The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-09-12 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING. SEPT. 12, 1848.

THE question is now occupying a great portion
of the attention of the public—" how are we to
put a stop to that flood of talk in the House of
Commons which impedes all legislative progress
and mocks the wants and patience of the nation ?"
And well it may ! After a session, such as that
which has just closed, which has added to the
pages of Hansard some thousands of profitless de-
bates, and consumed nearly ten months of the
public time, we have a just right to ask how it is
that the business of Parliament is left to so great
an . extent unperformed, and to devise means for
abating the nuisance. In part the question has
been solved by the evidence taken before a Com-
mittee, appointed to enquire into the mode of con-
clueing the debates of the House of Commons.
The opportunities given to honourable members by
the forms of the House for the display of their
oratorical powers are in the first instance very
much too great, as will be shown by the following
extract from the evidence of Mr. Lefevre, the pre-
sent Speaker. The enquiry made of him was, how
many are the questions, on which a debate may
ensue. which are ordinarily put during the progress
of a Bill through the House, and the answer of the
honourable gentleman was "eighteen."
" Sir R. Inglii.—Will you have the goodness to specify
the 18 questions ?-1, ' that leave be given to bring in the
bill ;' 2, that this bill be read a first time ;' 3, ' that the
bill he read a second time on a day named ;' 4, 'that this
bill be now read a second time;' 5, 'that this bill be com-
mitted on a named day;' 6, 'that this bill be committed;'
7. ' that the Speaker do now leave the chair.' Then, after
it had passed through the committee, 8, that the report
be received on a named day ;' 9, ' that this report be now
receive! ;' 10, ' that this report be now read ;' 11, that
these amendments be now read a second time;' 12, 'that
the house a.!ree with their committee in the said amend-
ments ;' 13, that this bill be engrossed ;' 14, 'that this
bill be read a third time on a named day ;' 15, ' that this
bill be now read a third time;' 16, ' that this bill do pass;'
17, that this be the title to the bill ;' 18, that Messrs.
A. and B. do carry this bill to the lords.' "
Here is latitude for speech with a vengeance ! In
addition, however, there are the questions which
may be raised whilst the Bill is in Committee, up-
on every one of which a debate may, and frequently
does arise. Then, it is in the power of any mem;
ber to provoke a debate by moving an adjourn-
ment, by speaking to order and in various ways.
In snort, the floodgates which are available to let
in upon us the wordy deluge, of which we com-
plain, are innumerable.
It is beyond our purpose here, and we are scarcely
sufficiently conversant with the subject, to speculate
upon the remedies which may be applied. Cer-
tainly, however, it does appear to us—and we think,
with the above extract before them, it will be the
opinion of our readers—that many of the formal
questions put to the House during the progress of
a Bill might be dispensed with. But then there is
another difficulty to be met—the propensity of
members to make long speeches. This is an in-
tolerable and, unfortunately, an increasing nuisance,
from which the public are in some measure spared
by the kindness of the reporters for the press.
Those of our readers who have occasionally attended
the debates, and, when anticipating the rising of
some of the really eminent members of Parliament,
have been kept on tenter-hooks for an hour or two
by some of the bores of the House, or by some
" Unaccustomed speaker," who having got on his
legs, keeps spinning out his quarter of an idea un-
til it is as transparent as gauze, dreaming all the
while of its astounding effects of the one auditor in
the gallery—a constituent or a friend—and the sen-
sation it will create in his borough or his county,
will have a notion of the extent of the nuisance.
Ilow this practice is to be put down we do not
know. Some of the witnesses before the Commit-
tee suggest a limitation of the time allowed to each
speaker, as practised in America. Mons. Guizot,
who was examined, explains the French plan, but
acknowledges that it has not prevented debates be-
ing extended to fourteen sittings. To us it appears
inherent in the representative system, which offers
a premium to talkers,• rather than business men.
It is, in part, the fault of' the public themselves, by
a portion of whom a speaker is estimated not so
much for the amount of good sense which he says
as for the number of words which he uses in saying
it. We could almost pardon a return to the old
practice of " cockcrowing," whistling, and other re-
sorts, by which such bores were put down in—if we
remember right—the first reformed Parliament. Or
within reasonable limits a few of the most out-
rageous of them might he reported by the press
verbatim, with all their interjectural " ali"—"ah"s,
and repetitions; or, as a less grievous infliction
upon the world, every honourable member below
a certain status, who should venture to occupy the
House above a certain and reasonable time, pro-
portioned to the exact amount of substantial matter
he had to communicate to the House, should have
his very name unrecorded altogether. We have no
hope in any more regular remedy.
For any reform, by which the public business may
be accelerated, we fancy that it will be desirable to
look further than to any change in the mere forms
of the House. For some years past we have seen a
gradual accumulation of business in the House of ,1
Commons, whilst, until within the last few weeks
of the session, the House of' Lords has been almost
unemployed. And when, at length, a mass of Bills
have been handed up for their consideration, we
have seen them compelled to he thrown aside, in
part from a just sense of the Lords of the indignity
of thus being called upon to become the mere re-
cording agents of the other House, and frequently
from the utter impossibility of even the necessary
standing orders of the former being observed. The
remedy for a part of this evil will be to allow those
Bills presented to the Lords at the close of the
session, being discussed and passed in the follow-
ing session, without further reference to the Com-
mons. With respect to Private Bills, in which ex-
pensive enquiries have bad to be gone through in
Committee, the justice of this course is obvious;
and, unless a dissolution has taken place in the in-
terim between the two sessions, there can be few
public questions which might not thus be set at
rest.

Another mode, by which the public business
might he facilitated, would be to give to the House
of Lords, more largely than at present, the privi-
lege of originating important Bills, both private
and public. By this means the labour of legislation
would be thrown more equally on both Houses.
The great impediment at present is the jealousy of
the House of Commons—in many cases purely tra-
ditional—on the score of privilege, with respect to'
those hills which contain what are termed money
clauses. That jealousy might, without danger, be
considerably relaxed, and a large amount of public
convenience secured. Indeed we don't know that,
with a few exceptions, every description of measure
might not he propounded in one House as advan-
tageously as in the other.
But an indispensable portion of any Reform
must be the placing of a compulsion upon ministers,
who now-a-days arrogate to themselves the initia-
tion
and conducting of every public measure of the
smallest importance, to decide beforehand what
those measures are to be, instead of coming forward
continually with half-formed projects, based upon
half understood principles, and requiring Parliament
to lick them into its own shape. When a Government
conducts its business in this way—when its policy is
merely tentative—when it is always either advanc-
ing, retreating, or dodging aside—above all when
its whole existence is staked upon the lucky turn-
ing up of the cards—when it requires to have four
attempts before it can produce a Budget and two
or three for a Sugar or a Sanatory Bill, as was the
case with our present precious Government, there
will be talk, interminable sitting, and a heavy
amount of unclosed business left behind.

THE "JENNY LIND 7:llANlA."—There is a vast quan-
tity of cant in this world of ours, which passes current for
sound sense—nay, even for philanthropy. What thou-
sands of people in this town have during the past week
been turning up the whites of their eyes, in pious horror,
at the enormity of paying a guinea, or even half a guinea,
to hear the dulcet warblinc,s of this most sweet of singers!
At how many brcahfast an tea tables has the mention of
Jenny Lind formed the text for a lecture on prudent
economy, and a diatribe against the extravagance of this or
that neighbour, with a concluding wonder how be, or she,
could afford to indulge in so expensive a treat ! What
numberless persons have been shocked at the thought
that so many guineas should be expended, " whilst so
many people were starving," and how many suggestions
have been made; as to the mode in which all these guineas
could have been better laid out—could have been " given
to the poor !" Yet there is not one in a hundred of these
censors of their neighbour's tastes, who does not, accord-

ing to his or her means, occasionally wander into equal
extravagance, in seeking the gratification of his or• her
particular tastes, grosser perhaps, and therefore tar less
defensible. But then they have always " something to
show for their money,"—something for the hody,--iome-