Part 7

The House howled again, but it was a cry of despair. Mr. O'Donnell, they knew, had the whip hand. In those good old days he, or any other member desiring to obstruct ordinary procedure, might, in the middle of questions, start a debate on any subject under the sun. This and other outrages were doubtless recalled by the House of Commons when revising its Rules. It then ordered that no member might, during the progress of questions, interpose with a motion on which to found debate. If, in this current month of March, Mr. O'Donnell, being a member of the House of Commons, had wanted to attack M. Challemel-Lacour, he must needs have waited till the last question on the paper was disposed of, and could then have moved the adjournment only if his description of the question--as one of urgent public importance--was approved by the Speaker, and if, thereafter, forty members rose to support the request for a hearing.

In June, 1880, all that was left for the crowded House to do was to roar with resentment. Mr. O'Donnell was used to this incentive, and had it been withheld would probably have shown signs of failing vigour. As it was, he produced a pocket-handkerchief, took down his eye-glass and carefully polished it, whilst members yelled and tossed about on their seats with impotent fury. Under the existing Rules this scene, if it had ever opened, would have been promptly blotted out. The closure would have been moved, probably a division taken, and the business of the evening would have gone forward. There was no closure in those days, and Mr. Gladstone, after hurried consultation with Sir Erskine May, hastily moved that Mr. O'Donnell be not heard.

A shout of savage exultation rising from every bench, save those on which the Irish members sat, hailed a stroke that promised to deliver the House from the thraldom of Mr. O'Donnell at the very moment when its chains had taken a final twist. In ordinary circumstances this resolution would have played the part of the as yet unconsecrated closure. A division would have followed, the motion carried by an overwhelming majority, and Mr. O'Donnell would have been temporarily shut up.

But those were not ordinary times. The Fourth Party was in the prime of its vigour. Lord Randolph Churchill's quick eye discovered an opening for irritating Mr. Gladstone and damaging the Government by making what should have been a business night one long turmoil. Mr. Parnell, whilst disclaiming any personal sympathy with Mr. O'Donnell, moved the adjournment of the debate, and poor, placid Sir Stafford Northcote, egged on by the young bloods below the gangway, raised various points of order. Finally, at eight o'clock, the House dividing on Mr. Parnell's amendment, Sir Stafford Northcote voted with the Irish members, leading a hundred men of the Party of Law and Order into the same lobby.

Hour after hour the riot continued. At one time blameless Sir William Harcourt, then Home Secretary, appearing at the table, a Conservative member, amid tumultuous shouts, moved that he be not heard. When members grew tired of shouting at each other they divided on fresh motions for the adjournment, and it was not till one o'clock on the following morning that Mr. O'Donnell, grateful for a pleasant evening, was good enough to undertake that before he recurred to the question he would give due notice, so that the Speaker might exercise his discretion in revising its terms. At five minutes past one in the morning, after a wrangle full eight hours long, the Speaker, with a pretty assumption of nothing particular having happened, called on the next question on the paper, which was Number 24.

All this might happen again on any night of this month save for the beneficent action of the New Rules a long-suffering Parliament was finally induced to adopt. On the threshold of a new Parliament it is useful to recall the scene as an assistance in calculating what may be accomplished by the Parliament elected in 1892, as compared with that which began its history in 1880. On the face of it, Parliament to-day has much less time at its disposal for the accomplishment of work than it had a dozen years ago. Then, the duration of a sitting was indefinite. The House might, as it did in February, 1881, meet at four o'clock on a Monday afternoon and sit continuously till Wednesday morning. Now, the Speaker takes the Chair at three o'clock; public business commences at half-past three; and at midnight, save in cases where the Standing Order has been formally suspended, the Speaker leaves the Chair, and the House adjourns, whoever may be on his feet.

The influence of this automatic procedure is beneficially felt throughout the whole of debate. One wholesome influence works in the direction of using up the early hours of the sitting, an arrangement which carries comfort to countless printing offices and editorial sanctums. Some time before the New Rules came into operation, Mr. Gladstone discovered for himself the convenience and desirability of taking part in debate at the earliest possible hour of a sitting. His earlier associations drifted round a directly opposite course. In the good old days the champions of debate did not interpose till close upon midnight, when they had the advantage of audiences sustained and exhilarated by dinner. That was before the era of special wires to the provincial papers, early morning trams, and vastly increased circulation for the London journals. Mr. Gladstone discovered that he was more carefully reported and his observations more deliberately discussed if he spoke between five and seven o'clock in the evening than if, following his earlier habit, he addressed the House between eleven and one in the morning. He has, accordingly, for some years been accustomed, when he has an important speech to deliver, to interpose in debate immediately after questions.

This habit has become general, even compulsory, with members who may, within certain limits, choose their own time for speaking. All the cream of debate is now skimmed before the dinner-hour. At the close of a pitched battle, the two Leaders of Party, as heretofore, wind up the debate. But their opportunity for orating is severely circumscribed. The audience in the House of Commons does not begin to reassemble after dinner till half-past ten. Rising at that hour, the Leader of the Opposition, if he fairly divides the available time with the right honourable gentleman opposite, must not speak more than three-quarters of an hour, and should not exceed forty minutes.

This is a necessity desirable not less in the orator's interest than in that of the audience. Except for the exposition of an intricate measure, twenty minutes is ample time for any man to say what is useful for his fellow-men to hear. All Mr. Disraeli's best speeches were made within half an hour, and if he thought it necessary, from a sense of the importance of his position, to prolong them, his stock of good things was exhausted in twenty minutes, the rest being what Carlyle disrespectfully described as thrice-boiled cole-wort. Mr. Gladstone can go on indefinitely, and in very recent times has been known to hold his audience spell-bound for three hours. But even he has profited by the beneficent tyranny that now rules the limit of debate, and, rising with the knowledge that he has but forty minutes to speak in, has excelled himself. For less exuberant speakers not gifted with his genius, the new discipline is even more marked in its benefits.

* * * * *

It is too soon to endeavour to estimate the general characteristics of the _personnel_ of the new Parliament. It will probably turn out to be very much of the same class as the innumerable army of its predecessors. When Mr. Keir Hardie came down on the opening day in a wagonette, with flags flying and accordions playing, it was cried aloud in some quarters that the end was at hand. This apprehension was strengthened when Mr. Hardie strolled about the House with a tweed travelling cap on his head, the Speaker at the time being in the chair. This, as Dr. Johnson explained, when the lady asked him why he had described the horse's pastern as its knee, was "ignorance, pure ignorance." Mr. Hardie is not a man of the quietest manners, as was testified to by the apparition in Palace Yard of the wagonette and its musical party; but in the much-talked-of incident of the cap he sinned inadvertently. Before the Speaker took the chair he had seen members walking about with their hats on. He had observed that even in his presence they remained seated with their heads covered. The shade of etiquette which approves this fashion whilst it sternly prohibits a member from keeping his hat on when in motion, even to the extent of leaning over to speak to a friend on the bench below him, was too fine to catch the eye of a new member.

Mr. Keir Hardie has done much worse things than this in his public appearances during the recess, and since the Session opened there has not been lacking evidence of resolve to keep himself in the front of the stage where the gallery may see him. But this is no new thing, to be cited in proof of the deterioration of the composition and style of the House of Commons. It has been done repeatedly in various fashions within recent memory, and always with the same result. No man, not even Mr. Biggar--and he may be cited as the most ruthless experimenter--has successfully struggled against the subtle disciplinary influence of the House of Commons.

From the first the member for Cavan set himself in deliberate fashion to outrage Parliamentary traditions and usages. He finished by becoming a punctilious practitioner of Parliamentary forms, a stickler for the minutest observation of order. Whilst Mr. Gladstone and other members of old standing were content to preface their speeches with the monosyllable "Sir," nothing less than "Mr. Speaker, sir," would satisfy Mr. Biggar. No one who has not heard the inflection of tone with which this was uttered, nor seen the oratorical sweep of the hand that launched it on its course, can realize how much of combined deference and authority the phrase is capable of. Mr. Biggar, having in his early Parliamentary days defied the Chair and affronted the sensibilities of the House, alike in the matter of dress and deportment, developed into a portly gentleman of almost smug appearance, a terror to new members. Woe to any who in his ignorance passed between the Chair and the member addressing it; who walked in from a division with his hat on; or who stood an inch or two within the Bar whilst debate was going forward. Mr. Biggar's strident cry of "Order! Order!" reverberated through the House. Others joined in the shout, and the abashed offender hastily withdrew into obscurity.

It is the same with others of less strongly marked character. Vanity or garrulity may force a new member into a position of notoriety. He may, according to his measure of determination, try a fall again and again with the House, and may sometimes, as in the case of Mr. O'Donnell, seem to win. But in the end the House of Commons proves victorious. It is a sort of whetstone on which blades of various temperature operate. In time, they either forego the practice or wear themselves away. In either case the whetstone remains.

This is a rule without exception, and is a reassuring reflection in view of the talk about the degeneracy of the House of Commons, and the decadence of its standard of manner. It would not be difficult to show that the House at present in Session will, from the point of view of manners, favourably compare with any that have gone before--though, to be just, the comparison should be sought with Parliaments elected under similar conditions, with the Liberals in office and the Conservatives in opposition. That is an arrangement always found to be more conducive to lively proceedings than when parties are disposed in the contrary order. The Parliament dissolved last year was decorously dull. Mr. Gladstone in opposition is not prone to show sport, and no encouragement was held out to enterprising groups below the gangway to bait the Government. It was very different in the Parliament of 1880-5, of which fact the Challemel-Lacour episode is an illustration, only a little more piquant in flavour than the average supply.

There are already signs that the new Parliament will not lie under the charge of deplorable dulness brought against its predecessor. But these varying moods are due to waves of political passion, and do not affect the question whether the House of Commons as a body of English gentlemen met for the discharge of public business has or has not deteriorated. I have an engraving of a picture of the House of Commons in pre-Reform days. It was carefully drawn in the Session of 1842. A more respectable body of the gentlemen of England it would be difficult to gather together. With the possible exception of one or two political adventurers like the then member for Shrewsbury, there is probably not a man in the House who is not well born or at least rich. Mr. Keir Hardie would look strange indeed in these serried ranks of portly gentlemen with high coat collars, cravats up to their chin, short-bodied coats showing the waistcoat beneath, and the tightly trousered legs. Yet this House, and its equally prim successors, had its obstruction, its personal wrangles, and its occasional duel. Peel was attacked by Disraeli in a fashion and in language that would not be tolerated in the House of Commons now, even though the target were Mr. Gladstone.

It is not necessary to go back as far as the days of Peel or Parliamentary Reform to sustain the bold assertion that, so far from having degenerated, the manners of the House of Commons have improved. In the Parliament elected in 1874 there sat on the Conservative side a gentleman named Smollet, who early distinguished himself by bringing Parliamentary debate down to the level of conversation in "Roderick Random." In those days Mr. Gladstone was down after the General Election, and Mr. Smollet, to the uproarious delight of gentlemen near him, savagely kicked him.

It was in the second year of this same Parliament, less than twenty years ago, that Mr. Gladstone, issuing from a division lobby, was suddenly pounced upon by some fifty or sixty Conservative members, and howled at for the space of several moments. It is, happily, possible for Mr. Gladstone to forget, or at least to forgive, personal attacks made upon him through his long career. In this very month of the new Session he may be nightly seen working in cordial fashion with ancient adversaries from Ireland, describing as "my honourable friends" gentlemen who, ten years ago and for some time subsequently, heaped on his head the coarsest vituperation permitted by practised manipulation of Parliamentary forms. But this scene in the division lobby on the 12th of April, 1875, is burned into his recollection. I have heard him, within the last few months, refer to it in those tones of profound indignation and with that flashing fire in his eyes only seen when he is deeply moved. He mentioned, what I think was not known, that Lord Hartington happened to be walking with him at the time. But there was no mistake for whom the angry cries were meant. Mr. Gladstone spoke with the profounder indignation because, as he said, he had on this occasion gone out to vote on behalf of a man whose character he detested, because he saw in the action taken against him an attack upon one of the privileges of Parliament.

That scene was an outburst of political animosity; and the movements of political animosity, like the dicta of taste, are not to be disputed. But on the question of good manners, the only one here under consideration, it may be affirmed that the present House of Commons would be safe from lapse into such an exhibition. To this better state of things the operation of the New Rules has conspicuously contributed, and though, as we know, they have not operated to the absolute extinction of Parliamentary scenes, they have appreciably limited opportunity and incentive.

_Portraits of Celebrities at Different Times of their Lives_.

LORD BATTERSEA.

BORN 1843.

Lord Battersea, who was until recently known to the world as Mr. Cyril Flower, M.P., is a son of the late Mr. P. W. Flower, of Streatham, and was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

He was called to the Bar at the age of twenty-seven, and became Liberal Member for Brecknock in 1880, and for the Luton Division of Bedfordshire in 1885 and 1886, in which later year he was one of Mr. Gladstone's "Whips." He married the daughter of the late Sir Anthony Rothschild, and both he and his wife are much interested in the welfare of the lower classes of London. Lord Battersea was unanimously reputed the handsomest man in the House of Commons, and is now, in every sense of the word, an ornament of the House of Lords.

W. Q. ORCHARDSON, R.A.

BORN 1835.

Mr. William Quiller Orchardson was born in Edinburgh, and at the age of fifteen entered the Trustees' Academy of that city, his first pictures being exhibited in the Royal Scottish Academy. At the age of twenty-eight he came to London, and the same year exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time, his contributions being entitled, "An Old English Song" and "Portraits," the latter a life-size composition of three young ladies. In 1865 he painted "The Challenge," which won a prize of £100 given by Mr. Wallace, and one of the very few Medals awarded to English painters at the Paris Universal Exhibition. In 1866 came "The Story of a Life"--an aged nun relating her experiences to a group of novices. Two years later, when he had only been four years in London, he was elected an A.R.A. Among his more recent pictures may be mentioned "Napoleon on Board the _Bellerophon_" (1880), "The Salon of Madame Recamier" (1885), "The Young Duke" (1889), and "St. Helena" (1892). Mr. Orchardson was elected an R.A. in 1877, and a D.C.L. of Oxford in 1890.

LADY HALLÉ.

Lady Hallé, whose maiden name was Wilhelmine Néruda, was born at Brünn, where her father was organist of the cathedral. She was a pupil of Jansa, and made her first appearance at Vienna at the age of six, and in London at the age of nine. After this she returned to the Continent, and in 1864 she married Ludwig Norman, a Swedish musician. Since 1869 she has been in England every winter, playing especially at the concerts of Sir Charles Hallé, whom she married in 1888.

SIR CHARLES HALLÉ.

Sir Charles Hallé is a native of Germany, but at an early age he established himself in Paris, where he acquired a great reputation by his refined and classical rendering of the compositions of the great musicians; but the Revolution of 1843 drove him to England, where he has ever since resided. He soon established himself at Manchester, and as the founder of the annual series of orchestral and choral concerts there and in London, which have become, perhaps, the most important series in Europe, he has rendered the most valuable service to musical art.

DR. HERMANN ADLER,

CHIEF RABBI.

Born 1839.

Dr. Adler, son of Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler, was born in Hanover, and came to London with his father at the age of six. He studied at University College, took his B. A. degree at the University of London at twenty, and that of Ph. D., at Leipzig, at twenty-two. In the following year he was ordained Rabbi by the famous Rapoport, Chief Rabbi of Prague, and became in succession Principal of the Jews' College in London and Chief Minister of the Bayswater Synagogue. In 1890 his father, the Chief Rabbi, died, and Dr. Adler was elected in his place. Dr. Adler is well known not only by his powerful and scholarly writings, but by his work among the poorer Jews of London.

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, BART., K.C.B.

Born 1826.

General Alison, son of Sir Archibald Alison, the first Baronet, who was the well-known author of "The History of Europe," was born at Edinburgh, and entered the Army at the age of twenty. He served in the Crimea, at the siege and fall of Sebastopol, at which date our second portrait represents him. During the Indian Mutiny he lost an arm at the relief of Lucknow. In 1882 he commanded the 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, during the expedition to Egypt, and at the decisive battle of Tel-el-Kebir he led the Highland Brigade which fought so gallantly on that memorable occasion, and after Arabi's surrender he was left in Egypt with the command of the British army of 12,000 men to restore order and protect the Khedive. Sir Archibald was included in the thanks of Parliament for his energy and gallantry, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General; he received his appointment as General in 1889. In 1869 Sir Archibald Alison published an able treatise, "On Army Organization."

MADAME JANE HADING.

Madame Jane Hading, the well-known French actress, was born at Marseilles, in 1863, where her father was popular as a leading actor, with whom she appeared when only three years of age as little _Blanche de Caylus_ in "Le Bossu." At the age of thirteen she began work in earnest, having won "le prix de solfège" at the Marseille Conservatoire, and her talent having come to the ears of Mr. Plunkett, the director of the Palais Royal, he engaged her for the Palais Royal in Paris, where she created the part of _La Chaste Suzanne_, by Paul Ferrier. Giving up comic opera for comedy, Jane Hading went to the Gymnase, where she created the part of _Claire de Beaulieu_ in "Le Maître de Forges." London had the opportunity of seeing her in that and "Prince Zilah," by Jules Claretie, later on, and fully indorsed the Parisian verdict. These conspicuous successes were followed by others almost as notable, and her subsequent tour in America won her golden opinions, and was so successful that it was extended some months. Her latest Parisian success was "Le Prince d'Aurec," which added greatly to her laurels, putting her in the very front rank of great artists.