The discussion of Mr. Balfour's new rules began on Monday
with a speech from Mr. Leonard Courtney, more or less favourable, though he asked for twenty-five nights (instead of twenty) for Supply, and asked that Supply should be divided into compartments, to each of which a special proportion of the whole number of sittings should be allotted. Sir William Harcourt's speech also opened in a very mild and almost sympathetic tone, though he relapsed before the close into condemnation of the guillotine, and boasted that he had declined to apply it to his great Finance Bill in 1894, though that took thirty-seven illghts to get through. Thereupon we reply that Mr. Balfour would equally have deprecated applying it to a Bill involving quite new financial principles. Supply stands on very different ground. Sir J. Mowbray gave the new rules the warmest support. The most severe attacks on the rules were made on the Conservative side by Mr. T. G. Bowles and Mr. Sydney Gedge. The former made a speech that was not at all serious, but extremely entertaining. He quizzed Mr. Hanbary, of whom he spoke as his "nurse" in matters of finance, and said that Mr. Hanbury's conversion to these new applications of the gag had dismayed him as much as a country village would be dismayed if a basket containing a new-born baby were found some fine morning placed at the door of the parson of the parish. Mr. Balfour's reply was wonderfully lucid as well as good-humoured. He conceded that the new rules should be made at first only a Sessional, not a Standing Order,—that is, that they should be tried in practice before they are definitively adopted. But of this speech we have said enough elsewhere. It produced a very great effect on the House.
Previous page
