Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-10-11
KEEPING UP THE CRY.

The Democrats of the minority do not,
even with the adjournment of Congress,
cease to moan about Rule Fifteen, or to
denounce "the arbitrary and unparalleled
ruling of Speaker Reed" in counting those
members physically present in the House
as part of a quorum. Even the six-by-
nine platforms of ward nominating conven-
lions and Democratic town meetings all
over the country come to us overlooking
with frothy EXPLANATIONS against the
Speaker and loud-sounding platitudes
about some sort of anticipated assault upon
the liberties of the people and the frontlet
of the Constitution by the RECKLESS and
vicious majority"
Now comes one of the most distinguished
parliamentarians of the age, Professor
Bryce, NJ. P, who calmly discusses the
whole question and arrives at the conclusion
that Speaker Reeds ruling and Rule Fiji
teen are simply the common sense of the
matter. That it is the hight Of unreason
and the sublimity of absurdity to perpetu-
ate custom that recognizes a member of
deliberative body as absent though sitting
in his seat, and by his very presence in
the body confessing the power of the
House over him. Says Professor Bryce of
the custom in the English Parliament,
and from which we are supposed to have
drawn our system of parliamentary rule
and usage:
In both houses of Parliament every member
present has always been held bound to vote
and recusant members have more than once
been positively compelled to vote. The only re-
source of a person who seeks to escape this
duty is to hurry out of the Houae before the two
minutes allowed for members to come in have
elapsed and the doors have been locked do
not know whether the American habit of per-
hitting members to have each his own desk,
where he can read and write, has anything to
do with this permission to remain silent spec
tatOr of a division. To us Englishmen both the
desks and the habit of non participation while
physically present, as well as the right TO
change ones voc while the division proceeds,
seem unfortunate; and we are not surprised
that technical difficulties should arise out of
the regulations for, a quorumiwhere the anon
ally exists of divisions of the House which
are not divisions of the whole body of members
present. Such question as that which Speaker
Reed decided and his decision on which has
been embodied in the rule since enacted by the
House, could not have arisen at Westminster,
where we know of only one quorum-the quo
rum consisting of every member within the
four walls of the chamber whom the eye of the
Speaker gees and his finger Tor, rather. the
cooked hat he points With and voice count
audibly when count is required.
If our friends, the Democrats, have any
fear whatever of the voice of public opin-
ION, if they at all respect the judgment of
the great mass of the people, they will
issue orders to their several Conventions
and other organized bodies to cease insult
ing public sentiment by declaiming against
the rule of the House, and to stop the
insuferable chatter about the "unprin-
cipled action of the majority" in adopting
it. The great mass of the people are
thinking, as it is said by the Inter Ocean
sturdy old border Democrat the other day
roughly expressed it at a party gathering
in Western town. The old man, whose
voice has great weight in the community,
listened long and patiently to the younger
men in their denunciation of Mr.. Reed and
the rule that provides that one actually
present may be so recorded. Finally he
interrupted the flow of denunciation with
these emphatic expressions, which served
to close the meeting and settle the ques-
ton in that section of the country: "Drat
it, men, quit. Reed was right, and any
Liz Whof
do we send men to Congress for, if not to
vote like men and take their medicine
when whipped? We don't send 'em up
there to sit and do nothing and refuse to
answer here when they are thar. If you
want to hurt the Democratic party, keep
on talkin' the way you've been doin'."
The old mans diction was coarse, but his
logic was irresistible.