PUBLIC BUSINESS.
THE prospects of the Session do not seem to give entire satisfaction to the supporters of the Government. This is a very common feeling, whatever party be in office. The reputation of a Ministry depends to a great extent on the number and magnitude of the measures it is able to carry, and at all times Beater brings with it the first hint of discouragement as regards the legislative harvest. It is then that the promises of the King's Speech begin to look out of proportion to the probable additions to the statute-book. The Session which in February seemed so spacious has already become contracted. The Parlia- mentary year is no longer an undefined whole ; it is made up of three well-marked stages, the first of which has already been traversed. But though the feeling returns as regularly as the season, it varies greatly in intensity. The measures expected of a Conservative Government are naturally few in comparison with the demands pressed upon a Liberal Government. But when, as is the case now, the Liberals have been out of office for the better part of twenty years and have only been in office one year, the amount of deferred legislation is enormous. Had the last Election given the Government only an ordinary majority, some sections of the party might hardly have been represented in it. But from the actual majority no section has been left out. Each has borne its part in the Liberal victory. Each looks for its share in the distribution of the fruits which that victory is to yield. On the morrow of their triumph these various fractions had no difficulty in adjusting their several claims. All that each then insisted on was a place in the Liberal programme, and this was conceded without hestitation to every suppliant. For the moment the Liberal Party could advance in line, and every soldier be abreast of his comrades. But when Parliament met it became necessary to change the order of march. The forms of procedure do not permit more than one measure to be taken at a time, and, though there is no limit to the number of Bills that may be taken one after another, the progress made with one means the denial of progress to another. By degrees it has dawned on the Miuisterialists that by the time the necessary business of administration has been got through, the balance that is left of the Session is a strictly limited quantity. Upon this dis- covery the comfortable unanimity that has hitherto pre- vailed threatens to come to an end. There is no great difference of opinion as to the work that the party has to do, but a great deal of difference of opinion as to the order in which the parts of the work shall be taken in hand. In 1906 this controversy had not become acute. The Nonconformist element in the majority was strong enough to force the education question to the front. But when the &mien and the Education Bill came to an end together, there were immediate signs of disagreement as to the course the Government ought to take. The simplest policy would have been to bring in a somewhat shortened and simplified Education Bill, and to take the chance of the Lords pulling it to pieces a second time. There is little reason to doubt that the Lords would have availed themselves of this place of repentance, and allowed the Government to deal with elementary schools pretty much as they liked. The advantages of this plan would have been that the House of Lords would have been shown to be a less formidable opponent of Liberal legislation than it pleases Ministerialists to make out, and that the Nonconformists would have been kept in good humour. But the case on the other side was strong enough to determine the action of the Government. The Noncon- formists are, after all, but a section of the party, and though they are keenly interested in the education controversy, there are many Liberals who were not at all disposed to spend another Session in devising a settlement which, after all, would have no great promise of finality. Irish legisla- tion, land legislation, labour legislation, licensing legislation, each had its claim to furnish the principal business of 1907, and to pass them all over in favour of a Bill which appeals chiefly to Nonconformists might have aroused serious dissatisfaction. Nor was it at all the desire of the majority to give the Lords this place of repentance. The declamation of the Christmas Recess would have seemed ridiculous if it had turned out that the Lords had thought discretion the virtue most befitting the situation, and had accepted the Education Bill with no intervening Dissolution The proper distribution of the Session's labours seemed to demand two things : a great apparent flouting of the Lords, and a sufficient list of popular measures. Accordingly the Prime Minister expounded his intentions as to the Lords in a succession of dark sayings which might be made to fit in with any one of the various solutions in favour with his party, while leaving it wholly uncertain what his own solution is, or whether he has yet arrived at one, and then proposed to bring in a Land Bill, an Irish Bill—or perhaps
two—and a Licensing Bill, while reserving for the odds and ends of time that may be left over the entire recon- struction of the British Army. In February this apportionment of Parliamentary time appeared heroic; in April this heroism may seem too closely allied to foolhardiness. Even when new Rules of Procedure have been devised with a view of shortening debate, and rules originally made for • the House of Commons have been extended to Standing Committees, the proverbial analogy of the quart and the pint-pot will continue to hold. If the House of Commons were a purely legislative body, and if no measures could be introduced into it except those which had the Government for their author, a fair number of Acts might be passed between January and August. But the House of Commons satisfies neither of these conditions. The Members who are most anxious to increase the legislative output are often the least dis- posed to let the administrative action of the Government go uncriticised. They will neither vote Supplies without comment on their amount, nor forego their right to bring in Bills of their own to jostle, at least in their earlier stages, the Bills fathered by the Cabinet. It is hoped, seemingly, that now that the work of the Standing Committees is to be increased, the area of debate in the House itself will be so narrowed that the later stages of each measure will be little more than formal. Expecta- tions founded upon the working of untried methods of restriction are sometimes falsified, and it will not be sur- prising if this should once more prove true. However accurately a Standing Committee reproduces the distribu- tion of parties, one section or another of the House may be dissatisfied with the treatment its amendments have met with, and may succeed in giving the Report stage no small share of the importance which once belonged to the discussion in Committee. And even if this is avoided, and the House accepts without inquiry the decisions of the Standing Committees, the effect of such legislation on the country may only be to provoke reaction. No measure is really useful which has been adopted without full considera- tion of its probable working. If this stage in its progress is omitted, the Courts of Law take possession of the Act as their natural property. A law which in its intention may have been excellent becomes a byword for the number of cases which have arisen in the course of applying it, and for the severity with which the Judges have commented on the carelessness with which it has been framed. Hardly a day passes without signs that this sifting process awaits the Employers' Liability Act of last Session, and though in this instance the problems for which the Law Courts will have to find solutions may be unusually numerous, some- thing of the same fate is certain to overtake all statutes which have been passed without adequate inquiry into their probable consequences. The simple truth is that the House of Commons is a far worse body for legislative purposes than it was in the days when it was thought almost a miracle that Mr. Gladstone could pass his first Irish Land Bill and his Education Bill in the same Session. Members have become more talkative. They are more anxious to keep themselves before the eyes of their constituents ; and considering how little their constituents sometimes know of their repre- sentatives, this may only be a necessary precaution. They are not all equal to set speeches, but they can all ask questions and move adjournments, and in one or other of these ways a good deal of time is wasted, at all events for the purposes of legislation. If Governments had no other end to keep in sight than the passing of what they hold to be the measures demanded of them in the public interest, these interruptions would be less serious. Ministers would only have to calculate the time needed for the proper consideration of each measure, and to submit them to the House of Commons in the order suggested by their relative importance. As it is, it is not so much their relative importance that is taken into account as the rela- tive strength of the sections they are intended to propitiate. For this purpose it is more essential to introduce Bills than to carry them, and we have here, perhaps, the explanation of what will soon be the state of the Order-book.
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