1902, Joseph Chamberlain, then Colonial Secretary, speaking
on the concluding stages of the South African War, quoted
a saying of Vilonel, the Boer General, that the enemies of
** ORDER, ORDER ! »' 135
South Africa were those who were continuing a hopeless
struggle. " He is a traitor," interjected John Dillon, the
Irish Nationalist, and Chamberlain retorted ; " The hon.
gentleman is a good judge of traitors," Dillon appealed to
the Chair whether the expression of the Colonial Secretary
was not unparliamentary. " I deprecate interruptions and
retorts," replied Mr. Speaker Gully, " and if the hon. gentle-
man had not himself interrupted the right hon. gentleman,
he would not have been subjected to a retort." " Then I
desire to say that the right hon. gentleman is a damned
liar ! " exclaimed Dillon. He was thereupon " named " by
the Speaker, and, on the motion of Arthur Balfour, was
suspended from the service of the House. On May 7th
J. J. Mooney, a Member of the Irish Party, moved that the
Speaker ought to have ruled that the words applied by the
Colonial Secretary to Dillon were unparliamentary, and
accordingly have directed Chamberlain to withdraw them.
On a division the action of the Chair was supported by
398 votes to 63, or a majority of 335.
If the duties of the Speakership are arduous, its dignity
is high and its emoluments handsome. In former times the
Speaker was paid a salary of £5 a day, and a fee of £5 on
every Private Bill. This fluctuating income was replaced
by a fixed salary of £6,000 a year on the election of Henry
Addington to the Chair in 1789. It was also decided at
the same time that a sum of £1,000 equipment money was
to be given to the Speaker on his first appointment. In
the reign of William IV the salary was reduced to £5,000
to be paid, free of all taxes, out of the Consolidated Fund
direct, without having to be voted every year by the House
of Commons. At the same time an official secretary, with
a salary of £500, was attached to the office. The Speaker
also has a residence, furnished by the State and free of rent,
rates and taxes, with coal and light supplied. The Speaker's
house is in that conspicuous wing of the Palace of West-
minster, with its carved stonework and gothic windows,
extending from the Clock Tower to the river. It was first
136 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT
occupied by John Evelyn Denison in 1857. Here the Speaker
gives several official entertainments during session. There
are dinners to the Ministers, to the leader Members of the
Opposition, and to private Members. According to long-
established custom, a Member who accepts an invitation
to dine with Mr. Speaker is required to appear either in
uniform or Court dress, ordinary evening dress being debarred.
As a result, many eminent parliamentarians, such as William
Cobbett, Joseph Hume, Richard Cobden, John Bright,
Joseph Cowen, all sturdy democrats and Radicals, who could
not bring themselves to wear Court dress, never had the
pleasure of dining as guests of Mr. Speaker. The rule
is still enforced. The only departure from it was made
by Mr. Speaker Peel during the short Liberal Parliament
of 1895, when he had a separate dinner party of the Labour
Members of the House, and told them they might come
in any dress they pleased. But that precedent, at least,
has not once been followed at Westminster, though subse-
quent Speakers have in such cases given luncheons instead
of dinners. The Speaker is attired at these dinners in a
black velvet Court suit, knee-breeches with silk stockings,
a steel-handled sword by his side, and lace ruffles round
his neck and wrists. The table and huge sideboards in
the oak-panelled rooms are spread with magnificent old
plate, and the walls are hung with portraits of many
famous " First Commoners."
The Speaker is the First Commoner of the Realm,
according to an Act of Parliament passed in 1688 (1 William
and Mary, c. 21) after the Revolution. It provided that the
Speaker's place in the order of precedence is next after the
peers of the Realm. In 1919 the Speaker was raised a great
many steps in the scale. By an Order in Council issued by
King George V it was ordained that he " shall have, hold
and enjoy place, pre-eminence and precedence, immediately
after the Lord President of the Council," which makes him
the seventh subject of the Realm. The order is : Archbishop
of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of York, Prime
Minister, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lord President of the
Council, the Speaker.
The Speakership is one of the highest prizes of political
*' ORDER, ORDER ! '' 137
ambition. In dignity and importance it is next, perhaps, to
the office of Prime Minister. Four Speakers have resigned
in order to become Prime Ministers. One of them, Henry
Addington, after being Speaker for twelve years, was sum-
moned by George III, in 1801, to form an Administration in
succession to Pitt's, which failed to complete its Irish policy
at the Union, owing to the King's rooted objection to
Catholic emancipation. The only position for which the
Speakership would be relinquished is certainly that of Prime
Minister. Sir John Freeman-Mitford, who followed Adding- j,
ton in the Chair, resigned after a year's service in order
to become Lord Chancellor of Ireland ; but he did so only
at the earnest solicitation of the King and the solatium of
a salary of £10,000 per year and a peerage as Lord Redesdale.
The Lord Chancellorship of Ireland is a high and honourable
position, but it is unlikelj'^ that anyone would now give up
the Speakership of the House of Commons for it. Charles
Abbot resigned the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland — a post
of greater political importance than that of the Lord
Chancellorship — in order to succeed Freeman-Mitford as
Speaker in 1802. Abbot refused the offer of a Secretaryship
of State from Perceval, the Prime Minister, in 1809 during
his occupancy of the Chair ; and Manners-Sutton could *' '
have been Home Secretary in the Administration formed
in 1827 by Canning, but he did not think it good enough.
On the other hand. Ministers have been willing to give
up their portfolios for the Speaker's Chair. Spring Rice,
Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Melbourne Administration,
had his heart set on that coveted office. He was in the
running for the Speakership in 1835, when James Abercromby
was elected. In 1838 Abercromby intimated to Lord
Melbourne his intention to resign — throwing a curious side-
light on the relations at the time between Mr. Speaker and
the Treasury Bench — because from the attitude of Lord
John Russell, the Leader of the House, he felt he no longer
possessed that degree of Ministerial confidence which, in
his opinion, was essential to the due conduct of public business
and the maintenance of the authority of the Chair. The
Prime Minister induced Abercromby to postpone his resigna-
tion, and at the same time satisfied the renewed pretensions
138 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT
of his Chancellor of the Exchequer with the promise that
he should be the Government candidate for the Chair
whenever it became vacant. But when Abercromby retired
in the following year it was found that Spring Rice was not
acceptable to the Radicals, and Shaw-Lefevre was selected
in order to maintain the unity of the Party and preserve
the Liberal succession to the Chair. Again, on the resignation
of Arthur Wellesley Peel in 1895, Sir Henry Campbell-
Bannerman was willing to lay down his portfolio as Secretary
of State for War in the then Liberal Government for the
object of his ambition — the Speakership ; and it is said
that he reluctantly yielded to the urgent representations of
his colleagues that the Party could ill spare his services.
Just ten years later he became Prime Minister.
Still, the office has, as a rule, fallen to unofficial Members,
or to Members who have held subordinate Ministerial
appointments. Denison, in the opening passages of his
Diary, states that on April 8, 1857, he was seated in his
library at Ossington, when the letters were brought in, and
among them was the following :
94 Piccadilly,
April 7, 1867.
My dear Denison,
We wish to be allowed to propose you for the Speakership of
the House of Commons. Will you agree ?
Yours sincerely,
Palmekston.
Denison says the proposal took him by surprise.
" Though," he writes, " I had attended of late years to
several branches of the private business, and had taken
more part in the public business of the House of Com-
mons, I had never made the duties of the Chair my
special study." William Court Gully had been ten years
in Parliament before his elevation to the Speaker's Chair,
but he was one of that large, modest band of " silent
Members " who, confining themselves to voting in the
division lobbies, arc unknown in debate, and, conse-
quently, are never mentioned in the papers. Moreover,
being a busy lawyer, Gully took little or no part in the routine
** ORDER, ORDER ! »' 139
work of the House, such as service on Committees upstairs,
which is supposed to afford a good training for the Speaker-
ship. Indeed, the Chair may be said to be the one great
prize that is open to the occupants of the back benches as
well as the front benches who possess the necessary physical
and mental qualities. Personal appearance is undoubtedly
an essential qualification for the office. This includes the
possession of clear vision. A Speaker with spectacles would
look incongruous in an assembly where the competition to
catch his eye is so keen.
The term of office of Mr. Speaker is usually short. Arthur
Onslow, who was elected in 1726, continued in possession
of the Chair for thirty-five years, through five successive
Parliaments, apparently without ruffling a hair of his wig.
So long an occupancy is now wellnigh impossible. For
one thing, the duties of Mr. Speaker are physically more
responsible and irksome. The sessions are longer, the sittings
of the House more protracted, and the fatigue of the pro-
longed and often tedious hours in the Chair must be most
severe mentally and physically. Besides, there has grown
up of late a preference for a certain maturity of age in the .
Speaker. Arthur Onslow was only thirty-six when he was
called to the office, Henry Addington, who occupied the
Speaker's Chair at the opening of the nineteenth century,
was thirty-two only on his appointment. William Court
Gully, who was in possession of the Chair at the opening
of the twentieth century, had passed his sixtieth year on
his election. The occupancy of the office must be com-
paratively brief if men are appointed to it only when their
heads are grey or bald. Of recent Speakers, Henry Bouverie
Brand sat for twelve years, Arthur Wellesley Peel eleven
years, William Court Gully ten years, James William
Lowther sixteen years.
The Speaker receives a pension of £4,000 a year. John
Evelyn Denison refused this retiring allowance. " Though
without any pretensions to wealth," he wrote to Gladstone,
then Prime Minister, " I have a private fortune which will
140 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT
suffice, and for the few years of life that remain to me I
should be happier in feeling that I am not a burden to my
fellow-countrymen." He retired in February 1872, and
died, without heir, in March 1873. A peerage is also conferred
on the Speaker when he resigns. This was not the custom
in the eighteenth century. When Arthur Onslow retired in
1761, after his long service of thirty-five years, George III,
in reply to the address of the Commons to confer on Onslow
" some signal mark of honour," gave him a pension of
£3,000 a year for the lives of himself and his son, but no
peerage. The custom began in the nineteenth century with
Charles Abbot, who, on retiring in 1817, was made Baron
Colchester. Since then every Speaker has been " called to
the House of Lords " — Manners-Sutton as Lord Canterbury ;
Abercromby as Lord Dunfermline ; Shaw-Lefevre as Lord
Eversley ; Denison as Lord Ossington ; Brand as Lord
Hampton ; Peel as Lord Peel ; Gully as Lord Selby.
But he is Speaker no longer ; another presides in his
place ; and what a shadowy personage he seems, even as a
Lord, compared with the resounding fame and distinction
that were his in the glorious years when he filled with pomp
and dignity the Chair of the House of Commons !
CHAPTER XII
HOW A GOVERNMENT IS MADE
Macaulay, writing to his sister Hannah on December 19,
1845, says : " It is an odd thing to see a Ministry making.
I never witnessed the process before. Lord John Russell
has been all day in his inner library. His antechamber has
been filled with comers and goers, some talking in knots,
some writing notes at tables. Every five minutes somebody is
called into the inner room. As the people who have been
closeted come out, the cry of the whole body of expectants
is : ' What are you ? ' I was summoned almost as soon
as I arrived, and found Lord Auckland and Lord Clarendon
sitting with Lord John. After some talk about other
matters, Lord John told me that he had been trj^ing to
ascertain my wishes, and that he found I w^anted leisure
and quiet more than salary and business. Labouchere
had told him this. He therefore offered me the Pay Office,
one of the three places which, as I have told you, I should
prefer. I at once accepted it."
But this Ministry was fated not to be formed. Both
Lord Grey and Lord Palmerston, two leading members of
the Whig Party, wanted the Foreign Office, and neither
would recognize a superior claim in the other. Macaulay,
from whose very lips the cup of office was thus rudely dashed,
bore the disappointment philosophically. On the day after
he had sent the letter, from which I have quoted, he wrote
another to his sister, saying : " All is over. Late at night,
just as I was undressing, a knock was given at the door of
my chambers. A messenger had come from Lord John
with a short note. The quarrel between Lord Grey and
142 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT
Lord Palmerston had made it impossible to form a Ministry.
I went to bed and slept sound."
When we come to consider the interesting business of
making a Government, the first question that arises is —
What is the chief test of a man's capacity for office ? Under
our Constitution, with its free and unfettered Parliament, of
which the Ministers must be Members, a deliberative assembly
where everything is made the subject of talk, talk, talk,
and provided with a Reporters' Gallery for the dissemina-
tion of its debates through the Press, it is inevitable that
a man's fitness for a post in the Administration should be
decided mainly by his gift of speech. It must often prove
a false standard of judgment in regard to genuine ability
and character. Glibness of tongue, or even oratory, is
certainly not an essential qualification for the administra-
tive duties of government. Still, the fact remains that
the ready talker with but little practical experience of
affairs has a better chance of office than the man of trained
business capacity who is tongue-tied. Perhaps debaters
are really more useful to a Government than business men
in an arena of conflict like the House of Commons. There
are some excellent anecdotes pointing to such a conclusion.
Disraeli, forming an Administration, offered the Board of
Trade to a man who wanted instead the Local Government
Board, as he was better acquainted with the municipal
affairs of the country than its commerce. " It doesn't
matter," said Disraeli ; " I suppose you know as much
about trade as Blank, the First Lord of the Admiralty,
knows about ships." John Bright once said he asked
Richard Lalor Sheil, an eloquent speaker, but unconnected
with commerce, how it happened that he was appointed
to the Board of Trade. "I think," repHed Sheil, "the
only reason is I was found to know less of trade than
any other man in •the House of Commons." Bright
himself was made President of the Board of Trade in
18G9. It used to be said in the Department that, so
unfitted was he for administration, he did not know even
how to tie up official papers with red tape.
When, at an earlier period of political history, Sidney
Herbert, Lord Herbert of lica, resigned the War Office,
HOW A GOVERNMENT IS MADE 143
Palmerston fixed upon Sir George Cornewall Lewis to
succeed him, and argued the point with Lady Theresa Lewis,
saying that the duties would not be mihtary, but civil.
" He would have to look after the accounts," said the Prime
Minister. " He never can make up his own," replied the
wife. " He will look after the commissariat," said the
Prime Minister. " He cannot order his own dinner," replied
the wife. " He will control the clothing department,"
said the Prime Minister. " If my daughters did not give
the orders to his tailor, he would be without a coat," replied
the wife. Cornewall Lewis, however, accepted the offer,
and his Under-Secretary soon afterwards discovered him
in Pall Mall reading a work on the military tactics of the
Lycaonians. Sir Arthur Helps, the essayist, who was Clerk
of the Privy Council, used to tell the story that once when
there was a difficulty in finding a Colonial Secretary, Lord
Palmerston said : " Well, I'll take the colonies myself,"
and presently remarked to Helps ; "' Just come upstairs with
me for half an hour and show me where these places are
on the map." Charles James Fox is said to have confessed
his ignorance of what Consols meant. He gathered from
the newspapers that they were " things which rose and
fell " ; and he was always delighted when they fell, because
he noticed, that for some unaccountable reason, it very
much annoyed Pitt, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. That,
no doubt, was Fox's fun. But we are told of Lord Randolph
Churchill, on the authority of his son and biographer,
Winston Churchill, that when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Treasury returns worked out in decimal figures were laid
before him, he inquired what " these damned dots " signified.
I myself heard Sir Edward Carson, a distinguished lawyer,
speaking as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1917, during
the Great War, declare that he entered the Admiralty in
a state of extreme ignorance. " Someone asked me the
day I went there how I felt," he went on to say, " and
I said, ' My only qualification is that I am absolutely
at sea."
After all, perhaps, it is a matter of no very great concern.
Are there not capable permanent officials in the various
Departments of the State, whQg§ duty it is to see that
144 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT
administration is efficient and economical ? The simple
task of the Minister, as he sits behind the scenes in a room
at Whitehall, is as a rule to see that things are done in
harmony with the political policy of his Party. What
seems to be absolutely necessary to the prosperity of an
Administration is that in the Houses of Parliament — open
as they are to the gaze and hearing of the country — it should
have at its service a number of able debaters. The measures
of the Government have to be submitted to the judgment
of a deliberative Assembly, and a newspaper-reading public ;
and accordingly a successful Minister is he whose ready
gift of clear and forcible exposition of Party principles and
policies enables him to expound and defend these measures.
Gladstone, when forming his first Government in 1868,
invited John Bright to join it, giving him his choice of any
office, except the War Office or the Admiralty, which, as
he was a Quaker and a man of peace, would hardly suit
him. Bright selected the position of President of the
Board of Trade. As I have said, he never gave evidence
of any special business capacity, but he was the greatest
orator of his day ; he had uttered in the House of Commons
and on the public platform the most beautiful and also the
most scornful passages that ever fell from the lips of man ;
he possessed debating gifts which enabled him to place a
political question in a light that made it shine beyond its
deserts, and that being so he was deemed fit for a place of
importance and emolument in the new Government. What
is the good of a Minister rising to the Table of the House
of Commons with an unanswerable case if he be unable to
state it — if he be choked with arguments for which he
can find no utterance ?
It follows, therefore, that when a General Election has
pronounced the sentence of condemnation on the existing
Government, and men of another Party are called to the
service of the country, selection for office is restricted mainly
to those who have won distinction as debaters in Oppo-
sition. On the benches to the left of Mr. Speaker are always
HOW A GOVERNMENT IS MADE 145
numbers of young men ambitious of office, eagerly pushing
themselves to the front on that conspicuous field of political
activity, under the eyes of the Reporters' Gallery, most
constant in their attendance, ever watching for an oppor-
tunity to strike a blow at once for their Party and their
own reputation, in the hope that in the day of victory they
shall have the proper reward of their services. Some of
them are capable of talking well upon any subject. These
aspire to be Secretaries of State. Others, not so remarkable
for general ability or so glib of tongue, confine themselves
to particular departments of administration. It is the
endeavour of each to obtain a mastery of the business details
of some special office — Foreign, Home, Treasury, Colonial,
Army, Navy, Post Office, Pensions, Trade, Transport, or
Agriculture — looking for an Under-Secretaryship, in the
expectation of ultimately attaining, after some 5''ears of
diligent and capable service, to Cabinet rank. Yet the
qualities needed for success in office are often entirely
different from those that bring fame and renown in Opposi-
tion. Gladstone said of Robert Lowe, whom he appointed
Chancellor of the Exchequer in his first Administration
on the strength of the reputation which that slashing debater
had made in Opposition, that he was " splendid in attack,
but most weak in defence " ; " that he was capable of tearing
anything to pieces, but of constructing nothing." But it is
only after the brilliant swashbuckler of Opposition has
been tried in office that his incapacity and weakness in the
true gifts of statesmanship are discovered.
Besides the pushful young men in the ranks on the
back benches, with their abounding sense of fitness for office,
there are the veterans of the Front Opposition Bench,
survivors of the Ministry of the Party when it was last in
power. Some of these, it often happens, are men who have
grown old and worn in the service, as their wrinkled faces,
bald heads, and stooped forms testify ; but their interest
in public affairs has not in the least abated, and they still
crave to be placed at the head of Departments. It might
be supposed that the weighty responsibility of office is a
burden to be avoided rather than coveted by old parliamen-
tarians ; the world has such pleasant delights, apart from
VOL. I. 10
146 THE PAGEANT OF PARLIAMENT
politics, with which they might occupy the leisure of the
close of their day. But that is an idle supposition. It is
true that in the Senate of Rome, to which election was for
life, there was a special law providing that no senator over
sixty should be summoned to its meetings. Did any Roman
ever willingly acquiesce in it except the physically incapable ?
In modern England human nature is exactly what it was
in ancient Rome. The grievance of the Front Bench man
approaching seventy would be, not that he should be dragged
from seclusion and quiet to sit for hours of a morning in
a room at Whitehall, reading documents, and attend at
the House of Commons till late at night, but that he should
be set aside in the distribution of offices when his Party
has again triumphed at the polls. And he has tradition
and custom at his back, in support of his desire, as well
as his past services. It is held that a member of either
House of Parliament who has already been in the Cabinet
is entitled to high office again whenever his Party comes
back to power ; and that, should he be passed over, should
he be put on the retired list, he has every reason to feel
affronted.
These are the two classes — the old but the tried, the
able but the untrained young — from which the Prime
Minister draws the members of his Administration. As I
have indicated, he has not an absolutely free choice. He
may not sit down in his study and, surveying the most
prominent members of his Party in both Houses, select
for office those who have proved themselves possessed of