THE PUNITIVE CURE FOR OBSTRUCTION.
MR. GLADSTONE has known the House of Commons so long, and has shown such a thorough mastery of its collective habits and tendencies, that we never differ from him on any matter relating to the Procedure of the House, without genuine self-distrust ; otherwise, we should have thought his concession of this week relaxing the penalties intended to be inflicted on wilful offenders against the Rules of the House a mistake,—and a mistake for this reason, that, though such penalties should never be inflicted at all except on very clear evidence, when inflicted, they should mark the displeasure of the House in no uncertain manner. We have never in the least agreed with the Conservative Party in their con- tention that the true cure for Obstruction is the inflic- tion of penalties on individual offenders. That such penal- ties must be imposed in the last resort, is evident enough, for were there none, there would be no means of enforcing the Rules on which we do rely for the amendment of Procedure in the House of Commons. A penalty, and a very serious penalty, must be applied for deliberate disregard of.the Rules of the House of Commons, but we should be very sorry to see harsh individual penalties applied for the unintentional disregard of those Rules ; while for the de- liberate disregard of them we should like to see less graduation in the penalty, and a much higher penalty imposed after the first instance of disobedience than even Mr. Glsdstone's original proposal,—much less his proposal as it has been since modified,—would assure. We 'should think, for a first offence, that a week's suspension from the debates of the House would be quite penalty enough ; indeed, we do not know why even suspended Members should not vote, for the vote involves no opportunity for obstruction, and there is no reason for de- priving a constituency of its vote merely because it is deprived, in consequence of the special abuse by its Member of his right of speech, of its voice on any question. But then, in a first offence there may be often a certain amount of inadvertence which can hardly belong to a second, and cannot possibly belong to a third offence. For a second offence, we believe that suspension for a month was not at all too grave a penalty ; and for the third, we would have given the House power to expel altogether, though with leave to inflict milder penalties, such as Mr. Gladstone had himself proposed, if there were cir- cumstances of an extenuating character. So far as we can judge, the procedure of the House will never be made what is de- sirable by virtue of any application of the Rules for purging the House of individual mutineers against its Rules. The difficulty arises far too much from general circumstances, far too little from exceptional individual rebellions, to admit of any hope that the extrusion of a few individuals would facilitate seriously the conduct of business. The vast majority of the House will neither attempt nor wish to break deliberately through the Rules. With those who are so inclined, short work must, of course, be made •; and the shorter the better, as it seems to us, when once an act of wilful defiance of the House is clearly made out, But by the vast majority, the Rules will never be deliberately broken, and the procedure of the House must, therefore, depend on the fitness of the rules themselves, much more than on the character of the penalties—so long as these are amply sufficient to make the rules respected—by which they are to be enforced. When once it comes to penalties at all, we hold that, so soon as the proof of the deliberateness of the offence is adequate, the more completely they exclude the offender from the chance of offending again, the better. As we have already said, we would never punish a first offence very seriously, because it may easily be uninten- tional ; but if it once comes to a fight betiveen the House of Commons and an individual mutineer, we would have the House assert its authority in a thoroughly impressive and absolute way. That a third offence should be punished, as is now proposed, by suspension only for a month, seems to us a confession of weakness on the part of the House. Indeed, it positively suggests fear on the part of the House at the prospect of a contest between it and its individual mutineers. We can imagine nothing more dangerous than to give any excuse for the imputation of such a fear ; and yet we cannot imagine how the punishment of a third act of disobedience to the Rules of the House in the same Session, on the part of the same Member, by no greater penalty than a month's suspension, can be interpreted, except as proceeding from the timid lenity of an assembly which dreads an encounter between itself and the constituencies responsible for these Parliamentary mutineers. It is, indeed, perfectly clear that penal rules intended to be frequently applied,—intended to be applied like the fines or impositions imposed on boys for slight breaches of school discipline,—would only irritate the House of Commons, and lead to a chronic distrust of the larger Rules of Procedure themselves. A great deliberative assembly cannot with advantage be in a state of perpetual drill, of perpetual fear of the presiding authority. Such a state of things would be simply intolerable. What is possible, is to have reasonable collective rules which economise the time of the House and, therefore, enlist the sym- pathy of all its active Members on their behalf ; and to enforce them, whenever there is any obvious disposition to defy them, with an unflinching hand. We object, therefore, to anything like lenity in the case of an offence repeated for the third time, because that really means that the offender desires to be known as deliberately ignoring the authority of the House, and appeal- ing from the House which represents the nation at large, to some particular section of it which is at issue with the nation at large. Such an appeal, except by the constitutional method or a general election, is simply intolerable, and the House of Commons should not even appear to vacillate in dealing with one who endeavours to make it. It is for cases of this kind, and for cases of this kind alone, that penal rules are needed ; and in applying them to such cases, the House of Commons ought not to waver for an instant. The only reason for lenity in relation to first offences is that first offences are often due to a mixture of inadvertence and hasty temper, qualities which are neither of them inconsistent with hearty loyalty to the House itself. But when once a defiant intention becomes obvious, there should be no possibility of saying that a duel is going on between individual Members and such an assembly as the House of Commons. We supported the House in silencing Mr. Bradlaugh, after the decision of the House had once been taken, though we thought, and think, that decision grossly unjust. Not the less is it impossible to permit any one party or section of the House to set up its own standard of justice, and to apply that against the standard of justice' which the majority accept, within the walls of the House itself. When the House decides, justly or unjustly, the House must be obeyed, the only appeal from the House being to the constituencies at large. For this reason, we think it very unfortunate that so feeble a penalty as a month's suspension should be inflicted on a third defiance of the House in the same Session by any of its Members. That looks as if the penal Rules were intended to work not by enforcing the authority of the House in the last resort, but rather as mere set-offs against breaches of discipline which an adventurous Member may, as it were, purchase the right to commit, by submitting to the inconvenience of the penalty assigned to it. A more dangerous principle than this we cannot imagine. It suggests to every Member for an ill-disposed constituency a calculation of this kind :--4 If I have a regular tussle with the Speaker or Chairman, and get suspended for a month, I shall earn a holiday for that time, get increased popularity for my patriotic conduct, and render it impossible for any rival to contest the seat with me on the next vacancy. Will it not be worth while to engage in such a tussle I' If such calculations are to be en- couraged, there is an end to the authority of the House, and there- fore we cannot but think that anything like compromise in the penalties imposed on deliberate insubordination to the House, is a very serious mistake. The penal Rules should not be intended for habitual use, but as the final condemnation of anything dike resistance to the orders of the House itself. Let the penalties once be regarded, as fines in a school are often re- garded, not in the light of sentences rendering it hopeless to resist the authorities, but rather as inconveniences which may be balanced against the still greater inconvenience of not doing as you please, and the authority of the House of Commons will be at an end.
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