (if in two, for Mr. HowARD'S complaint appears to be not very definite), and in two instances of previous occurrence, have we heard their accuracy impugned. Our main object, however, in submitting them, was to show how this part of the House of Commons machinery might be worked.
In conclusion, while we rejoice to perceive symptoms of honourable jealousy like that of Mr. WASON, we must frankly state, that we have no reason to believe that his feelings are shared by the majority of the candidates, and least of all by the Ministers. No plan of publishing the proceedings of Parliament, in an authentic shape, has as yet been contemplated by them; nor do WE think that any such plan will be contemplated, until, as in other reforms, the spirit of the times and the pressure of the people from without compel them to open their eyes to its propriety.
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