because they protested against it when they were in Opposition. Of course they did. The beaten party always does. It is too late to talk

in that way now. The closure, we maintain, whatever form it takes, is now an established system: the necessity for it as one of the regular instruments of parliamentary procedure has been amply demonstrated: both sides are committed to it, and both sides must be allowed to use it at their own discretion. When Ministers protested against it, moreover, it was in very different circumstances from those of the present day. They protested against its being used to override the will of the people. They might have hoped that it would never be necessary to use it to enforce the will of the people. That illusion being dispelled, there remains nothing but the naked truth that obstruction will henceforth be practised for purely party purposes, to embarrass or discredit an obnoxious Administration, without any regard to the public interest whatever, and that consequently it must be put down, as such a cynical prostitution of freedom of debate deserves to be, by summary intervention.

Ministers have not only their own credit and dignity to consider. They are intrusted with the promotion of important measures of relief- one demanded by the greatest of our national industries, and one by the almost unanimous voice of our national religion-and are they to allow such measures as these to be frittered away or entirely defeated, rather than make use of the weapons which Parliament has placed in their hands, because at some former time they have resented a particular employment of them? It is by listening

use

to such counsels as these that many disasters have occurred, which courage and firmness at the outset would easily have prevented. Ministers have now to finish the present session as best they may, and to look forward to the next, and to the conduct of their new Education Bill in the face of the open avowal, which cannot be again ignored, that Opposition with the Radical party means obstruction. The whole of Sir W. Harcourt's speech on the 22d of June, in reply to Mr Balfour, comes to this. He has a right to employ this method of resistance against any measure of which he chooses to disapprove. He proclaims this. The Opposition are determined to "every means at their disposal" to defeat such bills. That is a phrase which occurs over and over again in Sir William's speeches. The Opposition, in short, are in open revolt against the legitimate authority of the Government and the declared wishes of the people. They announce their intention of resisting both "to the last cartridge." For Ministers to stand overmuch upon ceremony with such opponents as these, so as to endanger or postpone measures which are urgently required, is a breach of their duty to the public. Magnanimity in the abstract may be treason in the concrete and can the Government believe for one moment that the disuse of the closure will disarm the hostility of the Radicals; or that when they return to power they will use it one whit more sparingly against the Conservatives because they have been spared themselves? Not they. Who cannot hear Sir William Harcourt's horse - laugh, if such a suggestion were made to him? Mr Balfour must harden his

heart, as they say in the huntingfield, and face without flinching the obstacles which lie before him, and he will easily redeem the mistake into which he has been betrayed by over-confidence in the waning traditions of the House of Commons. From the determined attitude which he exhibited on the 21st of May, when he refused to give way to suggestions for adjournment, and carried the Rating Bill triumphantly through Committee after a sitting of twentythree hours, we have good grounds to hope that he will not be found wanting hereafter, when perhaps the Opposition and their friends in Printing House Square may be found lamenting his firmness in stead of mocking at his weakness. Those laugh longest who laugh last.

Protests against the closure, the discussion of coercive regulations in general, the questions as to the wisdom of interfering with debate in any way, were all very well when the great change was in its infancy, and when the necessity for some remedial measure to check the licence of Opposition was first under consideration. But the system now in force is, we repeat, firmly established. It has been accepted by both parties. The right of the Government to terminate discussion when it is either superfluous or obstructive, or both, has been fully acknowledged, and how the system is to be applied, how the right is to be exercised, are clearly for the Government to decide, who are the best judges of what the public interest requires.

It signifies not one sixpence to the main question now before us either who were the original offenders, or whether the position of the present Government justifies seve

rity or not. We have a strong opinion on both questions ourselves, as we have already made plain. But what the public should understand is this, that constant obstruction having wrought the closure into an implement for constant use, it is doubtful how far Government is justified in allowing its measures to be defeated while it has this instrument in its hands to ensure their being carried. The Home Rule Bill was forced through the House of Commons by the aid of the closure. The Welsh Disestablishment Bill would have been pushed through in the same way if the career of the Government had not been cut short. Is it to be supposed that the Conservatives are going to allow their opponents a monopoly of what is facetiously termed the guillotine? Such a suggestion is puerile. Sir William Harcourt appeals to his own forbearance in the use of it when he was in power. We have referred to this boast, and to the curious notions of forbearance which Sir William must entertain. But does he not see that even if it were so, he used it as often as he wanted it; and that if he did not want it oftener, it was owing to the forbearance of the Opposition and not to his own? It is a law of dynamics to apply only as much force as is wanted to overcome the resistance offered. Thus the application of the closure depends on the force of the obstruction: and will anybody pretend to say that the obstruction experienced in the House of Commons by Lord Rosebery's Government can be compared for a moment with the obstruction offered to the present Administration by the members and supporters of that Government? If Sir William Harcourt were to be

treated by the Conservatives as the Conservatives are being treated by himself, would he put his precepts into practice, and refrain from closuring the Opposition? Give him the chance!

We were lately staying at the house of a friend blessed with some grown up sons, whose natural taste for disputation has been sharpened by the practice of the law. Not the simplest proposition can be advanced at either breakfast, lunch, or dinner but what it is immediately controverted, and made the subject of a lively altercation, which continues to the end of the repast. "You see," said our host one day, turning to a lady on his right, we carry everything in this house at the point of the bayonet." This is the state of the House of Commons. The younger members of the Opposition below the gangway consider it fine fun, and a cheap and easy way of making a reputation. The elder ones encourage it, just as Pulteney used to encourage "the boys" in their fiery declamation against Sir Robert Walpole. The Government cannot allow important measures, which they believe to be for the public benefit, to be arrested by such a system as this. If they can only carry them at the point of the bayonet, that gentle persuasion must be used. They are clearly in the right in resolving to carry their measures; and if the Opposition use 66 every means at their disposal" for defeating them, Government must use every means at their disposal for enforcing them. It was sanctioned by Parliament for this express purpose: and if it was not anticipated at the time that it would become "the ordinary diet" of the House, neither was it anticipated that obstruction would

become its daily food. Seeing that both seem now to have effected a permanent lodgment in our parliamentary system, it is useless to complain of either. We must take them as we find them. If we too might "give advice to Sulla," we should recommend the Government to give up complaining of the conduct of the Opposition, and accept it as part of the new conditions to which we have already referred, and which Mr Chamberlain recognised in his speech at the Westminster Palace Hotel. We must, he said, accommodate ourselves to the "new conditions which have obtained in the House of Commons." Let it be understood once for all that for Opposition we are now to read Obstruction: that the latter is the new way of doing business, which has superseded the old parliamentary methods. Call it Opposition at high pressure if you like, commercial men know what that means. obstruction is shorter and simpler. This truth, for such it is, being once frankly recognised, the closure loses all its odium, and takes its place at once as the natural antidote to the newly imported virus.

But

The Opposition will do well to remember Mr Chamberlain's words: "They have not yet given up their desire to succeed by constitutional means rather than by the more arbitrary methods of their opponents." But they may be forced to give it up. They may yet be made to feel that the conduct of their opponents is such as to absolve them from all obligation to their former protests, uttered as they were under totally different conditions. Sir W. Harcourt may yet live to rue the day when he destroyed the first Education Bill

They are not bound to abstain from closuring by compartments unless they are met in a conciliatory spirit, and with reciprocal concessions by the Opposition. But these gentlemen are already reckoning up in gleeful anticipation the chances they will have of heaping obstruction on obstruction between the present time and next March. Egypt will furnish so much matter, South Africa so much more. The Finance Bill will contribute its quota, and so on. Is this the attitude, is this the language, of gentlemen prepared to recognise in the Government's forbearance an act of generosity, to be received in a corresponding spirit, or of political sharpers, who see in it only a silly sentiment which they do not understand, and of which they will take prompt advantage? What terms is it possible to keep with such opponents as these, and how can we look forward to any return of better times when the guillotine may be turned into a pruningknife, while the regular Opposition in the House of Commons continue to be animated by such a spirit?

Even if the two parties could be brought to such a sense of the danger and mischief of the present system as to agree to abandon obstruction as at present practised, how could they trust each other, or how could the leaders restrain their followers? If we look back only across the current session, we see that the use of the closure has been of constant occurrence. So it was in 1893 and 1894. So it would be again if Sir William Har

court or Mr Asquith, or any other member of the Radical party, became leader of the House. It seems to us, we must own, very far from improbable that even more stringent measures of repression may some day be adopted, if the docrine of divine right still continues to flourish. Such seems to be Mr Balfour's own opinion. But whether or no, it will, we think, be found impossible to put any substantial check on the use of the closure as long as it exists at all. If you put power in men's hands they will use it. Closure by compartments is only one form of it: the principle is exactly the same; the one may be made just as coercive as the other. Is it not better to face facts at once--to accept obstruction and the closure as the twin conditions of future parliamentary debate?

The only alternative that we see is to abolish the closure altogether, and restore the House of Commons to its original freedom. There would be plenty of noble savages to run wild in it. But even without the closure Supply could be got through in six months; or if it were finished in less, some legislation might be attempted. One good bill a session would be quite enough; and perhaps that much might be managed. If this is a Utopian vision, the end, however, is one to which we seem likely to be brought by another road. Obstruction, unless suppressed by methods which the present Government are apparently unwilling to adopt, must bring us to onebill Sessions ere long: and we may ask in all sober seriousness whether it would not be better to put an end to the closure at once than to leave it in existence only for the benefit of our adver

saries. Of one thing we may be tolerably certain, that the application of the closure, if it remains as it is, is likely rather to increase than to diminish in frequency and severity. The spirit of obstruction is not allayed by it, though its action may be crippled. The more the conduct of the Opposition compels the Government to have recourse to it, the greater the exasperation of its opponents, and the less likely are they when they regain power to use it with moderation. Thus it seems probable that on every change of Government the new one will come into office with a fresh stock of hoarded irritation to work off, and that thus obstruction and suppression will grow hand in hand at compound interest, till some organic change in the constitution

of Parliament becomes absolutely indispensable.

We have tried to take a broad view of the question, and to look at the closure as it affects both parties and is practised by both without distinction. We would be understood to mean that Conservatives as well as Liberals may be reluctantly compelled to become the instrument of carrying out a change which circumstances have rendered inevitable, though both may consider it undesirable. But we must repeat, in conclusion, that if either party, for any reason whatever, decline to avail themselves of the assistance afforded by the closure in passing their measures through Parliament, the sooner they put it out of their opponents' power to make use of it themselves the better.