Parliament

“ We have had some reasonable modicum of talk in Parliament! What talk has done for us in Parliament, and is now doing, the dullest of us at length begins to see!
Much has been said of Parliament's breeding men to business; of the training an Official Man gets in this school of argument and talk. He is here inured to patience, tolerance; sees what is what in the Nation and in the Nation's Government attains official knowledge, official courtesy and manners—in short, is polished at all points into official articulation, and here better than elsewhere qualifies himself to be a Governor of men. ”

“ But a Parliament is composed of a great number of men by no means at the top of the world. When you establish a predominant Parliament, you give over the rule of the country to a despot who has unlimited time,—who has unlimited vanity,—who has, or believes he has, unlimited comprehension, whose pleasure is in action, whose life is work. There is no limit to the curiosity of Parliament. ”

“ A Parliament, like every other sort of sovereign, has peculiar feelings, peculiar prejudices, peculiar interests; and it may pursue these in opposition to the desires, and even in opposition to the well-being of the nation. It has its selfishness as well as its caprice and its parties. ”

“ When we come to consider the interesting business of making a Government, the first question that arises is—What is the chief test of a man’s capacity for office? Under our Constitution, with its free and unfettered Parliament, of which the Ministers must be Members, a deliberative assembly where everything is made the subject of talk, talk, talk, and provided with a Reporters’ Gallery for the dissemination of its debates through the Press, it is inevitable that a man’s fitness for a post in the Administration should be decided mainly by his gift of speech. ”

“ They ignore the human side of Parliament. Often they seem to present Parliament as a mere abstraction—a thing of rules, principles and theories unrelated to the human personalities who compose its membership. Parliament cannot be divorced from life any more than Literature. Rightly to appreciate Parliament in its strength and in its weakness you must have an acquaintance with it in being, and an understanding of the politicians who, whether in office or out of office, whether in Government or Opposition, bend it, or try to bend it, to their will. ”

“ Wherever the Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representatives freely chosen by the constituent bodies of the realm were met together, there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now in being; and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at a conjuncture when every hour was precious, when numerous important subjects required immediate legislation, and when dangers, only to be averted by the combined efforts of King, Lords, and Commons, menaced the State? A Jacobite indeed might consistently refuse to recognise the Convention as a Parliament. ”

“ Entering Parliament an elegant young man, scrupulous in his attire, bringing the prestige of his father's popularity and his own repute, standing about five feet ten inches in height, broad-chested, finely moulded, a handsome face, eagle eye, magnificent voice and commanding presence, he could early assume a superiority that all conceded. ”

“ Parliament will absolutely, with whatever effort, have to lift itself out of those deep ruts of donothing routine; and learn to say, on all sides, something more edifying than Laissez-faire. If Parliament cannot learn it, what is to become of Parliament? The toiling millions of England ask of their English Parliament foremost of all, Canst thou govern us or not? ”

“ The city courting their own ruin,
Thank the Parliament twice for their treble undoing.
A street ballad. From a broadside, 1647.
The hierarchy is out of date,
Our monarchy was sick of late,
But now ’tis grown an excellent state:
Oh, God a-mercy, Parliament!
The teachers knew not what to say,
The ’prentices have leave to play,
The people have all forgotten to pray;
Still, God a-mercy, Parliament! ”

“ The House of Commons is the house of a few; the Sovereign is the sovereign of all. The proper leader of the people is the individual who sits upon the throne.’
‘Then you abjure the Representative principle?’
‘Why so? Representation is not necessarily, or even in a principal sense, Parliamentary. Parliament is not sitting at this moment, and yet the nation is represented in its highest as well as in its most minute interests. Not a grievance escapes notice and redress. ”

“ ASSEMBLING OF THE NEW PARLIAMENT 1 The procedure of Parliament is very ancient. An old-world spirit animates especially the quaint and curious ceremonies that mark the assembling of a new Parliament. The House of Commons is crowded. ”

“ What then, is our Constitution loft, when Bundles of Writs are lost? No, I will go no farther than this last Letter to shew that there is a great Appearance that while there were Two Parliaments in a Year, the Second must be new Called. Though I hate the word New applied to a Parliament; for a Parliament is a Parliament, and our Ancestors would no more have dream’d of a Stale or Old Parliament, than of an Old Moon cut out into Stars. ”

“ While we are on the subject of misnomers, what say you to the wisdom of Parliament?
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. Why, sir, I do not call that a misnomer. The term wisdom is used in a parliamentary sense. The wisdom of Parliament is a wisdom sui generis. It is not like any other wisdom. It is not the wisdom of Socrates, nor the wisdom of Solomon. It is the wisdom of Parliament. It is not easily analysed or defined; but it is very easily understood. It has achieved wonderful things by itself, and still more when Science has come to its aid. ”

“ Farther, whatever was to be the structure of the Parliament, were any fundamentals to be laid down beforehand, as eternal principles of the Commonwealth, which even the Parliament should be bound not to touch? Must not the perpetuity of Republican Government itself, or non-return to Kingship or single Chief Magistracy of any kind, be one of these fundamentals, and Liberty of Conscience another? Nay, should a Church Establishment and Tithes be left open questions, or should there be some absolute pre-determination on that great subject? ”

“ But Parliament seems to me to be the very place which a man of action should avoid. A Parliamentary career, that old superstition of the eighteenth century, was important when there were no other sources of power and fame. An aristocracy at the head of a people whom they had plundered of their means of education, required some cultivated tribunal whose sympathy might stimulate their intelligence and satisfy their vanity. Parliament was never so great as when they debated with closed doors. ”

“ Parliament, too, is for the most part a sound, careful and practical body of men. Principle shows that the power of dismissing a Government with which Parliament is satisfied, and of dissolving that Parliament upon an appeal to the people, is not a power which a common hereditary monarch will in the long run be able beneficially to exercise. ”

“ Acts of parliament, indeed, on all kinds of subjects were as yet accustomed to be regarded by all degrees of people as little more than a sort of moral declarations or preachments on the part of the legislature—expressions of its sentiments—but scarcely as laws which were compulsory like the older laws of the kingdom. ”

“ Absorbed in the daily contests of their Chamber, they over-estimate the importance of those contests. They come to think that Parliament is in fact what it is in theory, a microcosm of the nation, and that opinion inside is sure to reflect the opinion outside. ”

“ Alas, the remote observer knows not the nature of Parliaments: how Parliaments, extant there for the British Nation's sake, find that they are extant withal for their own sake; how Parliaments travel so naturally in their deep-rutted routine, common-place worn into ruts axle-deep, from which only strength, insight and courageous generous exertion can lift any Parliament or vehicle ”

“ I place my firm reliance on the wisdom of parliament, and upon the loyalty and affection of my people. I esteem it also a peculiar advantage, that I succeed to a sovereign whose constant regards for the rights and liberties of his subjects, and whose desire to promote the amelioration of the laws and institutions of the country, have rendered his name the object of general attachment and veneration. Educated in England, under the tender and enlightened care of a most affectionate mother, I have learned from my infancy to respect and love the constitution of my native country. ”

“ The greatest teacher of all in Parliament, the head-master of the nation, the great elevator of the country—so far as Parliament elevates it—must be the Prime Minister: he has an influence, an authority, a facility in giving a great tone to discussion, or a mean tone, which no other man has. Now Lord Palmerston for many years steadily applied his mind to giving, not indeed a mean tone, but a light tone, to the proceedings of Parliament. ”

“ Each of these differences marks a stage in the return to the doctrine of common sense, that, convenient as it is in all ordinary times that Parliament should be summoned by the writ of the Sovereign, yet it is not from that summons, but from the choice of the people, that Parliament derives its real being and its inherent powers. ”

“ The notion that either or both houses of parliament, who possess no portion of executive authority, could take on themselves one of its most peculiar and important functions, was so preposterous that we can scarcely give credit to the sincerity of any reasonable person who advanced it. ”

“ When two ministers are found so humane, so virtuous, so excellent, as to study nothing but the welfare and deliverance of the people; when a king listens to such excellent men; and when a parliament, from the basest, most interested motives, interposes to intercept the blessing, must I not change my opinions, and admire arbitrary power? ”

“ Like many young men without experience, he believed that Parliament was a great power. If anyone had told him that the art of gerrymandering is greater than the art of governing, he would not have known what his informant meant. ”

“ Whether the business in hand be constituent or legislative, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, the right of Parliament—or, more accurately "the King in Parliament"—to discuss and to dispose is indisputable. ”

“ You have consulted but two members of the whole Parliament, and them only upon their promise to disclose your intentions to no man living. How then can your Highness think it possible that your sentiments, locked up so closely in the breasts of two members, can have any influence upon the whole body of the Parliament? I dare answer for it, monseigneur, that if you will but declare yourself openly the protector of the public and of the sovereign companies, you might govern them—at least, for a considerable time—with an absolute and almost sovereign authority. ”

“ On the presentation of this report, it was resolved that annual Parliaments are the right of the people, and that "the present state of the representation is inadequate to the object, and a departure from the first principles of the Constitution." ”

“ In manners, in public spirit, in devotion to parliamentary duty, and in the range of their knowledge and experience, the members of the present Parliament compare most favourably with their predecessors in any Parliament in our history. ”

“ In our age, therefore, the stages of legislation, the rules of debate, the tactics of faction, the opinions, temper, and style of every active member of either House, are familiar to hundreds of thousands. Every man who now enters Parliament possesses what, in the seventeenth century, would have been called a great stock of parliamentary knowledge. ”

“ Let it be remembered that the commonalty shall elect twelve honest men, who shall come to the Parliaments, and {48} at other needful times, when the King and his council shall send for them to treat of the needs of King and kingdom. ”

“ Parliament is not an administrative body. Summoned by the Crown, with its assent it passes laws, gives and takes away rights, authorises and directs taxation and expenditure; but in executive business the Crown acts through Ministers who are not appointed by Parliament, though undoubtedly responsible to it for their conduct. ”

“ And I never doubt but there is in Parliament itself, in spite of its vague palaverings which fill us with despair in these times, a dumb instinct of inarticulate sense and stubborn practical English insight and veracity, that would manfully support a Statesman who could take command with really manful notions of Reform, and as one deserving to be obeyed. ”

“ Forasmuch as there be of your Commons here, by your high commandment assembled for your Parliament, a great number, which are, after the accustomed manner, appointed in the Commons' House to treat and advise of the common affairs among themselves apart: and albeit, most dear liege lord, that according to your prudent advice, by your honourable writs every where declared, there hath been as due diligence used in sending up to your highness' Court of Parliament the most discreet persons out of every quarter, that men could esteem meet thereto. ”