A RECORD OF NOTABLE SAYINGS.*
'Tniti Press Gallery, except in the person of Sir Henry Lucy, does not often appeal to the general reader. Its work ordinarily ends with the appearance of the morning papers. 'Those who care to recall the debates of long-past Sessions have to look for help to the volumes of that pre-eminently useful work, the Annual Register. But, as pre-eminence is seldom gained in more than one field, the interest of the Annual. Register is hardly on a level with its importance. It is a real gain, therefore, when an occupant of the Gallery, besides furnishing us each morning of the Session with the solid—sometimes the too solid—food of Parliamentary oratory, refers to his memory or his note-book and there ends lighter material. A volume drawn from these sources may give the historian of the future many of the details on which the life of his narrative depends. Mr. Jeans's Parliamentary Reminiscences is a book of this kind. " Though not professing to be history" his recollections "touch. on nearly every measure or matter of importance within the Session with which they deal "—they are continuous from 1869 to 1886—and they preserve incidents and fragments of speeches which it might be difficult to ,find eliewhere. The by-play of a debate may be quite as important as the debate itself, and a single sentence will sometimes describe a situa- tion which the remainder of the speech only obscures. In both these ways Mr. Jeans's recollections will give real help to the student of parliamentary history. Unfortunately, useful as they are for this purpose, they do not do lima to serve the purpose of the reviewer. He is necessarily reduced Eo taking only the lighter aspects of Mr. Jeans's work.
The contrast between the House of Commons under Lord Palmerston and under Mr. Asquith is a saddening one. "So far as domestic affairs were concerned the country was living in a Parliamentary paradise." Questions rarely exceeded a dozen, private members' nights frequently ended in a count out, and on Wednesday, which was then the day for unofficial Bills, the House sometimes rose early in the afternoon because it had no work to do. When there was little business to be done there was some chance of its being done properly, and among other gains' must be reckoned the greater control exercised by the Prime Minister. Lord Palmerston "was in his place when public business began, and be never almost left the House till'it rose. When the Speaker retired to have his chop, which was as nearly at eight o'clock as posSible, Lord Palmerston went out with him. For this Meal the Speaker never took more than twenty or twenty-two minutes, and when he returned to the chair Lord Palmerston almost immediately followed him and remained till the • Parl■amenfarg Roltiniseenoesi By William Jeans. London: Chapman and null. L103. ed. not.]
adjournment." No doubt the• departmental' work of the Prime Minister is•muoli greater now than it was then, but the conduct of business in the House of Commons has suffered at least in proportion. At present the relations of the members of the Cabinet to one another seem to be modelled on that epoch in Jewish history when "there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Each Government Bill embodies the wisdom of its author and of no one else. In those days, too, the House of Commons had still a will of its own, Mr. Jeans describes an evening in which lie " heard Sir S. Northcote, Mr. Lowe, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Gladstone successively silenced by an angry and determined House." The occasion was a vote for the • purchase of the Exhibition building of 1861. Both the front benches favoured the pro- posal, but the rest of the House thought the building " hideously ugly," and had the courage- to say so. It was in vain that Mr. Gladstone, while admitting that the building as it stood was not very good, pleaded that the outside might be made quite handsome. Mr. Henley had an answer ready.
"Ito compared the attempt to beautify the Exhibition building to the showman who was going about the country exhibiting a
black woman. can make her red,' said the showman, I can make her white, but do what I will I cannot make a handsome woman of her.' Phis story exactly hit off the situation, and it was received by the crowded House with uproarious delight."
Mr. Gladstone made one more effort, but even he was obliged to sit down in the middle of an unfinished sentence, and the vote was rejected by 287 to 121—" an enormous majority in view of the fact that it was supported by both front benches." When we remember certain recent essays in making London
a handsome city we may well wish that the House of Commons of that day had loft some portion of its mantle to its successor.
Among the single sentences of which we have spoken we may note the sentiment attributed by Cobden to the English friends of the Southern Confederation, "'We sympathize with everybody's rebels but our own "; Roebuck's description of Prussia as "a compound of a pedagogue, a drill sergeant., and a highwayman," and of Lord RUssell as intended by nature for a schoolmaster and made a statesman by fortune"; Grant Duff's description of a speech of Sir Charles Wood's as " jerked out by a Minister, to whom Heaven has denied not only the power of lucid statement, but almost the gift of articulate speech" ; Disraeli'a tribute to Cobden as one of those " members of Parliament who, though not present in the body, are still members of this House, independent of dissolutions, of the caprice of con- stituencies, and even of the comic' of time"; ; Sir Patrick O'Brien's praise of the Irish Church Act on the ground that it " would break down the bridge-which had hitherto separated the Catholics and Protestant§ ";. Mr.' Bernal Osborne's account of his bill for election expenses at Waterford in which appeared an item of '210 for two 'seta of false teeth "in consequence of the too zealous'activity of some of his sup porters"; and Mr. Gladstone's enthusiastic tribute to the position of the Speaker, whose election he was proposing : " Like some tall. cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm; Though round its base the gathering clouds may spread, . Eternal sunshine settles on its head." . .
This last line can surely apply but seldom O. a, Speaker, until he has laid down the cares of. office.
Previous page
