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1877.]

SIR STAFFORD AND MR PARNELL.

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expressed his pleasure at having been able to thwart the intentions of the Government. There was nothing, as a Conservative member said at the time, particularly criminal in this remark, but Sir Stafford Northcote had been taunted with undue inactivity. His exemplary endurance gave way, and he moved that the words be taken down. There was the usual unedifying wrangle about what had been said and what had not been said, what must have been and what could not have been Mr Parnell's meaning; Mr Parnell was ordered to withdraw, and a motion of suspension was for the first time proposed. The debate was adjourned-it was never renewed-and the motion dropped. The phrase itself, or its equivalent, has often been used in the House without drawing a reprimand from the Chair. It would now be generally recognised as harmless in itself; but there was undoubted evidence of a conspiracy to stop the progress of public business, and everybody agreed that something must be done.

Sir Stafford Northcote was not eager to alter the rules of the House. He was extremely industrious, and did not mind sitting up. He was strongly of opinion that the assembly which managed the affairs of the nation should continue to manage its own, and that it should not be conducted as a school with the leader as schoolmaster. He knew that politics were a rough pursuit, and there was nothing effeminate in his character. Nevertheless, on the 27th of July he moved two resolutions. The first was to the effect that after a

member had been twice called to order, the Speaker or Chairman might "name" him to the House or Committee as disregarding the authority of the Chair, and then, after he had been heard in his own defence, a motion for suspending him during the rest of the sitting should be put without further debate. This motion was carried by a majority of 250. It was only once enforced, but a similar, though far more drastic resolution, which is now in force, has been frequently used. The second resolution, which was carried by 243, is now a standing order. It restricts the right of making dilatory motions, but its precise terms are too technical to be of general interest. The obstructive minority soon proved the bluntness of these weapons. The House again went into Committee on the South African Bill at a quarter-past five in the afternoon of Tuesday, the 31st July, and continued the operation till ten minutes past two on the afternoon of Wednesday, the 1st of August. This "record," as the saying is, has since been beaten, but it was then unprecedented. Yet nobody was suspended, and neither of the new resolutions was brought into play. Sir Stafford Northcote only left the House for a brief interval; Lord Beaconsfield looked down from the Peers' gallery with a sense of relief. Mr Forster was almost more ministerial than the Ministerialists; and Sir William Harcourt denounced the conduct of the Parnellites in exceedingly vigorous English. Mr Fawcett, however, protested against the determination of the Government to force the bill through, and Mr Courtney retired at four in the morning,

1880.]

COMMITTEE ON PROCEDURE.

133

feeling that legislation and deliberation had alike ceased. However, the bill passed, and the session came to an end.

During the session of 1878, a Select Committee on the procedure of the House was nominated, and took the evidence of Lord Hampden, then Speaker, as well as of Mr. Raikes, then Chairman of Ways and Means.

In 1879, an unsuccessful attempt was made to act upon the recommendations of this Committee. The Army Annual Bill of that year, the Mutiny Bill, as it used to be called, was seriously obstructed by Mr Parnell and his friends. It must, however, be remembered that their object was the abolition of flogging in the army; that this object has been long since achieved; that the Government incurred the censure of their own supporters for not knowing their own mind; and that Mr Parnell was aided if not abetted by no less a personage than Mr Chamberlain.

On the 24th of February 1879, Sir Stafford Northcote carried, after a protracted debate, the now familiar rule, then only applied to Monday, that there should be no preliminary debate on Mondays and Thursdays upon going into Committee of Supply unless the Army, Navy, or Civil Service Estimates are first taken, and then only on some question connected with the votes to be proposed. No other resolution was passed in 1879. But on the 28th of February 1880, a few weeks before Parliament was dissolved, a very long and elaborate proviso was adopted, according to which a member could be suspended by the House, after being named from the chair, without being heard in his own defence. This rule was made a stand

ing order, and still, in a shorter but more drastic form, survives.

An impartial critic of Sir Stafford Northcote's policy in leading the House would probably select as its weakest point his failure to apply the true, only, and sufficient remedy for obstruction. The clôture, or as Mr Gladstone prefers to call it, the closing power, is the one weapon with which the majority can at once terminate a factious and dilatory resistance. That the House of Commons continued to do without it from the days of Simon de Montfort to the days of Mr Parnell may be explained in a great variety of ways. Before 1832, the House had very little to do. Before 1867, it only represented the upper middle classes. Before 1874, it contained no members openly and avowedly hostile to the authority of the House as a whole. That a legislative or administrative assembly should have no right to stop debate and decide the matter under discussion forthwith is theoretically absurd. becomes practically mischievous when the indirect influence of custom and opinion ceases, for whatever reason, to operate upon a particular class of legislators or administrators. In the year 1890, when Tories and Radicals, Unionists and Home Rulers, move, according as opportunity serves them, "that the question be now put," the old prejudice against the clôture is difficult to understand, and almost impossible to revive. But Sir Stafford Northcote detested it, and in moving one of his resolutions on procedure, he referred to it in the same tone of reluctance not unmingled with disgust, with which he would

It

1880.]

SIR STAFFORD AND THE CLÔTURE.

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have spoken of the Russian knout or the Turkish bastinado. In the next Parliament, Mr Parnell had more than thirty supporters instead of less than ten, and the necessity for the clôture became urgent. But by that time Sir Stafford Northcote had ceased to be primarily responsible for the conduct of affairs in the House of Commons.

Sir Stafford Northcote led the Opposition in the House of Commons for five years. During the first year he acted as Lord Beaconsfield's lieutenant; but after the death of the latter in April 1881, the Conservatives were left under a dual leadership. It was determined to invest Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords and Sir Stafford Northcote in the House of Commons with independent authority, and this arrangement continued in force until the fall of Mr Gladstone's Ministry in 1885.

When the new Parliament assembled in the early summer of 1880, the Liberals were in a majority of more than a hundred, if the Irish Home Rulers were counted neutral. If they were added to the Liberal ranks, the majority became about 170. No one then thought of adding them to the Conservatives, though half of themthat is, the Parnellites-subsequently voted with the Conservatives in a vast number of divisions, and finally contributed to Mr Gladstone's downfall.

The most delicate and crucial incidents in Sir Stafford Northcote's career in Opposition were, perhaps, the case of Mr Bradlaugh, the debates on the clôture, and the rise of the Fourth party.

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