3. At that hour, on the afternoon sittings, the important business of putting questions to ministers begins.1 The character and political effect of these questions will be examined in Chapter XVIII, but from the point of view of parliamentary time it may be noted that the practice has grown so much during the last thirty years as to require some limitation. In 1901 the questions asked numbered 7180, and consumed 119 hours, or the equivalent of fifteen parliamentary days of eight hours each.2 The new rules of 1902 sought to check the tendency in two ways; by giving the option of requiring an oral or a written answer, the question in the former case being marked in the notice paper with an asterisk; and by fixing a strict limit to the time consumed. Forty minutes are allowed for putting questions, the answers to those not reached by a quarter before four, like the answers to questions not starred, being printed with the votes of the day.3

4. If there is a vacant moment before three o'clock, or between the time questions come to an end and a quarter before four o'clock, it may be used by motions for unopposed returns, for leave of absence, or for similar unopposed matters that would otherwise have to be taken up after the interruption of business.1

5. Immediately after questions, a member rising in his place may make the portentous motion "for the adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance." This is usually, but not necessarily, made in consequence of a highly unsatisfactory answer that has just been given to a question. It may seem strange to move to adjourn before serious business has begun, but as such a motion has not been carried for nearly a score of years that feature is unimportant, and its

1S.O. 9. Ilbert, §§ 55-60. It is not usual to ask on Friday questions requiring an oral answer. Ilbert, § 56 note. 2 Hans. 4 Ser. CI., 1353. Unless the minister was not present to answer, or the question did not appear on the notice paper, and is of an urgent character. S.O. 9 (3). 'In practice a motion for a new writ of election is usually made before questions, and the introduction of a new member follows them. Ilbert, § 47 note. 'S.O. 10.

Order at Evening Sittings.

real significance in giving a chance to discuss at short notice some action of the government will be explained in Chapter XVIII. Formerly the debate upon the motion took place immediately; but now the member merely obtains - by the support of forty members, or by vote of the House leave to make his motion, while the debate itself is postponed to a quarter past eight o'clock.

6. Then come what are called "matters taken at the commencement of public business." These are the presentation of bills without an order of the House or under the tenminute rule, and motions by a minister relating to the conduct of business to be decided without amendment or debate.

7. Finally comes the regular business of the sitting, in the form of notices of motions or orders of the day. The distinction between these two classes of business is not easy to explain with precision; but for our purpose it is unimportant, except so far as one class has precedence over the other. Now the government has authority to arrange the order of its own business as it pleases; and in relation to private members, orders of the day practically mean bills, and notices of motion mean resolutions and other matters that are not bills. The application of the distinction comes, therefore, to this, that of the sittings set apart for private members, Friday is reserved for their bills, and Tuesdays and Wednesdays after a quarter past eight o'clock for their other motions.3

At a quarter past eight o'clock the first business is a motion for adjournment on an urgent matter of public business, in the occasional instances where leave has been obtained at the afternoon sitting to make it. Next follows any postponed private business that may have been assigned

1

1 Ilbert, § 41 note. Technically an order of the day is a matter which is set down for a particular day by an order of the House; a notice of motion is a motion set down for the day by notice given by a member without any order of the House; but under the present rules an order of the House is made in many cases without any actual vote, or even the opportunity for a vote, the proceedings being in fact much the same as in the case of a notice of motion. The distinction remains, however, as a means of classifying different kinds of business. 3 S.O. 4.

'S.O. 5.

to that evening; and then come the notices of motions and orders of the day.

By the new arrangement with its definite time for certain business, the work of the House is better distributed. There is no longer the same danger that the discussion of a private bill or of a motion to adjourn, or an interminable series of questions, will unexpectedly cut a great piece out of the hours when the House is most crowded, and the leading men are waiting to debate a great public measure. At the afternoon sitting the regular business of the day is reached at a quarter before four, or very little later, and it proceeds without interruption until a quarter before eight. After that hour unless there is an opposed private bill, which does not often take long, or by chance a motion to adjournthe regular business, which may not be the same as at the afternoon sitting, begins again, and goes on until eleven. With the habits of slack attendance when nothing is expected, and the necessity for a presence in force when a division that touches the Treasury Bench may be taken, it is a matter of no small import to be able to forecast the business of a sitting.

The severe pressure for time has thus brought about a minute allotment of the hours at each sitting for definite kinds of business, and the same cause has produced a similar, although less exact, distribution in the work of the session as a whole.

the Session.

The regular session of Parliament opens about the begin- Order of ning of February, and the first business is the address in Business for reply to the King's speech. Formerly it was an elaborate affair, which referred to the clauses of the speech in succession, but since 1890 it has taken the form of a single resolution expressing simply the thanks of the Commons for his Majesty's most gracious speech. Amendments are moved by the various sections of the Opposition in the shape of additions thereto, pointing out how the government has done things it ought not to have done, and left undone things it ought to have done; and even members of the

majority, who are disgruntled because their pet hobbies have been left unnoticed, follow the same course. The debates on the address take practically the whole time of the House for two or three weeks. As soon as they are over, the Committee of Supply is set up, and sits one or two days each week, the rest of the sittings being taken up with government measures, and with business introduced by private members.

Hope springs eternal in the legislative breast, and every assembly undertakes more work than it can accomplish thoroughly. In some legislatures this results in a headlong rushing through of measures almost without discussion at the end of the session. But while, under closure by compartments and the supply rule, this may be true in England of certain clauses of bills and of large parts of the appropriations, it is not true of bills as a whole. Parliament is, primarily, a forum for debate, rather than a machine for legislation, and bills that cannot be discussed at some length are dropped. After the Whitsuntide recess every year, the leader of the House announces that owing to lack of time the government has found it necessary to abandon such and such measures, a proceeding familiarly known as the slaughter of the innocents. But it is not their own bills alone that the ministers are obliged to slay. In order to get through their own remaining work they have long been in the habit of taking by special order, after the Easter recess, a part of the sittings reserved for private members, and of seizing all the rest soon after Whitsuntide. The practice was regulated and made systematic by the new rules of 1902; but this brings us to the relation of the cabinet and of private members to the work of the House, which forms the subject of the following chapter.

1 As Redlich remarks (Recht und Technik, 315-16), the speech having a general political character, debate and amendment are not limited by any rule of relevancy, but stray over every kind of political grievance or aspiration and the whole foreign and domestic policy of the government. He points out that until 1880 the debate rarely took more than a couple of days, but since that time the number of sittings devoted to it has run from six to sixteen.

CHAPTER XVII

THE CABINET'S CONTROL OF THE COMMONS

For the purpose of collective action every body of men is in the plight of M. Noirtier de Villefort in "Monte Cristo," who was completely paralysed except for one eye. Like him it has only a single faculty, that of saying Yes or No. Individually the members may express the most involved opinions, the most complex and divergent sentiments, but when it comes to voting, the body can vote only Yes or No. Some one makes a motion, some one else moves an amendment, perhaps other amendments are superimposed, but on each amendment in turn, and finally on the main question, the body simply votes for or against. Where a body acts by plurality it can, of course, choose which of several propositions it will adopt, which of several persons, for example, it will elect.1 But this depends upon the same general principle, that the body can act collectively only on propositions laid before it by an individual, or a group of men acting together as an individual. Ordinarily it can only answer Yes or No to questions laid before it one at a time

in that way.

Obviously, therefore, it is of vital importance to know Framing the who has power to ask the question; and, in fact, one of the Question. great arts in managing bodies of men consists in so framing questions as to get the best possible chance of a favourable

1 Curiously enough, such a procedure is unknown in the House of Commons, and the term itself is unfamiliar. It means in the case of an election, for example, that a candidate to be successful need only have more votes than any one else, whereas election by majority means that he must have more than half of the votes cast. The proposal for a second ballot in elections to Parliament involves requiring a majority instead of a plurality on the first ballot.