THE GRAND COMMITTEE ON LAW.
IT is not very evident why Liberal Members should be so eager to get to the conclusion that the experiment of Grand Committees has failed. That Conservative Members should take this view is natural enough. The experiment is , not of their trying, and if so important a part of the Pro- cedure resolutions were to break down, the Government which introduced them might possibly be brought into discredit. But why should Liberal Members, Members who are supposed to 'Wish well to the Procedure Resolutions, be in such a hurry to make out that Grand Committees are of no use ? Why, for example, should Mr. Buchanan wish to tell the House that the Bill has been reported owing to its progress being rendered im- possible by opposition, and why should he find six friends to support his amendment? Opposition, as here used, means obstruction, and to admit that obstruction can make the labours of a Grand Committee of no avail, is to proclaim that a Grand Committee is no better as a working machine than a Committee of the whole House. In the Irish legend, when the man who was leaving his home to get rid of the Brownie saw his tormentor sitting on the furniture which had just been put into the cart, he wisely had the cart unloaded, and made up his mind to stay where he was. And so, if obstruction is to follow Members into the Grand Committee, they may as well stay in the House. A Grand Committee is valuable as an instrument for saving time and getting through business. If it ceases to answer these ends, it must be accounted to have lost its savour. We maintain that the belief that this happened is altogether unfounded, and we will state our reasons for thinking so.
To begin with, the Grand Committee on Law is not the only Grand Committee that has been sitting. It is at most but half an experiment. The experience of the Grand Committee on Trade is as encouraging as that of the Grand Committee on Law has been depressing. For years past, the impossibility of getting a Bankruptcy Bill through the House of Commons has been a con- stant theme of lamentation, and now, ba,fore June is over, a Bankruptcy Bill—and quite a revolutionary Bankruptcy Bill —has been brought into a state in which, if the House chooses, it may at once be read a third time. Surely that is a very great testimony to the utility of Grand Committees. The work may be pulled to pieces over again, but if so, that will be the fault of the House, not of the Grand Committee. In a larger sense, it must be admitted that even the Grand Committee on Trade is still on its trial, because, till the House has actually accepted its conclusions we cannot say how much time has been saved. But so conclusions, as the Grand
Committee is concerned, there is no question as to the saving of time. The Bankruptcy Bill has been threshed out at least as thoroughly as it would have been in a Committee of the whole House, and the House of Commons has been left free to do other work. Nor is that the only proof that has been given of the efficacy of Grand Committees. This very Com- mittee on Law has reported the Criminal Appeal Bill, and though in this case we could wish 'that their labours had been less successful, fruit is not the less fruit because you do not like the flavour of it. It is possible, indeed, that the reason why the Grand Committee on Trade has done better work than the Grand Committee on Law is to be looked for in Mr. Chamberlain's remarkable business ability. But the question now to be considered is not what goes to make Grand Com- mittees a success, but whether there is any sufficient proof of their failure ; and from this point of view, the fact that in two instances out of three they have answered the end for which they were designed is important evidence on the other side.
The case in favour of Grand Committees will be strength- ened, if it should appear that the Criminal Code Bill, out of the withdrawal of which the controversy has arisen, was in any way unsuited for consideration by a Grand Com- mittee. The discussion which preceded the adoption of the Attorney-General's Report shows plainly that it was in some respects very decidedly.unsuited for such consideration. Thus, Sir Joseph Pease suggested that it might be well on another occasion to distinguish between what was new in the Bill and what was old, so that Members might know more precisely when they were legislating and when they were codi- fying. Mr. Bryce thought that the Committee would have been on firmer ground if the Bill had come from the Govern- ment, and not from a Royal Commission,—the difficulty pro- bably in the latter case being that there is no one to whom the Committee looks, as of course, to say which provisions will be passed and which withdrawn. Mr. Collings com- plained that great changes had been introduced into the Bill, and that he had become "seriously alarmed" at the prospect of their adoption. When Mr. Collings is seriously alarmed, he is very apt to make those with whom he is work- ing, confidants of his fears ; and if the Committee had prolonged their sittings, a good deal more to this effect would probably have been heard. Mr. Labouchere was even more plain-spoken. The reason, he said, why the Bill had not passed was that it was not what it professed to be. Instead of being a codifi- cation Bill, it is a Bill introducing new principles. As such, it ought, in his opinion, to be opposed both in Committee and in the House —and "opposed exhaustively." These last words are enough to make legislators shudder. The prospect of Mr. Labouchere applying his audacity and fertility of resource to the work of exhaustive opposition ! These • criti- cisms are quite enough to show why the Bill did not get any further in the Grand Committee. A Grand Committee is in- tended for the discussion of details. It is supposed to take its principles from the House. They have been explained and examined in the course of the debate on the second reading, and the business of the Grand Committee is to determine how they can best be carried out. If, instead of this, the Com- mittee has to give up its time to the consideration of prin- ciples, a different kind of discussion necessarily comes into play. Members do not know how far they can trust to their objections being threshed out when the Bill goes back to the House ; consequently, they are resolved to thresh them out in Committee. The result is that they bring to the discussion the same persistence which they would have brought to a similar discussion in the House itself. When men meet to consider details, each has a preference for his own method of arranging them ; but if he cannot get that method adopted, he is ready to put up with some other. It is not so where principles are concerned. There, negative results are of as much importance as positive ; a man's whole energy may naturally, and properly, be devoted not to doing a thing in one way rather than in another, but to preventing it from being done at all. From the moment that this feeling comes into play, a Grand Committee has no advantage, as regards the despatch of business, over the House itself.
The temptation to amend the Law, at the same time as it is codified, is a very strong one. It seems to economise time which would otherwise be wasted, either in debating isolated provisions in a body of law which needs to be looked at as a whole, or in framing a Code which will have to be altered as soon as framed. But the experience of the Grand Committee on the Criminal Code Bill seems to show that, notwithstand- ing this apparent advantage, the temptation had better be resisted. The law is not in a state to be codified, until it is in a state which those who have to codify it have agreed to accept as at all events provisionally satisfactory. Any attempts to treat it as final before it has reached this stage are in the nature of make-believes. The temper of mind which is needed for codification is distinct from that which is needed for the law amendment, and men who are brought together for the former work are likely to forget it altogether, in the excitement aroused by the latter. Before the Criminal Code Bill is again sent to a Grand Committee, it will be well that the House of Commons should have determined what law it is that is to be codified. Is it an amended law or an un- amended law ? When that point has been decided, we see no reason why the Grand Committee on Law should not do its work as well as the Grand Committee on Trade.
Previous page
