are made about the matter. At one time the debates had a certain elocutionary elegance, at least; now they represent an unattractive sham-fight, and abuse is being increasingly substituted for rhetoric. The most paltry trickery is employed on both sides, because every man is aware that his speech is really addressed to his followers outside the House, and he must, in the House, rely on quite other devices than eloquence. Yet all this pseudo-gravity is lightened occasionally by sittings in which some measure of the greatest importance, but not introduced by the Government, is treated as flippantly as it would be in a humorous debate during a long sea-voyage.
If a man is instructed by his constituents to represent in the House some special need of theirs, or some public reform which has millions to support it, he finds that “the rules of the House,” or the rules of the oligarchy, will not allow him to introduce it. A very small fraction of the time of the House is granted for the discussion of such proposals; but the debate is farcical, and is often looked forward to in advance as such, because everybody knows what will be the issue, even if a majority of the House really favours the proposal. Measures of grave social importance, like women-suffrage, have been arbitrarily crushed by the oligarchs for thirty years,—as early as 1886 women-suffrage had 343 supporters on the benches,—and this tyranny and injustice of a few ministers have led to the most violent and bitter recrimination.
