TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DEBATE ON OBSTRUCTION. THE Liberal leaders and the independent Liberals have alike been wise in offering their hearty support to the Government in their effort to remove the obstacles to the effectual use of the powers of the House of Com- mons. The astounding statement in the Daily Telegraph of yesterday that Lord Hartington gave "too wavering a support to the Leader of the House," is of that kind which makes us feel something like despair of the popular Press of this country. It might, with perfect truth, have been said that Lord Hartington urged the Leader of the House to go further, and promised him his support in going further. But assertions of this kind, founded on a large dis- regard of the facts of the case, will produce their effect on the minds of hundreds of thousands who only know the facts of the case as they are misreported to them by untrustworthy state- ments; and of course, the public opinion so engendered must be a distorted public opinion. Lord Hartington assured the Government that any criticisms he might offer were not even offered as alternative proposals,—that if the Government decided to ignore his criticisms, he would support them cordially in trying the experiment they proposed ; and after this preliminary statement, the tendency of the criticism he did make was to strengthen very much the proposals of the Government, and in no case to weaken them. Lord Harting- ton would have preferred to render the decision of the Speaker or of the Chairman of Committees, on the sub- ject of Obstruction, final, and not to refer it to the House for discussion. In other words, a Member named by the Speaker or by the Chairman of Committees would, under Lord Hartington's proposal, be suspended for the remainder of the sitting, without any appeal to the House,—clearly, a much better proposal, for if the Speaker's decision in the particular case is to be referred to the House, it must either be supported, or overruled. If it is supported, much time is lost in the neces- sary division, and so far the obstruction is rendered effectual ; if, on the other hand, the Speaker is overruled, he loses autho- rity with the House, and will be hardly likely to use his privilege a second time with firmness and decision. Yet though this is Lord Hartington's proposal, and though he accompanied it by declaring that it was not an alternative pro- posal, and that he would support the Government in trying their own experiment, if they preferred it, the people are told how much it is to be regretted that Lord Hartington gave the Government only a "wavering" support. Again, as to the further mode of dealing with an obstructionist who had re- peated his offence, Lord Hartington suggested what would much strengthen, instead of weakening, the proposed Standing Orders. He desired that a Committee of Order should be appointed each Session, consisting of men whose authority on points of order is deservedly respected,— men like Mr. Whitbread,—and that in case a Member is guilty of repeated acts of obstruction, his conduct should be referred to this Committee, who should, if they think it right, propose to the House, on their own authority, to impose the penalty, whatever it may be, which the House may decide to inflict on systematic obstruction. And this penalty, Lord Hartington thought, should be very much more stringent than that proposed by Sir Stafford Northcote, namely, suspension for a single week. Lord Hartington's criticism, in- deed, appears to us to strengthen the suggested remedy very materially. When the question is one of inflicting any severer penalty than suspension for a single sitting of the House, it would be, we think, unfair to the Speaker, or Chairman of Com- mittees, and dangerous to the order of the House of Commons, to throw the whole responsibility of challenging its judg- ment upon the Speaker or the Chairman. On an issue so serious, the House would naturally desire the judgment of more than one authority accustomed to consider questions of order from an impartial point of view ; and it would hardly come to a decision which would command the respect of the country for its impartiality, without being fortified by such an opinion. But if, confirmed by such an opinion, the House takes the resolve to inflict a penalty at all, Lord Hartington wishes it to be a serious penalty, and not one that would be either lightly inflicted or lightly forgotten. And here, surely, he is right. What can be more important than that deliber- ate obstruction should be punished with a high hand ? What can be more important than that anything which is not deliberate obstruction, but only a conscientious devotion to the public interest, should not be punished at all ? It seems to us impossible for the Leader of Opposition to go further than he did, in sustaining and strengthening the principle of the Government's proposal, especially when he promised at the same time to waive his own opinion, and support the Govern- ment on any point on which the Government should nOt feel inclined to accept his criticism. Yet this is what the most unscrupulous of daily journals wishes to represent to the country as " wavering " support,—support, concealing, we conclude, a secret sympathy with the policy of obstruction. While we go entirely with Lord Hartington on the general tenor of his suggestions, and think them really needful for all cases in which Members set themselves,— as certain Members did, a session or two ago,—to tire out the House by reading irrelevant quotations from Blue-books for hours together, in order to protract debates in which the Members thus engaged themselves felt no serious political interest, we must say that we have seen no sign during the short period of the present Session of any obstruc- tion of this discreditable kind, and that we see grave reason to fear that the cry of obstruction may be used in a very dangerous way, to strike at the right of minorities to resist even a outrance measures which they believe to be fatal to the best interests of their country. We should be very far, for instance, from thinking that Mr. Lowther ought to- have been suspended for the persistent violence with which he obstructed the passing of the Abolition of Purchase Bill, and the Ballot Bill. Not, of course, that we approve of such persistency,—we believe he divided the House twenty-one times in a single evening,—but that we do seriously think that such persistency may have been either conscien- tious, or at all events of a kind so closely related to conscientious- ness, that it is dangerous and difficult for public rules to draw any distinction between the two qualities. We should object in tote to any sort of definition of obstruction which would have defined the conduct of any of the Irish Members in the recent debate on Irish Relief as obstructive. It would be simply impossible to conduct Parliamentary discussion at all, on any principle which would have branded the conduct of any of these Members, in the first debate of this Session, with the stigma of obstructiveness. And it is, we fear, only too probable that in a fit of popular irritation against a small group whose chief sins were committed a year or two ago, the country may be persuaded to condone the curtailment of popular rights of infinite importance to Parliament. Mr. Dillwyn's wise caution against adopting over- confident and over-hasty Standing Orders on this subject is, to our minds, amply justified. The new Rules, if adopted, ought merely to be adopted as Sessional Orders, and not as Standing Otders, so that they may come up for reconsideration in the next Parliament, by the light of the experience obtained.
By all means let us have strong measures against genuine obstruction. But by all means let us be cautious in giving the stamp of finality to a principle adoptfd rather hurriedly, in the last Session of a worn-out Parliament ; and adopted, we fear, with a little too much reference to the general election, and the use that may be made of obstruction as a. hustings' bugbear in the general election, to be easily regarded as a well-considered, mature, and final remedy.
We think the Government deserves much credit for erring on the side of mildness, rather than on the side of severity, if it has erred at all, in the Rules which it proposes.
But at the same time, it must not be forgotten that an error on the side of mildness may tend in the wrong direction, by rendering the House and the officers of the House less scrupulous than they would otherwise be, in applying rules which ought never to be applied except in a case that is clear to all temperate and sensible men. At all events, whatever is now done, can only be in the nature of an experiment. And as an experiment, therefore, it ought to be treated, and a definite limit assigned where the success or failure of that experiment can be authoritatively affirmed.
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