done, he returns to his place in the chamber. He is not going to take part in the debate, to which, however, he listens with amused interest, voting in the lesser divisions from time to time, till the dinner hour, when he joins a small party which one of his colleagues is giving in a room off the terrace. Midway in dinner the electric bell summons him to a 'count,' for which he must rush to the chamber (if his party be in office), lest it should prove a count-out.' After this interruption he resumes his dinner, and the brief entertainment over, he returns to his place on the green benches by half-past nine, and listens to the debate. Between that hour and midnight he will for a while resort to the upper corridor adjoining the chamber, and write letters to his political friends. But he can hear all that is passing in the house, so he keeps one ear open in that direction, while his eye is fixed on his paper. At a quarter to twelve he will hear 'Division! Division!' called, and he runs down to the 'Aye' or the 'No' lobby as the case may be. After midnight the bills of private members are called, one or other of which he will oppose or support, or he may have one of his own to forward. By half-past twelve he is released for the night, thinking that the house is not an unpleasant place after all!

"On a hard day the member enters the house at eleven in the forenoon, and mounts the great staircase to the room where his com

mittee sits on a private bill for the promotion of some material enterprise. If he happens to be chairman, he will not be able to keep his eyes and his ears off the case till four in the afternoon-without any interval for refreshment-listening to the pleadings of counsel, the points of order raised by the learned gentlemen, the evidence of promoters and opponents, the opinion of experts and so forth. Then, having actually done a day's work, he proceeds to his place in the chamber, near the end of question-time, to make some interpellation which stands in his name, and observe the answers given by the leader of the house to the tormentors on the opposition side. He then watches the progress of some full-dress debate, rising time after time in his place, and chagrined at finding some one else always called before him. At last, as the hands of the clock point to eight, he catches the Speaker's eye and is called, and then there is an adjournment for half-an-hour.

He

cannot, therefore, think of dining, so he takes some light refreshment speedily at the luncheon-bar. He must of course be in his place a few minutes before the time, lest the opportunity so long sought should be lost. At half-past eight, or thereabouts, he makes his speech, and after nine he has some peace of mind till he finds his speech punished by his opponents. Once or twice he will jump up to explain, with the courteous permission of the house, what he regards as a misrepre

sentation of what he has said. All this keeps him on the alert till the division takes place shortly before midnight. After that hour he finds that some educational gentlemen, having a privileged motion to which the midnight rule does not apply, begin a discussion which lasts till say half-past one, when a division takes place, whereon the house adjourns. He then goes home tired in the small hours of the morning, saying to himself

'Who would fordels bear

To grunt and sweat under this weary life?'"

66

This description would, with a few trifling modifications, apply to the house of commons of the present day. The house now meets at a quarter before three, and questions begin about three. Before 1902 business used to be suspended informally for about half-an-hour at dinner-time, whilst the Speaker took what was called his chop." Now business is continuous, the Speaker being relieved by his deputy during the dinner-hour, but attendance is very scanty at that time. Opposed or contentious business now stops ordinarily at eleven instead of at midnight, and what Sir Richard Temple calls the midnight rule is now called the eleven o'clock rule. But, subject to these corrections, Sir Richard Temple's description might be safely utilized by the journalist of 1911.

CHAPTER VIII

RECORDS, THE PRESS, AND THE PUBLIC

THE house of commons possesses no early records of historical value except the old manuscript journals of the house. Three of these volumes, that with the page of protestation torn out by James I in 1621, that with the unfinished entry as to the attempted arrest of the five members in 1642, and that with the erased entry as to the dispersion of the long parliament by Cromwell in 1650, are on show in the members' library. The other volumes are in the Speaker's part of the library. But such original documents as early writs of summons, parliament and statute rolls, and old bills, and Acts, are mostly to be found either in the record office, or in the Victoria tower, which is attached to the house of lords. They relate, not to the house of commons, but to parliament as a whole.

The chief official records of the proceedings of parliament are, for the period down to the end of Henry VII's reign, the rolls of parliament, and, for the later period, the journals of the two houses.

The contents of the rolls of parliament are

✓

to be found in six folio volumes which were printed in pursuance of orders given by the house of lords in 1767, and to which an index volume was added in 1832. The earliest entries in these volumes relate to the parliament of 1278, the latest to the parliament of 1503; but at the beginning of the first volume there are some supplemental entries, relating to the period from 1513 to 1553, and intended to supply deficiencies in the lords journals for that period.

The nature of the proceedings in the earliest parliaments has been described in Chapter I, and it will have been seen that the business related mainly to petitions for the redress of grievances, by legislation or otherwise. The bulk of the entries in the rolls of parliament consists of these petitions, with short notes of the replies. There are also a few records of the pleas held in the high court of parliament, acting in its judicial capacity. And there are descriptions of the formal proceedings at the opening of parliament. During the earlier period some of the more important of the parliamentary enactments were occasionally entered on the rolls, but it was not until the reign of Richard III that Acts of Parliament were regularly so enrolled. At a later date the petitions gradually dropped out, and only Acts were entered.

The journals of the house of lords begin in 1509, but are not complete for the whole of Henry VIII's reign. At that time the house