MR. LABOUCHERE AGAIN.
WE tried last week to explain why the new House of Commons had accepted Mr. Labouchere as its natural leader. The fact we took as proved ; all that we sought to do was to find reasons for it. It was impossible, however, not to feel that here and there a sceptical reader might challenge the assertion with which we started. 'You have not shown,' he might say, that Mr. Labouchere holds the place you assign to him.' In presence of such an objector we should have felt in a difficulty. Strength of conviction may sometimes be a hindrance to the work of convincing others. Nothing is harder to prove than what seems too obvious to need proof. Fortunately, the article had hardly been printed when the House of Commons itself came to our aid. Mr. Labouchere's leadership was established last Tuesday under conditions as severe, and consequently as conclusive, as any that we could our- selves have devised. If there was one thing more than another which the new House of Commons might have been con- fidently expected not to do, it was to adjourn over the Derby. A variety of considerations seemed to combine to make such a step unlikely. First of all, the adjournment would be a new departure. There has been a decided break in the tradition. Twice the Derby has fallen in the Whitsun recess ; once the necessity of passing an Irish Crimes Act made it impossible to spare a day. There are customs which can survive anything except accidental disuse ; and it was probable, to say the least, that this would be one of them. Then the characteristics of the new House all pointed to the same conclusion. It is an earnest House, a Radical House, in some degree a working man's House ; and in virtue of all these qualities, it was likely to be somewhat of a Puritan House. Shall a newly elected Legislature, confronted by a few questions which are really great, and a whole host of questions which some one Member fancies to be great, turn aside from its majestic em- ployment in deference to a horse-race ? Shall men whose con- stituents have for the most part to gain their bread by hard manual labour, do honour to the favourite amusement of extravagant idlers who have never known what it is to earn a shilling or to want one ? Shall men who have come to West- minster impressed with the need of moral and social, as well as of political reform, recognise the chief festival in the gambler's calendar, the day which, more than any other in the year, sees fortunes madly risked and wrongly won ? It only needed to ask these questions to feel sure that they could receive but one answer. Yet in every case the prophet who undertook thus to answer them would have been wrong. A House impressed with the paramount importance of its work has taken a commonplace, and even frivolous holiday. A House which represents labour has listened to the prayer of men whose only conception of life is amusement. A House eager to mend everything and everybody has expressly recognised an institution which itself stands in great need of mending. Why has all this been done There is one adequate explanation, and one only. It has been done because Mr. Labouchere proposed it. Will any one now venture to question Mr. Labouchere's position The speech in which the leader of the new House moved the adjournment over the Derby was a masterpiece in its own line. Note the modesty with which he, for the first time, took the formal initiative. He should not, he said, have made this motion, had he not ascertained that the Prime Minister "did not contemplate making it himself." What modesty ! What good-taste ! Though the substance of power has fallen at Mr. Labouchere's feet, he shows no unworthy haste to take it up. On the contrary, he is anxious to spare Mr. Gladstone's feelings, to hide from him a little longer the change that the General Election has wrought. Next, note the art with which the idea of a holiday is brought from the circumference to the centre. All things take holiday ; so must we. Short hours and holidays produce better work than long hours and no holidays. Working men have found that out long ago ; employers are finding it out ; it only remains for the House of Commons, which is bath master and workman, to apply the lesson to itself. Mr. Labouchere next indicated the many interests that would be served by an adjournment over Wednesday. Mankind is so wonderfully knit together, that it is impossible to do good to one section without at the same time doing good to another. We may grant that some, at least, of those who went to Epsom last Wednesday would have spent their time to no good purpose. They were thinking, possibly, more of their books than of the breed of horses. But all men were not so ill-employed. The
Society of Friends have been holding their annual meeting this week, and a Parliamentary holiday gave the Members who are Friends an opportunity of attending it. Moreover, it is not the Members only that are concerned in the adjournment. The House has its officers, and they, worse off in this respect than the Members, can never snatch a holiday when the House is sitting. Then turning to the charges brought against the Derby, Mr. Labouchere singled out Sir Wilfrid Lawson's com- plaint that it is a species of drunken orgie. "I assure you," he said, "this is not the case. I have several times hap- pened to find myself at Epsom on the Derby Day, and I have never seen a single drunkard there. Much, no doubt, may be set down to the influence of a vir pietate gratis, but I can- not believe that drinking stopped when I was present, and recommenced when I left." The House could not believe it either, and testified by its inextinguishable laughter to the irony of the supposition.
We have certainly no desire to prevent the House of Com- mons from taking a holiday. Indeed, if what it is now asked to do is at all a sample of its future work, it cannot take too many of them. Nor, as there must always be a pretext for a holiday, have we any objection to the Derby being treated as one. We would only submit to Mr. Labouchere, in view of the recurrence of the same question next year, whether his definition of a holiday is not a little too conventional, whether it does not tend too much to uniformity,—to making men pretend to take pleasure in that which really gives them none. No doubt, for a Member who wants to go to Epsom, or to the Exhibition, or to get a day's work at home, or at his office, the adjournment over last Wednesday was an excellent thing. But how about the unhappy spirits who are never so happy as when they are in the House, never so carried out of themselves as when addressing a few kindred souls, who listen, not indeed horn interest, but from a conviction which does credit to human nature, that by listening to others they establish a claim to be listened to in their turn They may be crotchetty, or they may be Scotchmen, but they are still human ; and though their tastes are not Mr. Labouchere's, they are—so long as they do not seek to impose them upon others—at least innocent. Why should the doors of the House be closed against men who would like to see them stand always open ? No one who wanted to be away need be present, except either the Speaker or the Chairman of Committees and one clerk at the table. Ministers might be at their offices, the mass of Members might be at work or at play elsewhere. But inside the House would be a little group of Members taking their pleasure sadly in the moving either of abstract resolutions or of Bills, the efficacy of which is exhausted as soon as the gentlemen whose names are on the back have put their constituents in posses- sion of what they have to say. If the resolution were passed, no harm would come of it ; if the Bill were read a second time, it would be no nearer getting into Committee. The date on which the stage had been got through would sufficiently show that, if any serious progress was to be made with them, the work must be done over again. But the object of the sitting would be speaking, not voting, and we should look to find that object f ally answered. It will be seen that we are not pleading for more woik, but merely for the kind of play which a certain j e.--centage of Members most enjoy. The Derby never was designed to make Sir George Campbell's pleasures less. Why condemn any Member to be a disconsolate Pen i outside Paradise, when, without injury to any one, he might be a happy Pen i inside ?
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