THE PARLIAMENTARY JOINT.
WE do not think enough of the enlightening effect that humour has upon politics. Everybody knows bow much it can do to make Parliamentary debates amusing, and no doubt, considering the staple of which so much of them is composed, they need all the help they can get in this direction. But the benefits of humour are not exhausted when it has enabled the hearers or readers of a speech to smile instead of sigh. In the darkest night the whole landscape may be lighted up by a single flash. and a jest can sometimes convey the true significance of a Parliamentary situation more accurately than a laboured argument. It brings out the facts in their naked sim- plicity. It strips them of all the adventitious colouring imparted to them by the dignity of the performer. It puts rude truth in the place of polite convention. And it makes all these changes in a way which divests them of the brutality which ordinarily accompanies the process of making things seem what they are. Mr. Birrell's speech yesterday week was an excellent example of this particular function of humour. Enough had been said both in and out of the House as to the uselessness and impropriety of the prolonged debate on Lord Edmond Fitzinaurice's Amendment. It had been attributed to want of patriotism and want of taste on the part of the Opposition ; want of courage and want of insight into the real wishes of the nation on the part of the Govern- ment. It was left to Mr. Birrell to assign a simpler reason than either of these, and one that must have carried conviction to all his listeners. The true ex- planation why a debate that might usefully have occupied two days has been extended over six is to be found, he thinks, in the vanity of the two front benches. There may be half a dozen speakers on each of these benches who have something to say which the country desires to hear, and if they had followed one another with only the occasional interposition of a private Member, the House would have had all the information and all the argument it wanted, without any hindrance being offered to the more necessary business that is to follow. Instead of this the chief debaters have refused to believe that an audience can be fit unless it has ceased to be few. There are some two or three hours in the afternoon when this demand is satisfied,—when, to use Mr. Birrell's happy expression, the Parliamentary joint is in prime cut, and will yield a couple of slices in the best possible condition. Unless a front bench speaker can secure one of these slices he would rather remain silent. The remaining hours of the evening are merely so much offal to be fought over by inferior Members. The really valuable hours are those which come between tea and dinner. A listening Legislature has by that time made its bow in the drawing- rooms of its choice, and has not yet begun to speculate whether it is allowing time enough for the process of dressing. Its mind is in the best state for appreciating eloquence because it knows that it will not be too long drawn out. This is the sacred interval which Ministers and ex-Ministers keep so strictly to themselves. There is only one other that can be compared with it and that is the two hours before the division. But this is almost invariably appropriated by the Leader of the House.
It is perfectly natural that even the most prominent men in the House of Commons should like speaking to full benches. Whatever doubt science may have cast upon Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, the doctrine remains true of those particular children of Nature who compose the two front benches. Nor is it only vanity that is the cause of this instinctive preference. An orator is in part the creature of his hearers. He rises with their enthusiasm, he sinks with their indifference. In that long and dull interval which constitutes the dinner-hour the warmer of these emotions is not easily evoked. Enthusiasm requires some approach to physical contact. Mind does not readily respond to mind when the inter- vening matter is a row of unoccupied seats. There may be men who could—at all events on some special occasion —keep the House listening from 8 to 10 p.m. But that is not a common gift, and we do not wonder that the ordinary statesman avoids the experiment which might prove only too conclusively that he does not happen to possess it. If he has missed or foregone his chance in the afternoon be prefers to wait until Members have dined and smoked, and have unwillingly returned to the scene of their political labours. But we look to Ministers and ex-Ministers for some traces of ability to rise above Nature. They are not like private Members, to whom the opportunity of making a. set speech comes perhaps but once in a Session. Ministers and ex-Ministers have the secret of catching the Speaker's eye. They have nothing to do but to put the Whip in possession of the fact that they want to speak in a particular debate, and the way is at once open to them. From them, there- fore, we look for something rather more heroic than mere regard for their own oratorical reputation. They are the custodians of the public time as well as of the public purse, and their business is to see that no avoidable inroads are made upon either. If Mr. Birrell's hint were taken, and when each speaker of Cabinet rank sat down another followed close at his heels, we should not have weeks taken with debates which might easily have been limited to days.
We are not suggesting the adoption of a time-limit for Parliamentary speakers of the first, or indeed of any other, rank. We are only anxious to see them less punctilious about the precise hour at which they happen to rise. We do not say that their audiences would be as large, but we are sure that in critical times they would be rendering a real service to the transaction of public business by occasionally dispensing with an audience. There are Sessions, doubtless, in which the transaction of public business is of very small importance. The necessary supplies have to be voted, but when this has been done, there is a general sense that Parliament is sitting chiefly to save appearances. In this case no reasonable objection can be taken to the present distribution of oratorical strength. Everybody is benefited, and by consequence everybody is pleased. Ministers and ex-Ministers speak at the precise moment when they are most certain of a hearing, while private Members speak at times when they are secure against being counted out, even though there is no one to listen to them. But in such a Session as the present, the country is otherwise minded, and but for the force of habit the House of Commons would be otherwise minded too. What is wanted is not general comment on the origin and progress of the war, but a statement of the pro- visions which Ministers propose to make for bringing the war to the speediest and most successful end that it is in our power to secure. This statement is not brought nearer by appeals to the Opposition to withdraw their amendment in order to allow the Government to get to the real business of the Session. The Opposition have a right to comment on the diplomatic and military history of the war, and if the Government wish them to waive this right they ought to set them an example by waiv. ing the less important right of only speaking when the House is fullest and most attentive. Assuming that Ministers are as anxious as the rest of the House to get Mr. Wyndham on his legs, what would have been the most certain way of bringing this about ? We can imagine nothing more calculated to have the desired effect than an announcement by the Leader of the House that in order to save time the Government intended to make no unnecessary speeches and to leave no unnecessary inter- vals between those they did make. If that intention had been carried out, the front Opposition bench would have been forced to fall in with it on pain of seeing the debate draw to its close without their having had an opportunity of taking part in it. What is the need of the flow of Ministerial and ex. Ministerial oratory that has filled the Parliamentary columns of the Times for a full week ? All that was necessary on the most liberal calculation might have been gained by a couple of speeches on each side, or, if more had been wanted, double that number might easily have been compressed into a couple of nights. It is not private Members that are to blame for this needless and mis- chievous prolongation, since they have only spoken in the interstices which the present method of debate leaves to be filled up between the principal speakers. Consequently, the remedy does not lie in the surrender, either by private Members generally, or by the Opposition in particular, of opportunities which they have not really misused. It lies in the hands of the two front benches.
Previous page
