THE COMMONS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
TRUE to the integrity of the British Constitution, those who have been concerned in arranging the New Houses of Parliament, in the Palace at Westminster, have taken care to commit no inno- vation in the practice by which the Faithful Commons, when summoned to the presence, enter as a rabble, scrambling for places —a few prizes among many blanks. The kind of pen erected for the honourable wild beasts, at the extreme end of the House of Lords; is slyly made so small that only a very few of the herd will be able to get in : a strong barricade will receive the force of the rush and keep it back ; effectually protecting even the nearest Peers who might else feel some nervousness at- the proximity of the John Brights and otherferre : the newspaper reporters, perched up in their gallery over-head, will be quite out of danger; and we observelhat, with laudable humanity, stout enclosed boxes have been placed at each side of the Members' pound,—no doubt, for the personal safety of the Black Rod and other officers appointed to keep order by rapping the Members on the head, as policemen sooth unruly crowds and butcher-boys pacify mad oxen. The same thoughtless disregard that is shown to inferior animals, however, is here displayed. A great fuss is made about the con- fined Space into which oxen are thrust at Smithfield : but surely that is not a very perfect humanity which sheds a tear over the discomfort of an ox and views with indifference the sufferings of a Parliament-man ? If any Peer belongs to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, he will have to blush when he sees the pen provided for Members. Of course, no provision is made for the Members to sit during their temporary exhibition in the House of Lords. Why should there be ? Seats are allowed for prisoners in the dock : but then it is the boast of Britain that her prisoners are treated with humane consideration. Seats are provided for Peers in the House of Commons : but there is no parallel between the cases. Members are neither Peers nor prisoners. If seats were provided, you might see Commoners sitting in the presence of Peers ; which would be a very startling innovation. We should next have ser- vants sitting at the sideboard while their masters are at dinner. When a footman is called up into the drawingroom, or a Member is called up into the House of Lords, he is expected to stand-; and it would be supererogation to provide a seat for him. It you do things of that sort, you abolish all social distinctions. Mr. Hume objects to standing m the House of Lords while Peeri sit in the House of Commons : we wonder, to use a phrase of his own, at his "impudence." Surely we have not come to that pjlts, that any Member of the Commons is to he accounted fit to Lit publicly in the presence of the Peers.? Is it because men like Lord Mont- eagle, Lord Cardigan, Lord blountcashel, or any other Peers, when they please to descend into the Lower House, are seated, that therefore such persons as Mr. Hume, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Warburton, or Mr. Henry Baillie, are to sit in the presence of their superiors?
Abstractedly considered, the arrangement does not appear the best suited to the dignity of great national ceremonies. We all know, that if you stuff too many live fowls into a market-basket, they will keep up such a clamour of astonishment and indigna- tion as to disturb a whole street. Members are not figs, thatthey
should endure mutual compression, even to the flattening of their sides, in silent fortitude. We cannot but think it a pity, there- fore, no provision whatever has been made for admitting the Commons into the place for which they are summoned. By the custom of Parliament jointly with the architecture of the build- ing,
the Black Rod will annually be called upon to perform a feat excelling that of the conjuror who conjures a man into -a black bottle; it being no legitimate part of Black Rod's duties to be a conjuror. He has to summon the Faithful Commons, and he should be provided with a locus in quo. The necessity seems to have been superciliously ignored in the design of the House of Lords.
We know it is said in apology, that the House of Lords is pri, manly and mainly a debating chamber, and that it ought to be small in order to convenient hearing. The reason is a very sound one taken with its limitation to the purposes of debating. But the House of Lords is not only a debating chamber—it is also a great hall of Parliament, in which the Three Estates meet at least twice a year for great national ceremonies ; and the Peers should be content to sacrifice either the perfection of hearing or the practice by which the Crown and Commons meet in their- chamber. Nor are the Commons exempt from blame : they have been cognizant of the proceedings from first to last: they joined in requiring the architect to build a fine palace on a limited piece, of ground, and to make it include an immense variety of separate abodes and offices; but they forgot to require that he should pro- vide an adequate place of meeting for the Three Estates. He has provided for the four hundred Peers a suitable space ; at one end, for the single person of the Sovereign, a dais and a vast entrance; at the other end, for the six-hundred-and-fifty Commons, a little door and a little dock like that allotted to "the public" in police- Courts.
It is too late now to include in the design an adequate place of meeting for the Three Estates, a suitable hall of Parliament; but it might be possible to mitigate the consequences of the omission. Instead of limiting the ingress of the Commons to the door, would. it not be possible to convert the lower portion of the wall between the House of Lords and the adjoining antechamber into a row of arches closed by moveable doors ? In that case, when the Com- mons were summoned, the doors might be removed; in a degree, the apace of the antechamber would be temporarily added to the House of Lords, and Members who failed to get front places would still not be positively excluded : they would stand as we have seen part of the congregation stand during the daily after- noon service in St. Paul's Cathedral, just outside the arch under- the organ-loft.
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