THE GRAND COMMITTEES. T HE important experiment of delegating the detailed
work of the House of Commons to Grand Committees has now been on trial for a week. The Standing Committee on Trade meet on Mondays and Fridays, the Standing Com- mittee on Law on Tuesdays and Thursdays. By this arrange- ment, the members of the two Committees are placed as nearly as possible on an equality. Each Committee has to give up a morning and a Government night ; each will enjoy the comparative leisure of a morning and a private Member's
night. The Members of the Committee on Trade came off a little the worst, because Supply is usually taken on a Friday evening, whereas Tuesdays very often end in a count-out. But when the burdens are not identical, it is impossible to adjust them with entire accuracy, and though the easier work of the two falls to the Committee on Law, it comes upon the men who, in other respects, have most to do. The accommodation in the two Committee Rooms is suffi- cient,—a point which in any building associated with the House of Commons deserves notice for its strangeness. At starting, an effort has been made to obliterate the usual party division as regards seats, the first move in this direction being appropriately made by Mr. Forster. As the Bills which will be re- ferred to the Standing Committees will be those into which party considerations are supposed not to enter, this is a sensible in- novation. Inasmuch, however, as party considerations do some- times intrude themselves where they are least expected, it is not impossible that in the end the gangway of the Committee Room may be as significant a division as the floor of the House itself. There is but little room for Reporters, and the morning papers seemingly hold themselves emancipated from the obliga- tion of reporting the proceedings any earlier than suits their convenience. At least, the report of Monday's proceedings did not appear in the Times until Wednesday. On the whole, this is no disadvantage. Discussions in Committee are, or ought to be, meant for the Committee itself, not for the outside pub- lic. It is enough for them to follow the debates on general principles, which are still reserved to the full House. Nothing probably will more promote the business like shortness, which has hitherto characterised the meetings of the Committees. The members scarcely speak for five minutes, but they thresh- out all the stronger arguments, till their debates are far more interesting to read than those of the House. They evidently mean business, and they advance it rapidly.
The first question that had to be decided on Monday was the position and functions of the Chairman. Ought he to regard himself as the Speaker of the Com- mittee, or may he leave the Chair, and make a speech like any ordinary Member? The question is not one that decides itself. On the one hand, if the Chairman declares himself for or against an amendment, it may bring his impartiality into suspicion. It is not often, indeed, that a Chairman has the opportunity of making or marring an amendment, but from time to time such an occasion does present itself, and when it does, it is undoubtedly con- venient that the Chairman should have taken no part in the discussion. On the other hand, the Chairman's opinion will usually be better worth having than that of most other Members of the Committee as regards the particular Bill which is being considered. Mr. Goschen, for example, is a great authority on trade and commerce, and if he is silenced, as he wishes to be, the Committee will undoubtedly be the losers. The shortest way out of the difficulty would be for the Chairman of each Committee to be taken from among the less qualified Members ; but this would hardly, in the long- run, add to the dignity of the Committee, or help to speed the despatch of its business. All things considered, we incline to think that Mr. Goschen's view is needlessly formal, and that the advantage of hearing his opinion on critical questions over- balances the risk that, when he interferes to keep order, he may be supposed to lean too strongly to the side on which he has himself spoken. Of one thing, however, we are clear, and that is, that the Chairman ought not to have power to " sum up." The case of a Judge summing-up the evidence to a jury is not really parallel. Grand Committees will be quite able to form their own conclusion upon the arguments they have heard, and what the Chairman would have to lay before them would not be evidence which needs analysis by a trained mind, in order to show the true bearing of what has been said, but opinions which have already fulfilled, or failed to fulfil, the end for which they have been stated. A Chairman's summing-up would really be the most effective of all the speeches on the side which he really favoured, and it would be all the more effective, because it would have the apparent impartiality of a Judge's charge. It is not, however, in the Committee-rooms that the fate of the Grand Committees will be decided. So long as a Bill is before them, everything may go well. The experiment may seem to show that the details of a long and complicated measure can now be settled without undue delays or unnecessary chatter, and that a Standing Committee can be made so fair a representative of the best sense of the House, as to make its judgment upon matters of detail more valuable, because more intelligent, than that of the House itself. But when all this has been made plain, the ill-considered action of a minority may, unless the House is at once patient and resolute, undo all that the Grand Committee have effected. In theory, every point that has been fought-out in a Standing Committee may be fought-out again on the Report. The House of Commons has merely delegated its powers in a particular stage of certain Bills ; it has not definitely parted with those powers. Every amendment that has been proposed and rejected in the Committee may be reproposed when the Committee sub- mits the result of its labours to the House ; and if Mr. Lowther is to be believed, there will be some Members whose high sense of duty will forbid them to be content with any con- clusion in framing which they have not had a hand. On this theory, the fact that a Standing Committee has spent weeks on a Bankruptcy Bill must go for nothing, so long as there be in the House a single country gentleman, Guardsman, or younger son who has still something to contribute from the depths of his impecunious consciousness to the true view of the question. On the other hand, it may sometimes happen that some point of real importance, or—what in legislation comes pretty nearly to the same thing—what a good many people think of real importance, has either been neglected or too soon dismissed in the deliberations of the Standing Com- mittees. A Member who makes this omitted point his own will have no opportunity of pressing it upon the Committee, and his only chance of calling attention to it will be to move an amendment on the Report. The success of the Grand-Com mittee experiment will depend in a great measure upon the power of the House to discourage the first kind of reconsidera- tion, without discouraging the second. It must learn how to resist endeavours the object of which is not so much to alter the result, as to repeat the process by which it has been reached, and yet listen willingly to any honest effort to show that the Committee has left a part of its work undone, or has done it badly. It will not be an easy combination to secure, but Grand Committees have already disappointed so many prophets of evil, that it is allowable to hope that this further triumph may yet be in store for them.
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