The Russellville Democrat., 1880-04-15
Discipline iu the House of Commons.
 New York Sun.

Discipline iu the House of Commons.
 New York Sun.
 The rules adopted last week in th, House of Commons, after an animated debate, are equivalent to kind of revo lution in Parliamentary procedure. By their operation, guarentees which have long been deemed essential to freedom of debate will virtually be swept away This innovation, which Conservative and Libesals have joined hands to ratify will effectually silence the Irish minor ity; yet the time may come when the same power of muzzling obnoxious mem bers will be turned against the inven. tors.
 The methods of obstruction which the new rules are designed to frustrate may be recalled in few sentences. It has heretofore been practicable for any member to protract or postpone the dis cussion of particular measures by vari- ety of motions which, as being debatable and requiring division of the House, necessarily consumed much time Some of these dilatory proceedings might be taken when the Speaker was in the chair, and others when the House had resolved itself into committee of the whole. There were certain limits to the extent to which a single member could thus block the wheels of the Parliamentary engine, but there was literally no check on the power of knot of members leagued together for obstructive pur- poses. During the last session Mir. Par nell demonstrated, to the intense disgust of the majority, the use to which this ~r ~.k al. Dc~ ~E mechanism might be put by sagacious and determined men. His own motives were plain enough. He desired Home Rule for Ireland; and, convinced that this concession could never be extorted in the existing temper of Parliament, he endeavored to arouse such a degree of evaporation and embarrassment as would dispose hls opponents to rid themselves of the Irish members at any sacrifice. If he could not actually secure an indorsement of Home Rule, he might, at all events, extract one concession after another, until he gained the reputation of second O'Connell in the eyes of the Irish people.
 Mir. Parnell was. by no means, reckon ing without his host in counting on his system of obstruction as permanent instrument of coercion. He calculated on the opposition of the mass of the Liberals to any curtailment of the abso- lute freedom of debate. The record and attitude of their party, their precedents and principles, indisputably favored that assumption. Parliamentary history is full of gallant struggles prosecuted and great achievements wrought during the long contest between the Commons and the Crown, by virtue of the very privil- eges to which the Irish champion had recourse. It seemed, too, not improba- ble that the weapons which had proved so precious to the people in their colli- sion with the royal power might become, in some future crisis, no less important to a minority representing the sober sense of the nation, and striving to arrest the headlong progress of revolution. Both in the last session and during the late recess some of the most prudent and trusted leaders of the Liberals have spoken and written with extreme diff dence and perplexlty touching the mode of dealing with the obstructionists. They have pointed out that, even in it's latest phase, the government of Great Britain has not been in principle, although it has seemed to be ir practice, the absolute, untrammelled government of Parliamentary majority; but that on the contrary, the rights of minorities and factions representing every section and shade of opinion in the British islands were fortified by bulwarks here- tofore held sacred and impregnable. So long as votes in supply and the annual mutiny bill could be interrupted and deferred by few resolute members, no body of men, however preponderant in numbers and influence, could be the unchallenged masters of the purse and of the sword. Under the unwritten British Constitution, where the execu- tive has shrunk into legal fiction, and where the judiciary has no power of revising legislation, the rights of minor ities, it was argued, found their main groundwork and defense in the liberties and immunities painfully built up by the experience of three centuries. IL would be rash and perilous, they said to deal rudely with the hard-won privi. leges of debate, because these, now and then, proved irksome to that Parlia. mentary majority which had gradually absorbed the power once exercised by the Crown. .E E..t
 The judgment of these cautious poll, ticians might have had more weight with their party but for the awkward Quandary in which the Liberals found themselves at the beginning of this ses sion. The attempt of many of theil members to secure the Irish vote by pledging & species of support to the Home Rule movement, had caused g reaction against them in the minds O. English electors. Notwithstanding tho more or less overt cooperation of LorC Derby, and the support of the Irish ele ment, the Liberals failed to win seal in Liverpool, and little later lost South wark, which had been one of theil strongholds. AA this juncture, when tht signs of Liberal weakness were multi plying, Lord Beaconsfeld took advan take of a repetition of Parnell's tactlc during O single evening to place th' opposition in a dilemma, either horr of which was sure to be unpleasant He refused. he said, to take the respon sibility of altering, by q strict party liamentary procedure. Either the Lib erals must make common cause witt him in extinguishing the obstruction ists, or he would forthwith dissolve Parliament and appeal to the countr, for it's decision on that question. Now in view of the recent elections, an abrup dissolution was not, by any means desired by the Liberal leaders; ant least of all could they venture to defenc at the polls the propriety of allowing few Irish members to clog the move ment of the whole Parliamentar,