The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-11 00:00:00

made by a select number of its members who have
investigated the evidence adduced before them in
reference to the probable results of sanctioning the
acherne, whereas it will not act upon the °pillion,:
of men perhaps better fitted than its own members'
to determine the point rte issue. Whether the
assumption on which this practite is based is one
which is reasonable, and whether the practice is rm.
itself an4nrtive to the interests of the public„l,
large, were the points raised by Lord R. Cec"
motion legit evening. This is not the first occasion
on which the expediency of this singular adjunct ofa
our legislative system has been brought under
notice of the House of Commons, it having alreesY
furnished subject-matter for consideration to n:
special meeting. The report of this committee w°
published A short time since ; and the resolution
the member for Stamford was ostensibly couched i
accordance with the general tenour of that report.
There are two points of view from which the ma'
rem
garded, of Parliamentary committees may be r"
garded, namely, in reference to its bearing on the'l
interests of the public, and on those of members e,;
Parliament. Regarded in the former light, lebtL.;
R. Cecil condemned the system as failing to atts .
the ends for which it was established ; regarded in
the latter, he equally disapproved of it as imposing
upon private members a great and unneccessarY
amount of labour. Dismissing for the moment the
consideration of the former class of objections, it Is
unquestionable that of late years private Parliatnebt
tary business has increased to an extent which ren'
ders the office of member of Parliament sometbi4
far different from that easy sinecure which the large
majority of the public believe it to be. Of the busi-
ness transacted in the committee rooms the country
learns nothing, and not a few suppose that feria'
torial duties consist in little else than being Pre;
sent in " the House" on the occasion of important
divisions. The first of the objections taken by ',Old
R. Cecil to the present system rested upon the
ground that, ds the public business of Parliament
was, to say the least of it, of as important a nature
as that which, for the sake of distinction, is termedprivate, it was indispensable to introduce such mods-
fications as would enable the members of the Wit
of Commons to discharge the former as well as the
latter class of duties. That, under the existing sYe;
tern, the public business is neglected, he averr"`:
was demonstrated by the paucity of the astendabe"
at the evening sittings of the House, and the 'll‘
creasing frequency of " countseout." To the gene,
ral modus operandi of Parliamentary committees h.°
raised those objections which have again and agatebeen advanced, and which, it must be confessfd
have never been satisfactorily answered. The 'EI;
competency of the tribunal, the unreasonable cost
incurred by the proceedings, the manifest interest,
which every one professional'y engaged before such
committees has in protracting the inquiry, and the
wearisome, and not unfrequently irrelevant, nature
of the details elicited, were all in turn cited as fury
nishing the most cogent reasons for reforming the
present mode of investigation by Parliamentary eel
mittees. 'The evils, to say the truth, are transparent
enough, enough, and their demonstration was a matter 01
great difficulty ; but unfortunately the remedy by
which Lord R. Cecil proposed to eradicate them
erh;
pears by no means so well calculated to effect t'
proposed end as its sanguine originator waswilling
°e
to believe. With the fundamental principle that the
House of Commons must in the last resort judge
the expediency or otherwise of sanctioning thes
miscellaneous projects which are embodied in
.Pit.
vate bills, Lord R. Cecil did not propose to interfere
;
he merely suggested that a large mass of the facts
on which, under the present mode of prccedure,' s
Parliamentary committee is called upon to deeie
l
might be determined by arbitrators or seieeptelb,
witnesses appointed by the promoters of, an
t,
jectors to, the measure submitted to Parliament
Although, however, the member for Stamford was
able to cite from experience examples or cases in is
which committees had been occupied for daYet;e,
determining facts which might, by the mode
proposed, have easily and expeditiously been 'ea;
tided, he was unable to give the house any idea
the manner in which in future those facts should
be left for the decision of arbitrators or experts.
Nor ought the difficulty to have occasioned him
any surprise, if he reflected that a Parliamentary
committee virtually exercises the functions of a
jury; that everything submitted for its considered.). n
is purely a question of fact ; and that it would be
just es impossible to determine beforehand by any
fixed rules what questions a committee should refer,
to
eeola arbitation as to define what facts a ury
take or granted because particular witnj esses chose
to depose to them. The question, after all, as .„T.r•
Milner Gibson pointed out, resolves itself into this:
Is the subject matter of a railway scheme, or soon
similar project, to be investigated by the House of
Commons or not ? If the latter, then the house
abandons to some other tribunal its legislative fund'
tions, but if the former, then a Parliamentary corn'
mittee must itself sift the evidence upon which it
bases its recommendations, Private bill legislation
is simply law-making of en exceptional kind, and
law making must, under all circumstances, be a
laborious task. The legislator cannot consistently
delegate his duties to another. But although
scheme such as that suggested by Lord R. Ci-e"
cannot be adopted, many important reforms Intl
with case be effected in the present system. The
expense attendant on Parliamentary ir quiries is a
gross public scandal; and w. think that, if some
means were adopted by which the cost of these in-
vest:gations was materially diminished, Parliaeoen'
tary agents and counsel would do their work more
expeditiously; and thus much profitless labour
would be saved to those whose duty it is to sit oa
Parliamentary committees.