The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1883-12-15 00:00:00

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SATURDAY. DECEMBER 15,11, 1883.

THE SPE AKERSHIP.

There is now no douf‘'. that Sir Henry Brand,
who has held the Speakership of the House of
Cwmons nearly twelve years, will retire from
that high Offieo early in the next session, and
that a succesiur will have to be elected. There
is all the difference between the Speaker of the
House of Commons and of the House of Lords.
The latter, as the Lord Cnancellor, is appointed
by the Crown; he is a Cabinet Minister, takes
part in the debates, votes in divisions, and goes
out of office with his party. 'Air.3 z_Tegker of the
House of Commons is in every way the antithesis
of this. He is elected by the House, is not a
Cabinet Minister, takes no part whatever in de-
b des, votes only when the numbers in divisions
are equal, and the tenure of his poet is not af-
fected by the fluctuated vicissitudes of political
warfare. He has a furnished residence within
the Palace of Westminster, which the Lord
Chancellor has not. His ruling in the assembly
over which he presides is not to be questioned;
he is practically supreme. In the Upper House
this is by no means the case with the Lord
Chancellor, who, if two peers contend for the
honour of addrussing that august assembly, has
no power to say which shall have precedence.
That is the point decided by the House itself.
In short, the Lord Chancellor makes no pretence
whatever to that impartiality which is the guid-
ing principle of the Speaker of the House of
Commons.

Necessarily the Speaker is taken from one
side of the House or the other, and must have
been when returned for any constituency a mem-
ber of a political party. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who
presided over the deliberations of the House for
the long term of eighteen years, was the Liberal
member for North Hants, Mr. Evelyn Denison,
who did not live long after his retirement from
the chair, of which he had been the occupant
fifteen years, represented North Notts as a
Liberal. The present Speaker sits in the Liberal
interest for Cambridgeshire. For nearly half a
century now, sod ever since the election of Mr.
Abercrowby in January, 1835, the presiding
officer of the House of Commons has been taken
from the benches on the right. There has,been
no contest for the Speaker's chair since the
election of Mr. Shaw Lefevre in 1839. The
choice of one Parliament has been ratified by the
next, even though the balance of party has been
coaipletely changed. A very remarkable in-
stance of this occurred in the case of Sir Henry
Brand. For many years he had been Parliamen-
tary Secretary to the Treasury, an official posi-
tion known familiarly 2s.j that of Chief Ministerial
Whip. ii is he who gathers together the Gov-
ernment forces in critical divisions, and if there
is an active partisan to be found anywhere it
must be the Government Whip. The Hon. Mr.
Brand was in February 1872 unanimously elected
Speaker, upon the motion of Mr. Locke King,
seconded by Sir Bounden Palmer, now Lord
Chancellor, The Liberals were of course in
power, and Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister.
Two years later that Parliament was dissolved,
and the Conservatives secured a majority at the
polls. Mr. Brand had been in the chair only
two years, had been an active party on the other
side, and it was in the power of the victors to
have plac, d their own Speaker in the chair, and
to have shelved the choice of Mr. Gladstone two
years previously. But they did not adopt this
course. Mr. Brand was proposed for re-election
by M. Henry Chaplin, one of the Conservative
members for Mid-Lincolnshire, and the choice
was unanimously ratified by the House. There
have been times, a long while ago now, when
partiality was imputed to the Speaker, and an
other selection has been made. There was a
singular instance of this half a century ago. Mr.
Charles Manners Sutton was elected Speaker of
the House of Commons in 1817 by a Tory Par-
liament. After the passage of the first Reform
Bill there was an overwhelming Liberal majority,
and the question arose whether that majority
should not place its own Speaker in the chair,
but with the unruly spirits to be dealt with it
was deemed advisable to continue with air.
Manners Sutton, after his long experience there
of fifteen years. But in that Parliament the
Whig Ministers imagined that they detected
partiality on the Speaker's part, and as a result
he was set aside in favour of Mr. Abercromby.
With r, spect to the Speaker-elect, Mr. Arthur
Peel, he bears an honourable tame, and has been
nearly twenty years in the Ho'ise of Commons,
so that he knows something of the rules and
practices of the assembly over which he will be
called upon to preside. It will be noted that as
the Liberal member for Warwick he will con-
tinue the traditions of the chair from the days of
Mr. Abercromby to the present time, The re-
tiring Speaker is usually voted a pension of
£4,000 a year for two lives, with a viscounty.
The late Sir Robert Peel declined himself to
found a peerage, preferring to remain a member
of the House of Commons, but a peerage in the
family seems now likely to be founded, should he
be spared, by that illustrious statesman's
youngest son.