PARLIAMENT AND GOVERNMENT. T HE Austrian news of last week was
of a. piece with the Austrian news of any recent week during which the Reichsrath has been sitting. The words " Scenes " or "Disgraceful Scenes," according as the framer of the headings gives less or more prominence to the moral aspect of the telegram, have long recurred with unbroken regularity. The Reichsrath meets seemingly for no more practical purpose than to exchange epithets of abuse. Sometimes the sitting takes the form of an organised attack upon a Minister. Sometimes it resolves itself into a series of free fights between the Members. Sometimes a set speech is delivered which has been carefully packed with insults directed against one side of the House,— insults which are taken up and resented as quickly as they are uttered. Which of these descriptions applies to a particular sitting is a matter of no moment. What is of moment is the certainty that when they have been enumerated the list of possible variations is exhausted. The Frew h Chamber, which opened on Tuesday, has very little reason to glory over its Austrian fellow-Legislature. Its misbehaviour is less chronic, there are more intervals in which sense and business habits resume their sway. The reason of this, we fear, is simply that, now that the Dreyfus case is out of the way, there is not so much to evoke these strange outbursts. When the cause happens to be present the effect will again be iden- tical. In Italy, again, we are met by precisely the same phenomena. The Chamber is interested in the personal disputes which arise in the course of a debate, and in very little else. It may be said, and said quite truly, that it is not so long ago that similar scenes took place in the English House of Commons. But the two eases differ in one very important particular. In England the Government of the day set themselves to discover the cause to which these scenes owed their being, and they found it in certain defects of procedure. Thereupon they at once considered what changes of procedure would meet the case, and as soon as they were satisfied on this point they brought up a new code of regulations for the conduct of debate. Even in England minorities do not like being asked to give up rights they have long enjoyed, and the right of obstruction has again and again proved of very great value to a Parliamentary party. But this natural indisposition to make rules which are pretty sure to be some day enforced against themselves was not allowed to determine the action of the English Opposition. They recognised that obstruction pushed beyond a certain point was fatal to the character of Parliament, and they gave the Government all the assistance it asked. In Austria—the country where Parliamentary obstruction is most triumphant—the Government know perfectly what the remedy is. They can put their finger on one and the other weak place in the rules, and suggest with absolute conviction the changes that are needed to strengthen them. But their knowledge is of no use to them. They cannot command a majority in favour of altering the rules. On this point even their own friends are against them. Majorities and minorities are so nearly balanced in the Reichsrath that the former cannot permit themselves to forget that they may wish to resort to- morrow to the very tactics they suffer from to-day. In theory, no doubt, they value the dignity and the efficiency of Parliament, but they value still more the power at present reserved to the minority of putting its veto on legislation it dislikes. If the English House of Commons had been animated by the same feeling obstruction would still have its way whenever a minority had anything to gain by its employment.
When we look about for an explanation of this differ- ence—a difference which, though it is most conspicuous in the case of Austria, is to be found in a lesser measure in France and Italy—we seem to find it in the greater perfection of bureaucratic government in Continental countries. They can afford better than we can to trifle with the efficiency of Parliament. The machinery of administration is so complete and so far-reaching that it provides for all the ordinary wants of life. The popula- tion are in a state of tutelage of which Englishmen have no experience. Their lives are arranged for them in a variety of particulars which among us the individual is left to arrange for himself. If this minute control were exer- cised by Parliament means would very soon be found to make Parliament again an effectual instrument. A nation could not afford to be governed by an Assem bly which was daily giving proof of its incapacity to govern itself. Even when, as i a England, this minute control is exercised by no one, there is still a sense that there must be a potentiality of control somewhere, and that, as it is vested in no other authority, Parliament must be kept fit to exercise it in the event of its becoming necessary. Among U3 the ideal of government is Parliamentary government. On the Continent the ideal of government is bureaucratic government. Consequently, on the Continent, when the need of improving the machinery of government is felt to be urgent, the Minister of the Interior takes the Prefects and Sub-Prefects in hand and preaches greater diligence and zeal in the use of the authority vested in them. There are differences of opinion in abundance among Continental politicians as to the extent to which these official powers shall be used, and as to the objects for which they shall be used. But no complaint is ever heard that the powers themselves are inadequate. That is a charge which is never brought against the Conti- nental system. The machinery which Napoleon partly found ready to his hand and partly created for him- self is sufficient for every purpose of government, and all that is needed for its good working is the application of more or less force, according to the theory of government which happens to be in favour with the party in power at the time. In England there is no authority which commands the same habitual con- fidence; consequently we set much more store by the reserve authority which is possessed by Parliament. In this sense "the omnipotence of Parliament" is a reality. The phrase embodies the general conviction that at any moment, if our equipment in the matter of government-- ordinarily, no doubt, sufficiently slender—is found inade- quate, it is to Parliament that we must look to make it adequate. We may rub along for a long time or for ever without feeling the need of any such additional provision, but we are never without the sense that it is Parliament that will have to supply it if we find that we cannot do without it. On the Continent, at all events in the coun- tries we have named, there is no room for any such feel- ing. The force is always there, it is always sufficient for what is demanded of it, and it is always independent of Parliament.
Englishmen have often been uncertain whether to think continental methods of government better or worse than their own. But they have not as yet made any serious attempt to import them for their own use, though in some few instances the by-laws framed by particular municipali- ties may have savoured somewhat of Continental practice. For the most part, however, our admiration has been purely theoretical. It has gone no further than to make us dwell from time to time on the ease with which this or that wrong can be righted abroad compared with the cost and difficulty of getting it righted at home. But the tendency exists, and, though it is not likely with us to take the same shape that it takes abroad, there is another shape more consonant with our habits which is really open to very much the same objections. Local independence plays so large a part in our theory of government that we may easily lose sight of the fact that administrative tyranny does not lose its inherent vices by becoming local instead of Imperial. We may be over-controlled by a County Council just as foreigners are over-controlled by the central Government. The real charm that the principle of local veto and local option has for many excellent people lies, we suspect, in their conviction that it will be easier to get what they want out of local bodies than out of Parliament. It is on this ground that they are anxious to make the authority of Parliament less and the authority of local bodies greater. If ever their efforts in this direction are successful, the effect on the character and position of the Legislature will probably be analogous to the effect of bureaucratic government on the character and position of Continental Legislatures. In proportion as Parliament ceases to be the immediate source of authority it will become less respected and less valued. If men learn to look elsewhere for the control they once looked for from Parliament, Parliament must in the end be the sufferer. And, so far as it suffers, it will not suffer alone. The people whom it once governed will be governed still, but they will inevitably miss the breadth, the freedom, the superiority to local passions and local crazes, the indifference to the multiplication of petty regulations, which have been the recurrent, if not the uniform, characteristics of Legislatures which embody the opinion of a country as opposed to a district. The danger of the change may be remote, but it is very far from being visionary.
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