Parliamentary debate

“ The fundamental principles of parliamentary law require a two-thirds vote for every motion that suppresses a main question for the session without free debate. The motion to lay on the table being undebatable, and requiring only a majority vote, and having the highest rank of all subsidiary motions, is in direct conflict with these principles, if used to suppress a question. ”

“ They have about them none of the searching, critical, illuminating character of the higher order of parliamentary debate, in which men are pitted against each other as equals, and urged to sharp contest and masterful strife by the inspiration of political principle and personal ambition, through the rivalry of parties and the competition of policies. ”

“ In all assemblies there is sure to be a difference of opinion among the members on the question before them, and said difference of opinion will lead to debate.
It is important for the welfare and orderly conduct of any assembly that its debates should be treated with liberality and that every member who has an opinion on the subject should be given the opportunity to freely express his views. ”

“ It shows what we may expect when there are genuine divisions of opinion which profoundly move masses of men and women in a democracy. Those who recall the tropical heat of parliamentary debates in 1893 naturally regard their voyage through the frigid proceedings of the last parliament as they would a sail through Arctic seas. ”

“ Well then, the whole problem of people who want reform is, to bring enough political pressure to bear upon the government to lead them to initiate, to draft a bill, and introduce it in the first instance, into the House of Commons, force it through the House of Commons, press it through the House of Lords, and finally land it safely, having passed through the shoals and rapids of the parliamentary river, safely on the statute book as an Act of Parliament. ”

“ If by reform is meant parliamentary reform, or a change in the mode or system of representation, what I have said is, that I have never heard of a plan that was safe and practicable that would give satisfaction, and that while I was in office I should oppose myself to reform in parliament. ”

“ At present, if the Commons decidedly oppose that policy, the Prime Minister, with his Cabinet, either resigns, and a new Cabinet is chosen, or the Minister appeals to the people for support, and the sovereign dissolves Parliament and orders a new parliamentary election, by which the nation decides the question. ”

“ Now, my notion is, that every great measure can have only one real importance, by throwing weight into the scale of one or other of the two great Parliamentary parties. Do what you will,—agitate, write, speak, pamphleteer, and libel,—but all resolves itself to some question of a harm to one side and good to the other, the country the while being wonderfully little the better or the worse for all the legislation. We used to have a Constitution in England: we have now only got a Parliament, and to be anything in the nation a man must make himself felt there! ”

“ The method by which the party in opposition contrives to secure a parliamentary majority for itself is by disparaging the measures of the party in power, and promising greater reforms and better measures than those of their rivals. ”

“ If there be one subject more than another that deserves the consideration and demands the responsibility of the government, it certainly is the reconstruction of our parliamentary system; and it is the government or the political party candidates for power, who recommend a policy, and who will not shrink from the responsibility of carrying that policy into effect if the opportunity be afforded to them, who alone are qualified to deal with a question of this importance. ”

“ One very clear cause of failure in the House of Lords to give satisfaction lies in the fact that, although government by Party is the very groundwork of the parliamentary constitution, as far as the Upper House is concerned such an idea might just as well not exist at all. ”

“ Were our government a parliamentary system, such as exists among the free peoples of the Old World, we should have a legislature promptly responsive to movements of the popular will, a ministry sitting in one or the other house of Congress, and dependent for continuance in power upon the support of a majority in the Lower House, and an executive disarmed in whole or in part of the power to negative legislative enactments. ”

“ Moreover, whatever foundation of fact underlie the charges, it should be borne in mind that parliamentary government has only existed for ten years, and it would not be reasonable to expect in a decade those virtues which were of very slow growth in our own Mother of Parliaments. ”

“ There could be no doubt that there were many respectable persons whose opinions ought to be held in proper regard, who were anxious that some change should take place in our system of parliamentary representation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But besides these necessary qualities which are needful before a parliamentary government can work at all, there are some additional pre-requisites before it can work well. That a House of Commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation’s will well, bring matters to the nation’s attention well. ”

“ In practice, however, parliamentary government by great parties, in countries where it is fully understood and practised, is found to be admirably efficacious in representing every variety of political opinion; in securing a constant supervision and criticism of men and measures; and in forming a safety valve through which the dangerous humours of society can expand without evil to the community. ”

“ Being responsible for the whole conduct of parliamentary business, he must keep a close watch upon every pending bill, and determine how much of Government time shall be 218 allotted to each, and in what order they shall be taken, and how far the general feeling of the House will let him go in seizing the hours usually reserved for private members, and in granting or refusing opportunities for discussing topics he would prefer to have not discussed at all. ”

“ Let me here incidentally call your attention to the way in which the very objects for which representative or Parliamentary government exists are, when properly understood, inconsistent with the idea or the delusion that every citizen has a moral right to a vote. Representative government, just because it is a form of popular 'government,' is intended to secure for the people of a given country what I may call the 'legislative effectiveness' of Parliament—that is, that Parliament shall consist of some of the best and most judicious members of the community, and shall enact good and wise laws. ”

“ When the great measure of Reform in Parliament was introduced in 1831, apart from all question of party struggles there was the still greater question considered by many reflecting people, whether the new Parliamentary and electoral system would be found compatible with the old practice of government by means of party and steady Parliamentary majorities. ”

“ Nor, abandoning the extreme case of such highly-mixed policies as I have endeavoured to amuse the reader by imagining, has the voter who changes his mind, or who finds that he has been bamboozled with false promises, any means of helping to undo the harm he has helped to do. It used to be said that, on an average, parliamentary government worked well—that it carried out in a rough way the will of the people. ”

“ On these grounds, some persons, incapable of seeing more than one side of a question, have pronounced parliamentary government a positive evil, and have maintained that the administration would be greatly improved if the power, now exercised by a large assembly, were transferred to a single person. ”

“ Not that I do not recognize the enormous value of parliamentary activity, but this is not an end, but only a means to an end. Our power is not measured by the number of representatives, but by the total number of votes that are behind us. ”

“ The reform measures of 1867 and 1884, establishing in substance a system of manhood suffrage in parliamentary elections, converted the House of Commons into an organ of thoroughgoing democracy. The development of the cabinet system brought the working executive, likewise, within the power of the people to control. ”

“ The laws, he said, were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a few ignorant country-gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make good laws for the government of their own families, much less for the regulation of companies and foreign commerce. He meant that the parliamentary legislation of the century was the work of amateurs, not of specialists; of an assembly of men more interested in immediate questions of policy or personal intrigue than in general principles, and not of such a centralised body as would set a value upon symmetry and scientific precision. ”

“ The difficulties which Liberal measures have experienced in the House of Lords, and the impossibility of the House of Commons dealing by debate with the increasing complexities of national business, have encouraged a tendency in Liberal governments to entrust to their departments decisions which trench upon the legislative functions of parliament. ”

“ A parliamentary government chosen on the party system is, as we have seen, at once the trustee of the whole nation, bound as such to make the welfare of the whole its supreme end, and also the special representative of particular classes, the special guardian of their interests, aims, wishes, and principles. ”

“ This is the very forlorn hope of a parliamentary ambition. They may tolerate it till they know what you are at, but no longer. It may succeed once or twice, but the third time you will be sure to break your neck. ”

“ Thus is the parliamentary rule which forbids a person unfriendly to the business of the committee, whatever it may be, whether bill or inquiry, from serving on the committee, one of those inhibitions by which public business is promoted, by which impartiality is secured, [Pg 55] and especially by which a minority is shielded against the wantonness of power. ”

“ There is some reason for regarding parliamentary government—at least under its classic and orthodox form of rivalry between two parties, who watch each other closely, in order to profit by the faults of their adversaries, who dispute with each other for power without the interests of the country, in the ardor of the encounter, being always considered—as a transitory form in the evolution of democracy. ”

“ Without some knowledge of this subject one is powerless in an assembly where his opponents are skilled parliamentarians, and therefore, in a land where perhaps most of the persons who have reached the age of sixteen years are members of one or more societies, some knowledge of parliamentary law may be justly regarded as a necessary part of the education of every man and woman, every boy and girl. ”

“ I consider the reform of Parliament, by an application to Parliament, as proposed by the Society, to be a worn-out hackneyed subject, about which the nation is tired, and the parties are deceiving each other. It is not a subject that is cognizable before Parliament, because no Government has a right to alter itself, either in whole or in part. The right, and the exercise of that right, appertains to the nation only, and the proper means is by a national convention, elected for the purpose, by all the people. ”

“ The gradual concentration of power in the hands of a supreme deliberative body, the active share of so many thousands of persons in choosing and controlling its members, the close attention with which the proceedings of parliament are followed and watched, the kind of dignity that has been lent to parliamentary methods by the great importance of the transactions, have all tended in the same direction. ”

“ A work on parliamentary law has long been needed, based, in its general principles, upon the rules and practice of Congress, but adapted, in its details, to the use of ordinary societies. Such a work should give not only the methods of organizing and conducting meetings, the duties of officers and names of ordinary motions, but should also state systematically in reference to each motion, its object and effect ”

“ Let Parliament go wrong—that is, oppose on any vital point the desires of the nation, and there would be little doubt as to the result which would instantly follow. Let us not, then, blame our legislators too much if from this Session of 1860 we have not reaped an ample crop of laws. The tendency of Parliament is to become every year more and more a mirror in which the forms of public opinion are represented. ”