much that I am afraid our clergy will be obliged, if they expect full congregations, not to look any more upon ten o'clock in the morning as a canonical hour. In my memory, the dinner has crept by degrees from twelve o'clock to three, and where it will fix nobody knows!" A bold guesser at futurity might now fix upon a liberal nine.

How fast the habits of keeping early hours continued to degenerate after the Revolution, we learn from the complaint and advice of Burnet. That wellmeaning whig bishop, among other useful hints, at the close of his Memoirs, says, "One thing more I presume to suggest, which is, that we may have fewer and shorter sessions of parliament: the staying late in town both wastes and corrupts the morals of members; their beginning so late in the day to enter upon business is one great occasion of long sessions. They are seldom met till about twelve o'clock; and, except on a day in which some great points are to be discussed, on which the parties divide, they grow disposed to rise after two or three hours' sitting. The authority of the prince must be interposed to make them return to the old hours of eight or nine; and, if from that time they sat till two, a great deal of business might be dispatched in a short session."

Speaker Onslow adds, at the end of another generation, "This is shamefully grown of late, even to two of the clock. I have done all in my power to prevent it, and it has been one of the griefs and burdens of my life. niences attending it. is (George the Third)

It has innumerable inconveThe Prince of Wales that now has mentioned it to me several

times with concern, and did it again this very day,

Notes to Burnet.

October 7th, 1759; and it gives me hopes, that in King William's time, those of his ministers who had the care of the government business in the House of Commons were dismissed by him to be there by eleven o'clock. But it is not the fault of the present king: his hours are early. It is the bad practice of the higher offices, and the members fall into it, as suiting their late hours of pleasure, exercise, or other private avocations. The modern practice too of long adjournments at Christmas and Easter, and the almost constant adjournment over Saturdays, are a great delay of business and of the sessions. This last was begun by Sir Robert Walpole for the sake of his hunting, and was then much complained of, but now every body is for it."

Greatly would Onslow's spirit have groaned over the multiplication and intensity of the evils which he lamented, and at the failure of his admonition. Saturday is still the allotted holiday; the winter and spring recess are become inveterate; and, notwithstanding the good example of George III., so little had his early to bed and early to rise habits corrected the mischief, that his wonted hour of rest became the very period at which his cabinet ministers began to think of taking part in the debate. So early as in the time of Onslow's successor, four o'clock became the hour for the Speaker's taking the chair. The presentation of petitions, discussion on private bills, and notices of motions, filled up the space till five, when the grand debate was in general heralded by a speech of two or three hours, and a division called for at any chance hour after, but never before, midnight.

The division on the address in 1783 did not

In the same year,

take place till half-past seven. the motion for the Speaker leaving the chair on Fox's India Bill was put to the vote at half-past four in the morning. During the Westminster scrutiny, the House sat sometimes till six in the morning. Pitt, speaking on the slave trade, introduced his beautiful quotation, from the sun just then bursting upon the wearied but still attentive audience. Wraxall passed the Horse-Guards at half-past eight in a summer morning, after an important division. Working men might indulge in sleep, and enjoy a good night's rest, before taking part in the debate, or dividing. It is recorded of Sir Samuel Romilly, that he would not unfrequently go to bed at his usual time, and, rising next morning somewhat earlier than usual, would go down to be present at the division.

This complete inversion of night into day received a useful check at the passing of the Reform Bill, since which important epoch for the internal economy of the House, an adjournment at the midnight hour has become habitual, and proved most consonant to the exigencies of business and to the habits of society. It were Utopian to wish an earlier hour, unless members could be induced not to speak so often, and so long.

Romilly's Memoirs.

390

CHAPTER XIII.

THE number of members who join in the discussion of popular topics has been multiplied by the increase of knowledge and the amount of information which so many can impart, by the generous rivalries of a noble ambition, by the consideration attached to success in Parliament, and that instant communication of fame which the daily publication of the debates brings home. "Formerly," said Sir Robert Inglis," very few members were wont to address the House; now the speaking members are probably not less than four hundred." of the sister-country, not four members out of the hundred are wholly silent.

The compulsion to speak for credit's sake has been well expressed by Lord Dudley. " "If, indeed, nothing were asked or expected of me, if I could hear the debate, give my vote, and then depart in peace, quite sure that my silence from the first to the last day of the session would be completely unnoticed by friend or foe, the condition of a pedarius senator might not be altogether disagreeable to me. It affords amusement, and keeps one in good company. But as, unfortunately, I have somehow given rise to ex

*Speech on the Reform Bill. Letters to the Bishop of Llandaff.

MEMOIRS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 391

pectations which I am unable to fulfil, I am tormented every day, not only by mortifying reflections of my own, but by the exhortations of friends, who mistake inability for laziness, and by the taunts and sneers of those who, better acquainted with the real nature of the case, choose to disguise their malice under the mask of compliment to me; therefore, leaving Parliament would be to escape from a very painful situation.'

The necessity for complying with the exactions of constituencies forms another powerful motive for speech, and solves the riddle of twenty orators who cannot speak with any effect striving to catch the Speaker's eye in the midst of a debate. A fond, popular constituency, credulous enough to believe that the hero of the hustings must be popular with the House, are surprised and displeased at a silence which they can attribute only to carelessness or neglect; that he may preserve their favour, the popular member is constrained to struggle for notoriety. He must appear to speak and to be listened to;-his name must be seen in print. There would be serious mischief in this necessity to speak, were there not strong counter-checks. Their proneness to garrulity is in some degree corrected by the extreme sensitiveness to ridicule, and fastidious shrinking from the risk of failure, to which our legislators, from habits of over-refinement, are peculiarly subject. Single-speech Hamilton sat in Parliament a year before he could venture on the delivery of that antithetical oration which forms his sole, doubtful, title to fame. Though afterwards worshipped as "Sir Oracle," no further response could be wheedled from that cold and cautious shrine.

"Wait to hear Hare," was the reply of