The Mother of Parliaments

This was but one example of the numerous collisions between Parliament and the law, resulting from the former's rigid insistence upon bygone privileges, and the difficulty of settling which questions should be left to the arbitrament of either authority. If matters were left to the decision of the Commons, it is clear that everything would probably be brought within the scope of privilege; if to courts of law, all privilege would possibly be abolished. Some thought the former alternative was the least to be feared. "While men are but men," said Lord Jeffrey, "we must be at the mercy of a fallible and irresponsible despotism at best; and if we have to choose, as in an open question, few would hesitate to say that they would rather have the House of Commons for a despot than the courts of law."[272 - Cockburn's "Life of Jeffrey," vol. ii. p. 354.] But the matter became ridiculous when Parliament insisted on interfering in questions which it had clearly no right to decide. In 1721, for instance, the House of Commons committed the proprietors of a paper called "Mist's Journal" to Newgate for publishing an article favouring the restoration of the Pretender. This could scarcely be considered a breach of privilege, but the House thought itself empowered to deal with all political offenders. Since that time no one has been committed, except for a distinct breach of privilege, or for contempt of Parliament. The latter term, however, embraces the most trivial offences. In 1827, a stranger who was visiting the House of Lords left his umbrella in the cloak-room, by order of the attendant. On returning to claim his property at the end of the sitting, he found that his umbrella – following the universal fashion of that elusive article – had disappeared. He proceeded to bring an action against the doorkeeper, and was awarded damages amounting to £1 0s. 4d. Lord Chancellor Eldon thereupon summoned him to the bar of the Lords, and forced him, on pain of imprisonment, to refund the value of his umbrella and apologise. Four years later, the printer of "The Times" was fined £100 and sent to Newgate for having dared to call the Earl of Limerick "a thing with human pretensions."

The House of Lords has always considered itself empowered to inflict fines as well as imprisonment for a fixed period. When the Commons confine an offender they may put no term to his sentence, and he is released automatically on a prorogation. For the last two hundred years they have ceased to exercise the right of fining delinquents, but in early days, as we have seen, they often inflicted financial penalties, and stimulated the attendance of their own members by an inroad upon their pockets.

At the very commencement of parliamentary history the shires or boroughs whose representatives did not appear in their places in Parliament were fined £100. In 1580, any knight who stayed away for a whole session was fined £20, while citizens and burgesses were fined £10. Besides this, members lost their pay during absence, and, by an Act of Henry VIII., boroughs and shires were exonerated from the payment of wages to members who left Parliament before the end of the session without the Speaker's permission.

In similar fashion peers and bishops were punished for non-attendance, the size of their fines varying in proportion to the rank of the offender. An ordinance framed in Henry VI.'s time, about 1452, imposed fines of from £40 to £100 upon absentee peers, the sum thus raised to be appropriated to the defence of Calais.[273 - Nicholas's "Proceedings of the Privy Council," vol. vi. p. lxv.] In 1625 a fine of 5s. per day was imposed upon peers who disregarded their summons to Parliament, and we read of the Cinque Ports being mulcted in the sum of a hundred marks because their baron absented himself.[274 - "Modus Tenendi Parliamentum," p. 28.] When the Bill for degrading Queen Caroline was before the Lords a fine of £100 was imposed during the first three days, and £50 for any subsequent day, on which any peer did not attend, unless he could prove illness or unavoidable absence. By a former Standing Order, every lord who entered the House after prayers was fined, if a baron or a bishop, 1s.; if of higher rank, 2s. What a contrast to these degenerate days in which the Lord Chancellor, the bishop, and one peer, hunted up for the purpose, form a reluctant congregation!

In the days of Charles I. penalties were extremely necessary if the business of Parliament was to be carried on at all. Members took their duties lightly, and at times not more than a dozen would appear in their places at Westminster. Prynne describes them as wasting their time in taverns, playhouses, dicing-houses, cockpits, and bowling alleys, "rambling abroad to such places at unreasonable Hours of the Night in antique Parliamentary Robes, Vestments fitter for a Mask or Stage than the gravity of a Parliament House." They would only come to peep into the House once or twice a week, he says, to show themselves in such disguises, and ask, "What news?"[275 - "Brief Register of Parliamentary Writs," p. 672.]

In the Parliament which passed the Grand Remonstrance there were sometimes as many as two hundred absentees. To remedy this evil it was proposed by Strode that any member who stayed away without leave should be fined £50, or expelled. This proposal, says D'Ewes, "was much debated, but laid aside."[276 - Forster's "Grand Remonstrance," p. 316 n.] Even those members who attended did so in a casual and perfunctory fashion, which proved a source of great inconvenience to colleagues who took their responsibilities more seriously. In order, therefore, to enforce punctuality, minor fines were inflicted, and in 1628 an order was made that any member who came in late for prayers must contribute 1s. to the poor box. The House met at seven or eight o'clock in the morning in those days; members therefore had some excuse for arriving late, and the system had to be temporarily abandoned in 1641, owing to the interruption of business resulting from the cries of "Pay! Pay!" with which unpunctual persons were greeted. "Scenes" would often take place when members arrived just as the clock was striking, and either refused to pay their shillings, or flung them angrily upon the floor for the Sergeant to pick up. Later on, when the House rose at midday, instead of in the afternoon, the regulation was revived. Speaker Lenthall himself was late on one occasion, much to the delight of the House, and, his attention being drawn to the fact, threw his shilling down on to the table with every sign of annoyance.

As late as the middle of the eighteenth century members did not allow their parliamentary duties to interfere with their social pleasures. Burke once complained because the Commons rose early in order to attend a fête-champêtre given by Lady Stanley.[277 - Townsend's "History," vol. iii. p. 377.] And in 1751 Horace Walpole told a friend that on the day appointed for the debate on the Naturalization Bill the House "adjourned to attend Drury Lane."[278 - "Letters," March 7, 1731.]

From time to time attempts were made to secure the attendance of members by means of a "call of the House," of which due notice was given, members who failed to answer their names being punished. A "call" which was taken in October, 1647, resulted in the discovery that one hundred and fifty members were absent, and after a prolonged debate it was decided that they should be ordered to pay a fine of £20 each. This system has fallen into disuse, the last "call" taking place in 1836.[279 - The last "call" of the Lords took place in 1901 on the trial of Earl Russell.] Five years before this date, however, on March 17, 1831, three members, including Lord F. L. Gower, who were not in their places when their names were called, were given into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, and compelled to pay fines ranging from £8 to £10.[280 - Grant's "Recollections," p. 52.]

A member who offends against any of the rules or orders of the House of Commons may be dealt with in several ways, either by being silenced, suspended, expelled, or committed to prison. If any member indulges in irrelevance or tedious repetition the Speaker can call upon him to discontinue his speech. Should the offence against order be more serious the Speaker may either order the offender to withdraw from the House or may "name" him, whereupon, on the motion of the Leader of the House, he is suspended from its service. The practice of "naming" originated in 1841, when Speaker Lenthall, after trying in vain to silence certain noisy members who were chatting together under the gallery, called upon Sir W. Carnabie by name. In former days little unpleasantness seems to have attached to the process of "naming," and when Speaker Onslow was asked what the result would be of "naming" a refractory member he could but answer, "Heaven only knows!"[281 - Fox asked Sir Fletcher Norton the same question. "What will happen?" replied the Speaker: "hang me if I either know or care!" "Life of Sidmouth," vol. i. p. 69 n.]

To-day a Speaker may order any member whose conduct is unruly to withdraw from the House for the remainder of the sitting. By a Standing Order any member wilfully abusing the regulations of the House can be "named" by the Chairman or Speaker, and suspended until the end of the session, unless the House decides to re-admit him sooner. When a member is "named," the Sergeant-at-Arms escorts him from the precincts of the chamber, and he is seen off the premises by the police. Should he decline to obey the Sergeant's invitation to accompany him beyond the bar, a couple of elderly attendants step forward and prepare to expedite his progress towards the door. If force has to be used in order to make a member withdraw, his suspension lasts unquestionably until the end of the session.

The punishment of suspension had not been used for two hundred years when it was revived in 1877. Immediately following the extraordinary scenes of obstruction which gave rise to Speaker Brand's resolute action, a wholesale suspension of Irish members took place. On February 3, 1881, Parnell and more than a score of his colleagues were named and suspended for refusing either to take part in a division or to withdraw from the House. When the "closure" was applied for the first time in February, 1885, a scene of uproar ensued, as a result of which Mr. O'Brien was suspended, and in March, 1901, as already mentioned, twelve Irish members who declined to leave their places for a division were forcibly removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms and police, and subsequently suspended.

Committal to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms is nowadays an uncommon parliamentary punishment, Bradlaugh being one of the last members to be confined in the Clock Tower.[282 - In 1834 Lord Althorp and Sheil were locked up by the Sergeant-at-Arms, by order of the Speaker, until they had apologised to the House and one another for the use of unparliamentary language. Cf. O'Connell's "Recollections and Experiences," vol. i. p. 169.] Both Houses, however, have the legal right of imprisoning (at Holloway or elsewhere) any British subjects who offend against their privileges.

Expulsion from the House of Commons is, perhaps, the direst penalty that can be inflicted upon a member. In 1714, Lord Cochrane and Steele the essayist were both expelled – the one for spreading false reports on the Stock Exchange, the other for publishing "The Crisis," a pamphlet antagonistic in tone to the Government. Some fifty years later Wilkes, who had been prosecuted for his articles in the "North Briton," was also expelled from the House. The voters of Middlesex at once re-elected him, but Parliament declared his opponent, the defeated candidate, to be duly elected. In 1782, however, the resolution against Wilkes was erased from the journals of the House. At the time of the South Sea Bubble a number of members were turned out for fraud. Since then, however, the list of expulsions has dwindled, until to-day such a thing would be considered a rare and unique occurrence. Though expulsion does not preclude re-election, a grave moral stigma attaches to the penalty, and a modern member who incurred it would find but little consolation in the reflection that he shared this invidious distinction with men of no less eminence than Steele and Walpole.

CHAPTER XI

PARLIAMENTARY DRESS AND DEPORTMENT

Parliament to-day differs in very many respects from the Parliaments of the past; nowhere does that difference express itself more forcibly than in the remarkable improvement in parliamentary manners of which the last century has been the witness.

Sir John Eliot's well-known words are far more applicable to the modern House of Commons than they can ever have been three hundred years ago. "Noe wher more gravitie can be found than is represented in that senate," he said, speaking of the Chamber of which he was so distinguished a member. "Noe court has more civilitie in itself, nor a face of more dignitie towards strangers. Noe wher more equall justice can be found: nor yet, perhaps, more wisdom."[283 - Forster's "Sir John Eliot," vol. i. p. 238.] It was no doubt a pardonable sense of pride that caused Sir John to take so optimistic a view of the assembly of his day, for there is ample evidence to show that the House of Commons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not always the grave or civil chamber which he describes. Its passions were not invariably under control; they flared up into a blaze on more than one occasion. The appearance of Cardinal Wolsey to demand a subsidy for his royal master was the signal for an outburst of feeling which almost ended in bloodshed; the Long Parliament was in a perpetual state of storm and disorder.

During the Stuart period, and even more so towards the close of the Commonwealth, the conduct of the Commons was anything but decorous. The Speaker of those days frequently found it impossible to maintain order; the Chair was held in little respect. The behaviour of the House was but little better than that of the Irish Parliament in the time of Elizabeth, which spent most of its time in futile argument and disagreement: "The more words, the more choler; and the more speeches, the greater broils."[284 - Mountmorris's "History of the Irish Parliament," vol. i. p. 77.] It was at the commencement of the seventeenth century that the first violent manifestations of party feeling took place which were afterwards destined to cause so many "scenes" in the Commons. Owing to the constant discord prevalent there, that House was, by one member, likened to a cockpit; another wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton that "many sat there who were more fit to be among roaring boys"; and a third declared his desire to escape, not only to the Upper House, but to the upper world altogether.

During the lengthy debates on the publication of the Grand Remonstrance in 1641, feeling ran so high that members would have sheathed their swords in one another's vitals but for the timely intervention of Hampden. Even those who did not actively assault each other seem to have expressed so much malice in their looks as to cause serious alarm to their opponents. In 1642, for instance, Sir H. Mildmay complained to the House that the member for Coventry "looked very fiercely upon him when he spoke, and that it was done in an unparliamentary way."[285 - Palgrave's "House of Commons," p. 18. (The Speaker, however, does not appear to have thought it necessary to call upon the member for Coventry to withdraw his fierce and unparliamentary expression.)]

In the reign of Charles II. riotous debates were of frequent if not daily occurrence. When Titus Oates appeared at the bar of the Commons to accuse Queen Katherine of high treason, partisan excitement reached a dangerous pitch. In 1675, a free fight between Lord Cavendish and Sir John Hanmer was only prevented by the tact of Speaker Seymour, who resumed the Chair on his own responsibility – the House was in Committee at the time – and managed to quell the disturbance before blows had been exchanged.

Scenes of a less serious nature took place on many occasions. Andrew Marvell, the much respected member for Hull, was entering the House of Commons one morning when he accidentally stumbled against the outstretched leg of Sir Philip Harcourt. In recovering himself, Marvell playfully dealt Sir Philip a resounding box on the ear. The Speaker at once drew the attention of the House to this affront, and members became greatly excited. When Marvell was at length allowed an opportunity of speaking, he explained that "what passed was through great acquaintance and familiarity" between Sir Philip and himself, and that his blow was merely a token of deep affection. After a heated debate the matter was allowed to drop, though other members of the House must subsequently have fought shy of making friends with a man who expressed his liking in so boisterous and painful a fashion.[286 - Andrew Marvell's "Works," vol. ii. p. 33. (Sir Philip Harcourt might well have anticipated the remark made by the Georgian monarch who, while leaning out of a window, received a severe blow from a footman who had mistaken the royal back for that of his fellow-domestic, James. "Even if I had been James," the King plaintively exclaimed, "you needn't have hit me so hard!")]

The fact that many members of both Houses frequently attended the debates in an advanced stage of intoxication was, perhaps, the cause of most of the parliamentary unpleasantness of past days. At Westminster, indeed, the sobriety of legislators was scarcely more noticeable than at Edinburgh, where the Scottish Parliament that met on the Restoration of Charles II. was forced to adjourn, owing to the fact that the Commissioner Middleton and most of the members were too drunk to deliberate.

Instances of parliamentary intemperance and its natural results were common enough in those days. In 1621, a quarrel arose in the House of Lords between the Earl of Berkshire and Lord Scrope. The former quickly lost his temper and laid violent hands on his colleague. For this he was called to the bar, censured by the Lord Chancellor, and committed to the Tower. Again, at a conference between the two English Houses, in 1666, the Lords behaved to one another with extreme discourtesy. The Duke of Buckingham opened the proceedings by leaning across Lord Dorchester in a rude and offensive manner. The latter gently but firmly removed the intruding elbow, and on being asked if he were uncomfortable, replied that he certainly was, and that nowhere but in the House of Lords would the Duke dare to behave in so boorish a fashion. Buckingham irrelevantly retorted that he was the better man of the two, whereupon Dorchester told his noble colleague that he was a liar. The Duke then struck off the other's hat, seized hold of his periwig, and began to pull him about the Chamber. At this moment, luckily, the Lord Chamberlain and several peers interposed, and the two quarrelsome noblemen were sent to the Tower to regain control of their tempers.

The Commons meanwhile were behaving in no less reprehensible a manner. "Sir Allen Brodricke and Sir Allen Apsly did come drunk the other day into the House," says Pepys, "and did both speak for half an hour together, and could not be either laughed, or pulled, or bid to sit down."[287 - "Diary," December 19, 1666.] Such a state of things was so usual in either House at the time as to provoke neither comment nor criticism. The tone of society may be gauged from the fact that at the end of the seventeenth century it was not thought peculiar for a party of Cabinet Ministers, including the Earl of Rochester, then Lord High Treasurer of England, stripped to their shirts and riotously intoxicated, to climb the nearest signpost in order to drink the King's health from a suitable point of vantage.[288 - Reresby's "Memoirs," p. 231.]

The usual condition of the Commons during the hearing of election petitions a hundred years later has been forcibly described by Thomas Townshend. "A House of twenty or thirty members," he says, "half asleep during the examination of witnesses at the bar, the other half absent at Arthur's or Almack's, … returning to vote so intoxicated that they could scarcely speak or stand." It must, however, be admitted that members' frequent potations did not always affect their utterance. Indeed, they sometimes appear to have had an entirely opposite result. In 1676, Lord Carnarvon, under the influence of wine, made a remarkably humorous and able speech in the House of Lords, causing the Duke of Buckingham to exclaim, "The man is inspired, and claret has done the business!" Charles Townshend, too, whom Burke called the delight and ornament of the House, and who was offered the Chancellorship of the Exchequer by Pitt, seems to have been far more eloquent in his cups than at any other time. He is chiefly famous for making what is known as the "Champagne Speech" of May 12th, 1767 – a speech which, as Walpole declared to a friend, nobody but Townshend could have made, and nobody but he would have made if he could. It was at once a proof that his abilities were superior to those of all men, and his judgment below that of any man. It showed him capable of being, and unfit to be, Prime Minister. "He beat Chatham in language, Burke in metaphors, Grenville in presumption, Rigby in impudence, himself in folly, and everybody in good humour."[289 - "Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry," vol. ii. p. 35.] Half a bottle of champagne, as Walpole said, poured on genuine genius, had kindled this wonderful blaze.

Pitt, as is well known, possessed a marvellously strong head. He and Dundas one evening finished seven bottles without the slightest difficulty, and he would often fortify himself with whole tumblers of his favourite wine before going down to Westminster.[290 - Samuel Rogers' "Recollections," p. 112.]

It was during the famous debate of February 21, 1783, when Fox was defending the Peace of Paris, that Pitt retired behind the Speaker's Chair to be actively unwell, at the same time keeping his hand up to his ear that he might miss none of his rival's points. His conduct on this occasion affected one of the sensitive clerks at the Table with a violent attack of neuralgia – a providential division of labour, as Pitt pointed out, whereby he himself had enjoyed the wine while the clerk had the headache! It has often been considered surprising that Pitt should have been able to exercise such influence on the House after drinking three bottles of strong port, but, as a distinguished statesman has observed, it must be remembered that he was addressing an assembly few of whose members had drunk less than two.

At the commencement of the nineteenth century, when Abbot was in the Chair, the member for Southampton, Fuller by name, entered the House in a hazy but happy frame of mind, which induced him to mistake the Speaker in his wig for an owl in an ivy bush. He was promptly removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and kept in custody until his eyesight had resumed its normal condition.[291 - Townsend's "History," vol. ii. p. 93.] Another member, Sir George Rose, arrived at Westminster in a condition which inspired him to call upon the Speaker for a comic song, and led to his being taken in charge by the Sergeant-at-Arms.

Lord Chancellor Brougham used to refresh himself copiously while upon the Woolsack, and, during his four-hour speech on the Reform Bill, drank no less than five tumblers of mulled port and brandy.[292 - Campbell's "Lives of the Chancellors."] There was, therefore, perhaps some reason for his extreme indignation when the Duke of Buckingham referred to the possibility of disturbing him in the midst of his "potations pottle deep" – a quotation which Brougham did not recognize, and which evoked from him a violent outburst.[293 - Grant's "Recollections of the House of Lords" (1834). (This is not the only instance of a well-known quotation passing unrecognized in Parliament. In 1853, when Bishop Wilberforce made a good-humoured attack on Lord Derby, the latter remarked that a man might "smile and smile and be a villain," and thereby caused much excitement among the Lords, who had not recently studied their "Hamlet.")]

Peers and members of Parliament to-day have no such weaknesses, or, at any rate, refrain from exhibiting them in Parliament. There have been, of course, exceptional instances, even in modern times, of persons speaking under the influence of drink, but these are so rare as scarcely to deserve mention. An Irishman in a conspicuously genial frame of mind referred to a Conservative member in the lobby as a "d – fool." The latter overheard this remark and contemptuously retorted that his honourable friend was drunk. "I may be drunk," admitted the Irishman, "but to-morrow I shall be sober. Whereas you'll be a d – fool to-morrow, and the next day, and all the rest of your life!" During one of those interminable sittings of 1877, when obstruction was at its height, another Irishman, "weary with watching, and warm with whisky," applied the same opprobrious term to a fellow member. On being ordered to withdraw the expression he explained that it "was only a quotation." "Whether the remark of the hon. gentleman can be explained by a quotation or a potation," said the Chairman, "it is equally inadmissible, and I must beg him in future to mind his p's and q's."[294 - "Quarterly Review," vol. cxlv. p. 247.]

Irish members have probably been the cause of more parliamentary disturbance than all the rest of their colleagues put together. Daniel O'Connell, whom Disraeli once called "the vagabond delegate of a foreign priesthood,"[295 - "Letters of Runnymede," p. 6.] was a perpetual source of trouble to the House. In 1840, he was the centre of one of the most noisy scenes that has ever outraged its dignity. Macaulay declared that he had never before or since seen such unseemly behaviour, or heard such scurrilous language used in Parliament. Members on both sides of the House stood up and shouted at the tops of their voices, shaking their fists in one another's faces.[296 - Trevelyan's "Life of Macaulay," vol. ii. p. 76.] Lord Norreys and Lord Maidstone particularly distinguished themselves by the pandemonium they created, while others of their colleagues gave farmyard imitations, and for a long time the whole House continued in a state of ferment. O'Connell's reference to the sounds emitted by honourable gentlemen as "beastly bellowings" only made matters worse. As a French visitor who was present during this scene has described: "Pendant plusieures heures plus de cinq cents membres crient de toutes leurs forces 'à l'ordre! à la porte O'Connell!' le tout accompagné des imitations zoologiques les plus étranges et les plus affreuses. C'étaient les cris de deux armées de sauvages en presence."[297 - "La France et L'Angleterre," par F. de Tassies. (Quoted in O'Connell's "Recollections," vol. i. p. 261.)]

"Imitations zoologiques" have always been a popular but by no means the only method employed by members desirous of drowning the words of a tiresome speaker. John Rolle, the hero of the "Rolliad," promoted a "smoking and spitting party "to interrupt and annoy Burke.[298 - Thomas Moore's "Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 296.] In 1784, the latter told a number of youthful opponents who interrupted him with their howls that he could teach a pack of hounds to yelp with more melody and equal comprehension. Ten years before the O'Connell scene Brougham excited the House to uproar of a similarly puerile character. He remained calm and unmoved, however, and, when the bestial cries of his audience subsided for a moment, pleasantly observed that by a wonderful disposition of nature every animal had its peculiar mode of expressing itself, and that he was too much of a philosopher to quarrel with any of those modes – a remark which does not appear to have subdued the clamour to any appreciable extent.[299 - Miss Martineau's "History of the Peace," vol. ii. p. 381.] A similar uproar which the Speaker was powerless to quell arose in 1872, when Sir Charles Dilke brought forward a motion to inquire into the manner in which the income and allowances of the Crown were spent.

Members who are anxious to bring a debate to a close still have recourse to sound, crying, "'Vide! 'Vide!" in an earsplitting fashion, which occasionally evokes a rebuke from the Speaker. But there is seldom, nowadays, such a scene of violence as occurred in both Houses upon the dissolution of Parliament in April, 1831. The Commons indulged in a painful scene "of bellowing, and roaring, and gnashing of teeth, which it was almost frightful to look at," says Cockburn.[300 - Cockburn's "Life of Jeffrey," vol. i. p. 317.] In the Upper House peers behaved no less childishly. Lord Mansfield doubled up his fist, elbowed Lord Shaftesbury into the Chair, and hooted Lord Brougham as he left the House.[301 - Duncombe's "Life of his Father," vol. i. p. 115.] Lord Lyndhurst, meanwhile, was threatening the Duke of Richmond with physical violence, and the uproar was only quelled by the arrival of the King.[302 - Brougham's "Life," vol. iii. p. 117.] One must not, of course, forget the notorious modern instance of ill manners, already described,[303 - Supra, p. 131.] when, in 1893, members exchanged blows upon the floor of the Commons. This, however, is a painful exception, little likely to recur.

Politicians have learnt to control their feelings, and the present publicity of parliamentary proceedings acts as a salutary deterrent to outbursts of the elemental passions. Neither House to-day would dream of expressing its emotion in the open fashion common to Parliaments of long ago. The sight of a Lower Chamber dissolved in tears is no longer possible. Yet, in 1626, when, by the King's command, no discussion was permitted on the question of Buckingham's impeachment, a lachrymose Speaker led the whole House of Commons in a chorus of weeping. Two years later Sir Edward Coke welcomed the introduction of the Petition of Right in a voice choked with sobs. Wingfield wept for joy when monopolies were abolished in Queen Elizabeth's reign,[304 - Townshend's "Proceedings of Both Houses," p. 252.] and we have already noted the tears shed by Colonel Wanklyn when he was expelled, and by Speaker Finch when he was forcibly detained in the Chair. Fox shed frequent tears in the House of Commons; Pitt wept bitterly when his friend, Lord Melville, was impeached. Lord Chancellors, too, were not ashamed to express their feelings in loud sobs, Eldon's eyes becoming sympathetically moist, while even the "rugged Thurlow" sprinkled the Woolsack with his tears.

Members no longer weep, except perchance in the privacy of their own homes; nor do they follow their predecessors' fashion of converting the House of Commons into a smoking-room or a lounge, in which to sleep off the effects of their potations. The free and easy habits of seventeenth-century politicians made it necessary for a regulation to be framed that "No tobacco should be taken by any member in the gallery, nor at the table sitting in Committees."[305 - Regulations in the Journals, March 23, 1693.] And it was no uncommon sight, a hundred years ago, to see members stretched at full length on the benches of the Chamber, with their feet resting on the backs of the seats in front of them, punctuating the proceedings with their stertorous snores.[306 - "L'lllustre enceinte présente souvent l'aspect d'une assemblée de yankees beaucoup plus que celui d'une réunion de gentlemen." Franqueville's "Le Gouvernement et le Parlement britaniques," vol. iii. p. 74.]

Lord North was notorious for his gift of somnolence in the House of Commons. "Behold," said Edmund Burke, with that indifferent taste for which he was noted, as he pointed to the recumbent figure of the Prime Minister, "the Government, if not defunct, at least nods; brother Lazarus is not dead, but sleepeth." North was dozing on another occasion when a member attacked him fiercely, saying that he ought certainly to be impeached for his misdeeds. "At least," exclaimed the Minister, waking for a moment, "allow me the criminal's usual privilege – a night of rest before the execution!"[307 - Timbs' "Anecdotal Biography," vol. i. p. 234.] He felt no shame at giving way to slumber in debate, and when an opponent remarked that "Even in the midst of these perils, the noble lord is asleep!" "I wish to God I was!" he replied with heartfelt fervour.[308 - Pryme's "Recollections," p. 114.] He would always take the opportunity afforded by a lengthy speech to snatch forty winks. Once, when the long-winded Colonel Barré was addressing the House on the naval history of England, tracing it back to the earliest ages, North asked a friend to wake him up as soon as the speaker approached modern times. When at length he was aroused, "Where are we?" asked the Premier, anxiously. "At the battle of La Hogue, my lord." "Oh, my dear friend," said North, "you've woken me a century too soon!"[309 - Harford's "Recollections of Wilberforce," p. 94.]

A marked improvement in the conduct of modern debate is to be noticed in the comparatively inoffensive character of the epithets used by members with reference to their opponents. The decencies of debate are, as a rule, religiously observed. Recriminations are rare. Measures are attacked, not men. The secession of a statesman is considered a political but not a personal offence, and what Palmerston once called the "puerile vanity of consistency" is no longer worshipped fanatically. Gladstone rightly called the House of Commons a "school of temper," as well as a school of honour and of justice. Offensive allusions have always been deprecated there, but it is only within the last few score years that members have controlled their tongues to any appreciable extent in this direction. Hasty remarks are nowadays withdrawn at the first suggestion of the Speaker, though on occasion an apology may be as offensive as the original insult. Lord Robert Cecil (afterwards Lord Salisbury) said of a speech of Gladstone's in 1861, that it was "worthy of a pettifogging attorney." Soon afterwards he rose in the House, and said that he wished to apologise for a remark he had lately made. "I observed that the speech of the right hon. gentleman was worthy of a pettifogging attorney," he said, "and I now hasten to offer my apologies – to the attornies!"

It is usual nowadays to wrap up offensive criticisms in a more or less palatable covering, to attack by inference rather than by direct assault. "I am no party man," said Colonel Sibthorpe, member for Lincoln, after the dissolution of Sir Robert Peel's Government. "I have never acted from party feelings; but I must say I do not like the countenances of honourable gentlemen opposite, for I believe them to be the index of their minds. I can only say, in conclusion, that I earnestly hope that God will grant the country a speedy deliverance from such a band."[310 - Grant's "Recollections," p. 140.] This is a good example of an unpleasant thing framed in a manner which does not lay it open to the stigma of disorderly language, and is just as effective as that oft-quoted attack made by a member of the Irish House of Commons on George Ponsonby (afterwards Irish Chancellor), whose sister was sitting in the gallery at the time. "These Ponsonbys are the curse of my country," said the member; "they are prostitutes, personally and politically – from the toothless old hag who is now grinning in the gallery to the white-livered scoundrel who is now shivering on the floor!"[311 - Hayward's "Essays," pp. 364-5.]

Members who consider themselves aggrieved or insulted have now no redress save by an appeal to the Speaker. In old days they often took the matter into their own hands, and many a duel was the outcome of hasty words spoken in Parliament. So prevalent, indeed, did the habit of duelling become, that in 1641 a resolution was passed in the Commons empowering the Speaker to arrest any member who either sent or received a challenge. The practice of parliamentary duelling long continued, in spite of every effort to stifle it. Wilkes was wounded in 1763 in Hyde Park by a member named Martin, who had called him "a cowardly scoundrel." Lord Castlereagh and Canning met in 1809, and had, in consequence, to resign their seats in the Cabinet.[312 - Bell's "Life of Canning," p. 251.] Lord Alvanley fought Morgan O'Connell, son of the Liberator, on his father's account. Charles James Fox was challenged by Mr. Adam, of the Ordnance Department, for a personal attack made in the House of Commons, and faced him in the old Kensington Gravel Pits. At the first shot Adam's bullet lodged harmlessly in his opponent's belt. "If you hadn't used Ordnance powder," said Fox, with a laugh, as he shook hands with Adam after the fight, "I should have been a dead man."[313 - Pryme's "Recollections," p. 235.]

If duels were fought in those days on very slight provocation, challenges were also occasionally declined on equally poor grounds. Colonel Luttrell, member for Middlesex, and afterwards Lord Carhampton, refused to fight his own father, not because he was his father, but because he was not a gentleman!

The last duel between politicians was that fought by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Winchelsea, as the result of some remarks made by the latter during a debate on the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill in 1830. Since that time no parliamentary dispute has been referred to the arbitrament of the pistol.

Although there has been a perceptible improvement in parliamentary deportment as the centuries have advanced, the same can scarcely be said of parliamentary dress. In the time of Charles II., knee-breeches, silk stockings, and silver-buckled shoes were absolutely de rigueur for members of the Commons. A hundred years later members of Parliament always wore court dress, with bag-wig and sword, in the House. The formal costume prescribed by etiquette was rigidly adhered to, and none but county members were permitted the privilege of wearing spurs.[314 - Lord Colchester's "Diary," vol. i. p. 45.] At this time, too, Cabinet Ministers were never seen in Parliament without the ribbons and decorations of the various orders to which they belonged. The regulation which bids the mover and seconder of the Address to appear in court dress on the first day of the new Parliament is the only relic of this custom.

Fifty years ago no member of either House would have appeared within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster wearing anything upon his head but a high silk hat. Gradually, however, a certain laxity in the matter of head-gear has crept into Parliament, and to-day, not only "bowlers," but even "cricketing caps" may be seen reposing upon the unabashed heads of members. Peers, as a rule, conform to the older fashion, and Cabinet Ministers usually dress in a respectably sombre garb. But among the rank and file of the House of Commons may occasionally be found members wearing check suits of the lightest and loudest patterns, and hats of every conceivable variety, ranging from the æsthetic "Homburg" to the humble cloth cap. The passing of the top hat must necessarily appear somewhat in the light of a tragedy to older parliamentarians. In both Houses the hat has long come to be regarded as a sacred symbol. It is with this article of clothing that the member daily secures his claim to a seat on the benches of the House of Commons; with a hat he occasionally expresses his enthusiasm or sympathy; on a hat does he sit at the close of a speech, with the certainty of raising a laugh; and without a hat he cannot speak upon a point of order when the House has been cleared for a division.

When the Labour Party began to take an important place in the popular assembly, it was thought that this democratic invasion would have an actively detrimental effect upon the dress of the House. Old-fashioned members shook their heads and prophesied an influx of hobnailed artisans, clad in corduroys, their trousers confined at the knee with string, and in their mouths a short clay pipe. These gloomy forebodings have not been realised. With very few exceptions the dress of Labour members is little calculated to offend the most sensitive eye, though it was certainly one of their number who first entered a startled House of Commons in a tweed stalking-cap – a form of head-dress which it is certainly difficult to forgive.

CHAPTER XII

PARLIAMENTARY ELOQUENCE

When Pitt was asked what he considered most to be lamented, the lost books of Livy, or those of Tacitus, he replied that to the recovery of either of these he would prefer that of a speech by Bolingbroke. Not a fragment of what Dean Swift called the "invincible eloquence" of that statesman is left to us. But though we are compelled to take his reputation as an orator on trust, we should do wrong to complain, for it is more than probable that a perusal of Bolingbroke's speeches to-day would prove disappointing.

"Words that breathed fire are ashes on the page," and the utterances that have stirred a thousand hearts in the Senates of old days too often leave the modern reader cold and unmoved. We miss the inflections of a magical voice, the stimulating plaudits of friends or followers, the magnetism that can only be communicated by a personal intercourse between a speaker and his audience. The reading of old speeches is, as Lord Rosebery has observed, a dreary and reluctant pilgrimage which few willingly undertake. It supplies, as a rule, but a poor explanation of the effect which the eloquence of past orators produced upon their contemporaries. It is like attending an undress rehearsal of a play in an empty theatre on a cold winter's afternoon. The glamour of costume, of limelight, is lacking; the atmosphere of appreciation, excitement, enthusiasm, is absent. The difference between the spoken and the published oration has been aptly defined as the difference between some magnificent temple laid open to the studious contemplation of a solitary visitant, and the same edifice beheld amidst the fullest accompaniments of sacrificial movement and splendour, thronged with adoring crowds, and resounding with solemn harmonies.[315 - "Quarterly Review," vol. xxii. p. 496.]

It has often been affirmed that no speech in Parliament has ever resulted in the winning of a division. Byron declared that "not Cicero himself, nor probably the Messiah, could have altered the vote of a single lord of the Bedchamber or Bishop."[316 - Moore's "Life of Byron," 185.] There are, however, one or two instances of orations which have been so moving in their appeal that they may claim to be exceptions to this rule. Plunket's famous speech in the debate on Grattan's motion for Catholic Emancipation in 1807 is said to have gained many votes. Macaulay won the support of several opponents by an eloquent speech on the second reading of Lord Mahon's Copyright Bill in 1842, and, on a Bill introduced by Lord Hotham to exclude certain persons holding offices from the House of Commons, actually caused the anticipated majority to be reversed.

On one memorable occasion when Sheridan, with that impassioned oratory for which he had already become famous, was advocating the prosecution of Warren Hastings, the House of Commons was so stirred that a motion for adjournment was made in order to give members time to recover from the overpowering effect of his eloquence.[317 - Barnes' "Reminiscences," p. 203.] Again, during the debate on Commercial Distress in December, 1847, Peel roused the fury of the Protectionists by a violent and able speech, and, when he resumed his seat, an adjournment was moved on the ground that the House was not in a condition to vote dispassionately. Burke, too, seems at times to have stimulated his hearers to an active expression of their emotion; and when he was lamenting the employment of Indians in the American War, a fellow-member was so moved that he offered to nail a copy of his speech upon the door of every church in the kingdom.[318 - Prior's "Life of Burke," vol. i. p. 337.]