The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1912-02-10
OLD AND new CUSTOMS
IN THE COMMONS
Vast Changes Have Taken Place in
Rules of Lower Chamber in
Recent Years.
All Night Sessions, Once Common,
Are Now the Rare Exceptions
to the Rule.
Strain on Members Due to PROLONGED
Debate Resulted in Adop-
ton of Closure.

1 wrote last week of the inmensity
of the work which has been done by
the liberal ministers since they came
into Office In 1906. But while admit
ting all this, one cannot deny that this
has been done except at great sacri.
flee. says L. 2. O'Connor in his London
letter Of Jan. 80 to the Chicago Trib-
une.
l have 10 sympathy whatever with
the - bigoted tory who shouts out
against the closure Of debate when it
is applied by his opponents and
shrieks vehemently in applause when
1t is used by his own friends. De-
bates in the House of Commons on
closure motions are always very anus
ing to me, because you can foretell
what each party is going to say. Ev-
erybody always says the same thing.
IL liberal minister proposes the clos
ure, then 1t is strangling debate, and
loud and angry shouts Of Gag! gag!"
SolIlC llpIl LIE IOIS DCut.IlcS. IL Il lOIy
minister propose the closure, then the
liberal speakers protest, though l am
bound to admit, with less conviction
and less noise or JUNCTION. And in
spite OF these protests from the sides,
not only does closure go on from year
to year, but it is steadily growing
md IL n,-tt
remember the days when there was
no closure in the House of Commons
at all, and when there was no means
of stopping anybody who wanted to
speak anything and for any length Of
time, except by shouting him down or
hy Il coup d'etat.
House Of Commons Different.
That state of things could not go on,
but it's disappearance has created q
House OF Commons entirely different
from that which l entered in 1880.
Indeed, the habits OF the House are so
changed that you could not sometimes
Imagine that it was the same place.
Then the House met at p. m. and It
usually sat until 2. 3 or 4 a. m. Dur.
ing my first years in the House Of
Commons, / rarely went to bed till
a. m. ] never got up till noon, Sleep
ing like top for eight hours. I had
plenty of English friends who insisted
on getting called at their usual hour
s o'clock in the morning. They are
nearly all dead.
But though the work was hard.
there were some alleviations, and one
OF these was the dinner hour. From
s o'clock every evening till 1o:30, three
fourths or tho members of the House
were absent. It was considered moth
ing short Of folly to dine in the House.
and Gladstone, who belonged to the
old parliamentary school, adhered so
much to this ancient prejudice that
during more than sixty years of par
iamentary life, he dined only three
times in the House, and when l saw
him taking his first dinner there, he
was then" upwards Of 80 and had been
quite sixty years a member.
This dinner hour played momen-
tous part In all parliamentary conflicts.
If speaker were driven into the din
ner hour, 1t meant in ninety cases out
of a hundred he had no audience. It
became a favorite device, when feel
ing ran high, to drive one of the great
debaters into the dinner hour and
thereby deprive him Of his audience.
Disraeli achieved his first big bid for
fortune by dexterous avoidance Of
being driven into the dinner hour.
Peel had made his first speech in favor
of repeating the corn law and intro
ducing free trade. and he spoke SO
long that if a short interval had been
filled up by another speaker, the din
ncr hour would have come and TIE
other speaker would not be heard by
anybody; and Peel thus would have
drawn first blood. But Disraeli saved
the situation for himself, and for pro-
tectionists. by jumping up Immediately
after Peel and, making a brilliant at
tack, rallied and reformed the protec-
ZIONIST party.
In my early days in tho House. the