THE DULLNESS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
WE wonder if it be really true that democracy, in the true sense, abhors a joke as Nature is said to abhor a vacuum. Of course, those who think of Athens as a democracy, naturally reject such a notion; for never was there a people who loved a joke better than the Athenian people. But Athens was rather a pure oligarchy, than a pure democracy. It was a small Republic founded on slave- labour ; and no Republic founded upon slave-labour can properly be called anything but an oligarchy. But there does certainly seem a real tendency in pure democracies towards the elimination of humour. Compare England, before Mr. Disraeli's first Reform Bill, with England now, and no one could deny that humour has disappeared almost entirely out of the debates of the House of Commons. Even the Irishmen have grown dull. Where could we find any Irish Member who, like the late O'Gorman Mahon, would convulse the House by asking, at some uncertain hour close to midnight, " Mr. Spaker, is it yesterday or to-morrow ? " or who would amuse it with the easy, twinkling sort of humour with which the late Mr. Sergeant Dowse, before he was raised to the Bench, used to cheer its debates ? Even the more indignant kind of humour, —the humour with which Mr. Bright used to adorn his greater speeches, as when he said that Mr. Disraeli reminded him of the mountebank who professed to have a pill that was very good against an earthquake, or declared of the "Cave " formed by Earl Grosvenor (now the Duke of Westminster), Mr. Lowe, and others, that it resembled a Skye-terrier in the impossibility of finding out which was its head and which was its tail,—has quite dis- appeared from the House of Commons. And as for the rather cynical humour of Sir Richard Bethell (afterwards Lord Westbury) or Mr. Bernal Osborne, the only trace of it now is in the occasional gay indifference of Mr. Labou- chere, who has not, perhaps, quite forgotten the assurance with which he spoke of himself on one of the many occasions of an adjournment over the Derby Day, as a vir pietate gravis, whose mere presence so repelled anything like wantonness or excess, that his personal experience as to the perfect sobriety and orderliness of Epsom Downs was, of course, quite irrelevant. There can be no doubt, whatever be the reason, that the House of Commons has turned deadly dull, and we should like to know why. It certainly is not for want of capacity. Almost everybody agrees that the average capacity of the younger men on both sides is far above the normal standard. And, indeed, the debates, though sadly wanting in any touch of humour, are almost always shrewd, practical, and to the point. But it is quite certain that anything resembling light-heartedness has vanished.
We say anything resembling light-heartedness, for very few of the best humourists of the House of Commons have been really light-hearted. Mr. Sergeant Dowse was light- hearted, and so occasionally was Lord Palmerston ; but the most characteristic humourists of the House of Commons, —Mr. Disraeli, Sir Richard Bethell, Mr. Bernal Osborne,— had always a greater element of scorn in their humour, than of anything like true laughter. But now we have neither satire nor fun. The House is as grimly in earnest on Home-rule and the Eight-Hours Bill as the consump- tive Jew in " Daniel Deronda," who filled the sanded parlour with his rather dreary eloquence on the duty of a new return from exile to the Holy Land. We wonder if the reason is really the atmosphere of weariness which belongs to the Labour question. It is not easy to think so, for whatever the miners may feel, there are very few miners in the House of Commons, and the mass of the representatives are by no means men who have been over- worked till they have lost the power to smile. But, no doubt, it is true that the popular fashion of the day is a rather sentimental earnestness, and that is not at all favourable to levity of any kind, whether of the light- hearted or the scornful type. Humour and even wit are both of the nature of a recoil from the ultra-serious view of a question, humour being the recoil of sincere good spirits, while a good deal of the wit is usually the recoil of a rather bitter and contemptuous impatience. But in the present House of Commons, there is hardly any recoil at all. The universal feeling is a vehement determination to grind away either at doing the taskwork to be done, or at resisting its being done at all, and this determination Is eminently industrious and prosaic. There is no elasticity, no buoyancy left in the temper of the House of Commons. Lord Rosebery shows buoyancy some- times in the House of Lords, and still oftener outside the House of Lords ; for even the House of Lords seems to be sensitive to the over-earnestness of the day. There Is, indeed, a great deal more playfulness shown even on platforms than there is in either House of Parliament ; and that is why we are disposed to think that it is really the over-practical temper of this generation which banishes all liveliness from the debates. The Closure has done a great deal in the House of Commons to put down anything like a jest. Atropos with her shears is always at hand ; the Speaker or the Chairman is always on the watch for irrelevancies ; and the thread of life, which is so near its last snip, is apt to run out with a certain grim- ness of purpose. And even in the House of Lords, where there is ample time, and much more than ample time, for the light shifting and glancing of a, playful humour, there is a sense of the democratic cloud which overhangs the Assembly and discourages its sportiveness. " Alas," not " unconscious of their doom, the little victims play." Even the Lords are anxious to show that they are not going to war " with a light heart." They feel too much like Sunday-school teachers on their trial. Any sign of flippancy, they perhaps think, will hasten their fate. Add to all this the exhausting monotony of a nearly eight years' debate on the same subject, the bitterness of the feeling it has evoked between the two parties, and the profound conviction on both sides that the ultimate triumph of their opponent is the end of all political life in any sense in which they care for political life, and there is, we think, a sufficient explanation of the dis- appearance of all true lightness of heart from the great conflict. If M. Emile Olivier, when he said that France was going to war with a light heart, could have repre- sented to himself the dark columns of German troops that were preparing to pour into France, the fell batteries, the heavily mounted hussars, and the siege-trains that were about to discharge their deadly shot and shells on his country, he would not have had a light heart to boast of. Now, the Parliamentary combatants of to-day do feel that the final victory of either side is full of these deadly auguries. If Mr. Gladstone fails to get an Irish Legislature into existence, the chances are enormous that it will never come into existence at all. Half at least, probably much more than half, of the members in favour of it in the English ranks are in favour of it out of mere loyalty to him, and a great deal of that loyalty is reluctant loyalty which no other leader could evoke. On the other hand, the Unionists know that if ever an Act passes the Legislature breaking up the present Constitution, laying the founda- tions for a new-fangled Federalism, and starting Ireland, and probably two or three other fragments of the Union, on a separate political career, we shall never have the old country again, nor indeed anything like it. The struggle, therefore, is a grim and deadly one, as well as being a weary and exhausted one, and all this tends to sombre pertinacity, and a certain dull fierceness on both sides. No wonder there is so little humour. Humour implies an unpreoccupied mind, a mind at leisure to take odd and fantastic views of the situation, and there are very few such minds in our modern politics. The Irish- men are all fighting for a victory the last chance of which hangs on a precarious and already marvellously prolonged life. The Unionists are fighting against an attack which, if it succeeds, will blow up the historic Kingdom into a ring of weak and almost helpless fragments.
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