MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S WARNING.
WPi really cannot discuss Mr. Chamberlain's plan for entrusting the management of the Land- Purchase Act to local bodies any more. It is at best only a counsel of perfection. He is not going to worry the Government by urging it in the present debate ; and if in a subsequent Session it should be brought forward again, there will be ample opportunity for weighing arguments. The question he raised at Oxford on Wednesday, when addressing the University Unionist League, is of infinitely more importance, and it is to that that we shall to-day confine our comments. The Gladstonian Party, finding themselves unable to defeat the Land-Purchase Bill, and growing day by day more afraid of its effect in tranquil- lising Ireland, have become furious, and appear resolved to prevent its passing into law by sheer obstruction. Although their own leader has repeatedly affirmed the principle of the Bill, and both parties agree that a Bill like it is an inevitable condition of peace in Ireland, and it is certain that if it could be submitted to an Irish plebiscite it would be passed at once, they will not, intimates Mr. Chamberlain, allow it to get through, but will use the forms of the House to keep up an interminable babble of objections, until the majority, who must always be present in the House to vote, though, by the mercy of Providence, they need not sit under the benumbing drip, drip of the debate itself, are worn out with mental and physical exhaustion. The Gladstonians will, in fact, make legislation impossible by torturing their opponents. They intend, first of all, to use the strongest weapon in the arsenal of obstruction, and move a series of " instructions " to the Committee, each one of which may, in truth, be the proposal of a new Bill, and allow of indefinite debate. If these instructions, by dint of a steady waste of life and energy on the part of the majority, are ever got through, they will fall back on their old weapons, and let fly a shower of "amendments," Mr. Morley alone, it is said, having devised two pages full of them ; while Mr. Healy, who understands Land Bills, would on demand be ready with a hundred or two more. They have no chance of carrying either instructions or amend- ments, or any one of them ; but by the time the talk grows slack, the limits of the Session will have been reached ; the Ministers will all be ill with the misery of abortive effort; and the majority, limp with fatigue, and heat, and mental torture like that of men who for eight hours a day have listened to sermons from curates with nothing to say, will refuse to sit any longer, and the Bill will drop. It may seem impossible that such a scheme would succeed. It is utterly opposed to every principle of the representative government which its authors profess to admire, being a direct denial not only of the rights of the majority of Members within the House, but of those of the electors outside it, who are distinctly told that they shall not have their own way, but shall pass only the laws which the minority approve. It reduces Parliament to impotence, and is, in fact, as opposed to the Constitution as if the minority arrested the majority, and imprisoned them in order to prevent their voting. We should expect, there- fore, that the electors would resent it, and by threatening every one engaged in the scheme with final exclusion from Parliament, prevent its execution ; but Mr. Chamberlain says there is no hope of such a revolt of common-sense. He believes that the plan will, under ordinary circumstances, succeed, and that the Bill will be lost unless the Government takes a course he deprecates,—that is, either "drops a large and important part of the measure, and so lightens the ship by throwing valuable cargo overboard, or uses the Closure as it has never been used before, and carries the rest of the Bill, after a certain time has been passed in discussion, without amendment or further debate." Mr. Chamberlain understands the House, and but for one lingering hope, we should agree with him in despairing of the prospects of the Bill. His own suggestion, that the chiefs of both parties should meet in conference, is inapplicable to the circumstances. The Gladstonians, strictly so called, and the Unionists could, of course, coalesce on a Bill easily enough if they chose, for they both acknowledge that the present system of land- tenure must be superseded by occupying proprietorship, and, indeed, could agree to a Bill covering all Ireland with freeholders ; but they will attempt nothing of the kind. The Gladstonians do not want a larger Bill, or a modified Bill, least of all an improved Bill. They object to any Bill whatever until they can pass it themselves, when they will pass it at once, and quote Mr. Balfour's proposal as a reason why there should be no resistance. They are not fighting against Land-purchase, but against the efficiency of Parliament when Parliament is in Unionist hands. They cannot, therefore, enter into a Conference with the Government, or agree to accept any Bill, even if they considered every word it contained beneficial to the Kingdom. There is no hope whatever in this direction, but there may be in another. It is just possible that the Government, taking co from despair, and indignant at the open menace to therights of Parliament, may throw itself on the common-sense of the community, may employ the Closure with the necessary severity —that is, ten times in a night, if need be—and if that expedient fails, may, after a sufficient time has been wasted in talk, ask the House to suspend the Standing Orders, and pass the Bill at once. It is useless to think of new rules, or lightening the Bill of clauses, or voting each clause in complete silence on the Ministerial side. The Gladstonians could talk with ease on one line of one clause from now till Christmas, and nothing except the suppression of debate can defeat the misuse of that power. Of course the minority in the House will denounce the remedy we suggest. as tyrannical, but it would not be so regarded in the country, which, whether it approves or disapproves of the Government, likes fair-play, and is sick to its very soul of obstruction by endless talk. We only wish, indeed, it were possible to dissolve upon that single issue, for the result would do more to frighten Members from attempting or sanctioning obstructive devices than any number of new rules. The people want to use the instrument, Parliament, now at last in their own hands, not to see it broken before it has been effectively employed in their service. As to discussion, when it descends to details, they do not even read it, any more than their Members sit to listen to it, and the only newspapers which report speeches at length are those supposed to represent the masses least accurately. If the House consented to conduct the rest of the discus- sion on Purchase with closed doors, the country would be delighted, feeling that it had been relieved of a duty which it could not altogether deny, but which human nature would no longer allow it to perform. The greater speakers have said their say on the second reading of the Bill ; and nobody wants the second-rate speeches except the second-rate speakers who utter them, us to almost empty benches. If those speeches are of Bud interest, as the talkers affirm, why do their own colleagueir fly for refuge to any room in the House where they are safe from hearing anything, except the electric bells calling them back to vote? We do not believe the Govern- ment would lose a single vote by cutting their torture short ; rather we believe they would gain thousands, the British, like the American democracy, asking first of its leaders that they should show a capacity of being firm. It is mere timidity, based on tradition and not on actual danger, which tolerates obstruction by talk. One thing is pretty well proved by this revival of obstruction. The evil which threatens the very life of Parliament—for every scene of obstruction adds thousands to the number of those who believe that government by public meeting has passed its day of usefulness—cannot be cured by any rules intended to limit the number of occa- sions of debate. A strong opposition resolved to waste time can always find occasions. If the debate on the Address is abolished, they will move a vote of censure on the Ministry for advising such a Royal speech, and talk about that during the fortnight or three weeks now wasted upon the other pretext. If the right of interpellation is limited to important matters, Members will invent important matters, and, leave it to Government to assure the House that they are only inventions. If talk is allowed at all, the only cheek upon talk must be the self-respect of the talkers ; and it is obvious, from all recent experience, that self- respect is no longer a restraining influence in the House. It never does restrain people who are over- mastered by spite, and spite is, for the moment, the dominant impulse with the minority, owing to its belief that were the country consulted, it would again be placed. where it alone has the right to be, namely, in power. If the forms of the House are to be again revised, an they must be if representative government is to remain alive, the efforts of reformers must be directed towards some method of allowing the House, when intellectually wearied out, to terminate debate. It is, unhappily, not possible to apply the old remedy for the abuse of the right of preaching, a rope round the preacher's neck, with ';a. layman to chuck it ; but some device very nearly as drastic must sooner or later be devised. Otherwise, we may be certain, the people will grow as weary of the Rouse of Commons as revolutionists already are, and will supersede it by something which may not be as good. as the systeni through which we manage the Executive,—namely, Cabinet government. A Cabinet which could legislate, subject to a veto by the representatives, would be at once effective and cautious, and might possibly prove an ideal government ; but no democracy has as yet attempted that solution of the new puzzle,—How to make a Representative Body work when half its members do not intend it should.
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