Chapter XX · “WHO GOES HOME?”

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As a rule, the Parliament knows that its days are numbered long before it is actually dissolved. I know of only one dissolution, that of 1880, which when announced was quite unexpected. In the abrupt way it was heralded there was also a strange mixture of the comic and dramatic. On March 8, 1880, the House of Commons met for nothing more exciting than the disposal of some unimportant Orders of the Day. The attendance was, therefore, small. Among the notable absentees were Lord Hartington, titular Leader of the Liberal Opposition, and its actual chief, Gladstone. When the questions on the paper were asked and answered, Sir Stafford Northcote, the Leader of the House, interposed with the desire—as he put it—to “make a few remarks.” In this, of course, there was nothing unusual. Nor was there anything in Northcote’s manner, or the tone of his voice, that implied a portentous announcement. He made a few commonplace observations about the business before the House, and seemed to have finished what he had to say and to be about to sit down, when, as if starting afresh on another topic as an afterthought, he said: “Being on my legs——.” Then came the announcement that, as soon as financial business could be wound up, the Parliament would be dissolved. For delightful casualness, that “being on my legs” has no parallel in famous parliamentary phrases. Parliament is actually dissolved by Royal Proclamation, which appears in the London Gazette. But some weeks before this is published the ceremony of prorogation takes place in the House of Lords. Though it means the end of the Parliament, there is rarely anything in it officially to distinguish it from the function that marks the end of any session.

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In former times it was usual for Parliament to be dissolved by the King in person. The most famous dissolution of the kind in recent times is that for the purpose of taking the sense of the country on the first Reform Bill of 1831. The second reading of the Bill had been carried in the House of Commons at three o’clock on the morning of March 23 by a majority of one, in the fullest House perhaps that ever was known—303 being for the Bill and 302 against it. During the following April the Bill was slowly and with difficulty making its way through Committee, being fought desperately word by word by the Tory Opposition, when the Whig Government made up its mind to dissolve. The Cabinet Council at which this decision was suddenly come to was held on Friday, April 22nd, at half-past eleven o’clock. The Government realized that it was most important for their ends to have the King present in the House of Lords. The Prime Minister, Earl Grey, and the Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham, went at once to the King, William IV, at the Palace, with some fear and trembling, to try to persuade him to go down and prorogue Parliament—with a view to its dissolution—at two o’clock that very day. The King declared that he could not reconcile himself to dissolving a Parliament that had just been elected and had treated him so handsomely in the matter of the Civil List and had settled so magnificent an annuity on his Consort. The Lord Chancellor insisted that dissolution was inevitable, and that the King must go straightway to Westminster. “But who,” demanded the King, “will carry the Sword of State and the Cap of Maintenance?” That had been arranged, said the noble lords. “But the Guards,” pleaded his Majesty, “have not been ordered out.” Earl Grey, who had foreseen everything, assured the King that they had. “Treason, high treason!” shouted the astonished King, whose prerogative it was to order out the Guards. The Ministers admitted their guilt, but declared their action necessary in the interests of the State; and in the long run the King became calm and went to Westminster. “This coup d’état was so sudden,” writes Greville in his Memoirs, “that nobody was aware of it until two or three hours of the time, and many not at all.”

The proceedings in both Houses, when they met at two o’clock and the unexpected decision of the Government was announced, were very violent. In the House of Commons Sir Robert Peel, the Leader of the Opposition, made a furious attack upon the Ministers. Suddenly, above the uproar caused by his speech, the guns, announcing the arrival of the King, were heard, and at each explosion the followers of the Government shouted exultingly. Peel was still struggling to say bitter things of the Ministers in the midst of every sort of noise and confusion, when Black Rod knocked at the door to summon the Commons to the House of Peers. In that exalted Chamber the proceedings were, if anything, still more tumultuous. The peers on both sides were in a state of the wildest excitement. They went so far as to shake their fists at each other. Lord Chancellor Brougham was hooted by the Tories as he endeavoured to defend the action of the Government in advising the King to dissolve Parliament. He states in his Memoirs that he purposely continued speaking until the roar of the guns told him that his Majesty had arrived. “Black Rod” stood at his elbow, crying: “My Lord Chancellor, you must come; the King is waiting for you; come along; you must come”; and he had to be almost dragged out of the House by that impatient functionary. In the robing-room his Majesty asked the Lord Chancellor what all the noise in the House was about. Brougham coolly replied: “It is the Lords debating, sir.” Hansard is not strong in descriptive, but this is how that record of parliamentary proceedings describes the manner in which the Lords debated after the Lord Chancellor had left the Chamber: “It is impossible to describe the confusion, the noise, the impetuosity, that prevailed from one end of the House to the other. The peeresses seemed alarmed. Some of the peers were, as it appeared in the confusion, almost scuffling, and as if shaking their hands at each other in anger.” However, when the King entered the tumult ceased. “George Villiers said that in his life he never saw such a scene,” writes Greville; “and as he looked at the King upon the Throne, with the Crown loose upon his head, and the tall, grim figure of Lord Grey close beside him, with the Sword of State in his hand, it was as if the King had got his executioner by his side, and the whole picture looked strikingly typical of his and our future destinies.” The Commons summoned by “Black Rod” were now at the Bar, the Speech from the Throne proroguing Parliament “with a view,” it was stated in this instance, “to its immediate dissolution,” was read by the King, and in ten minutes all was over. Parliament was dissolved by proclamation on the following day. It may be noted that Villiers’ lugubrious imaginings have not been fulfilled. On the contrary, the Reform Bill, carried triumphantly after the General Election, added strength and depth to the foundations of the Constitution.

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It is now the settled custom for Parliament to be prorogued, not by the Sovereign in person, but by Commission. The Lords Commissioners—five in number, of which the Lord Chancellor always is one—sit in their scarlet robes and ermine on a bench in front of the great Throne, as we have seen them when the Royal Assent was given to Bills. “Black Rod” is forthwith directed to summon the House of Commons, and within five minutes the Speaker appears at the Bar, accompanied by some of the Ministers and a crowd of unofficial Members. The Lord Chancellor then announces that the King, not thinking fit to be present, had appointed a Royal Commission to do all other necessary things in his Majesty’s name. But it is customary to make no reference whatever to the impending death of the Parliament. The Royal Commission is then declaimed at the Table by the Reading Clerk. The King’s Speech is read by the Lord Chancellor. It contains congratulations to “My Lords and Gentlemen” on the valuable additions to the Statute Book which their labours during the session have produced. There is also a separate paragraph specially expressing thanks for the supplies granted by “the faithful Commons.” Thus the proceedings at prorogation, before dissolution in the House of Lords, are brief and simple. When they are over the Speaker and the Commons retire from the Bar. The Lords Commissioners shake hands with the Lord Chancellor, and withdraw to their robing-rooms behind the Throne. The Lord Chancellor, gathering up his long robes, and attended by the Purse-bearer and the Mace-bearer, walks down the floor to the Bar, and also disappears. So far as the House of Lords is concerned, the ceremony is simply at an end, and that is all. For the peers the General Election has no terrors. They are untroubled by any apprehension that they may never again return to the scarlet benches of the Gilded Chamber. Their position as Members of Parliament is a permanency unaffected by dissolution and the fluctuations of political opinion. It is true that only by virtue of fresh writs of summons issued to them by the Crown can they again take their seats after a dissolution. But it has been held by a series of decisions of the House of Lords itself that under the existing law or custom of the Constitution these fresh writs of summons cannot be denied by the Crown. A peerage cannot be forfeited or affected except by Act of Parliament. A peer cannot be expelled from the House of Lords for any offence, however great. For only one thing is he disqualified from sitting and voting, and that is bankruptcy, in accordance with a statute passed in 1871. Yet during the World War the Crown exercised the discretion of not issuing writs of summons to the Duke of Cumberland and the Duke of Albany, as they had joined the King’s enemies—the Germans.

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With the Commons, however, it is entirely different. Few of them have any certainty of coming back from the country. “It is so much easier to go to the country than to return from it,” said Sir Wilfrid Lawson, from bitter personal experience. It is not unlikely, therefore, that thoughts tinged with melancholy prevail in the band of Members which, faithful to the end, follows the Speaker from the House of Lords back to the House of Commons for the last time for that Parliament. For how many of them will it be the last time they shall be permitted to cross the Bar of the House of Commons and take their places on the green benches?

The Speaker walks up the floor of the Chamber, bowing to the empty Chair. Then, standing at the head of the Table, he tells the Commons that he had been to the House of Lords, and reads the King’s Speech, with the contents of which they are already acquainted. Not a word is officially said, as a rule, about the forthcoming dissolution. But the shadow of it lowers forbiddingly over all, and fills their minds with gloomy thoughts. And so the Speaker, lingering awhile by the Chair, shakes hands with the Members that surround him, and wishes them good fortune in the approaching battle in the constituencies. Then he disappears from the Chamber. The Serjeant-at-Arms, with the Mace, is also gone. Political friend and foe among the last little company present clasp hands in a last farewell and depart. Only the Clerks, in wig and gown, linger at the Table to collect their papers. All is over. The great debating Chamber is silent and empty. The Parliament is already but a phantom and a memory.

“Who goes home?” shouts the doorkeeper in the lobby. “Who goes home?” echoes the policeman in all the corridors of the Palace of Westminster. It is just as if it were but the end of an ordinary nightly sitting of the House of Commons. But on this occasion the ancient familiar cry falls incongruously, if not unfeelingly, upon the ear. Who goes home, indeed? In the circumstances, it is not home they go—they to whom the question is addressed—but to the North, the South, the East and the West, to renew the wooing of the electors, to tread again for weeks that steep and thorny way which leads to a seat in the House of Commons!