313 



PARLIAMENT, IMPERIAL. 



PARLIAMENT, IMPERIAL. 



314 



meeting. The house that seeks the conference must clearly express 

 in their message the subject upon which it is desired, and it is not 

 granted as a matter of course. There are many instances to be found 

 in the Journals in which a conference has been refused, but not of 

 late years. The reasons that are to be offered to the other house are 

 prepared by a committee appointed for that purpose, who report them 

 for the approval of the house. These reasons are generally very short, 

 but in some cases arguments have been entered into at considerable 

 length. The conference is conducted by " managers " for both houses, 

 who, on the part of the house desiring the conference, are the members 

 of the 1 committee who have drawn up the reasons, to whom others are 

 occasionally added. Their duty is to read and deliver in the reasons 

 with which they are entrusted to the managers of the other house, 

 who report them to the house which they represent. At a free con- 

 ference the managers on either side have more discretion vested in 

 them, and may urge whatever arguments they think fit. A debate 

 arose in a free conference, which was held in 1836, in reference to 

 amendments made by the lords to a bill for amending the Act for 

 regulating Municipal Corporations, and the speeches of the managers 

 were taken in short-hand and printed. While the conference is being 

 held, the business of both houses is suspended until the return of the 

 managers. 



Amendments made to bills by either house are not the only occa- 

 sions upon which conferences are demanded. Resolutions of import- 

 ance, in which the concurrence of the other house is desired, are 

 communicated in this manner. Reports of committees have also been 

 communicated by means of a conference. In 1829 a conference was 

 demanded by the commons to request an explanation of the circum- 

 stances under which a bill that had been amended by the lords had 

 received the royal assent without being returned to the commons 

 for their concurrence. The lords expressed their regret at the mis- 

 tike, and stated that they had themselves been prepared to desire a 

 conference upon the subject, when they received the message from the 

 commons. 



Conferences were formerly held in the Painted Chamber, but since 

 the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament after the fire in 1834, they 

 have been held in one of the lords' committee rooms. 



Royal Assent to Billt has been described under ASSENT, ROYAL. 



Committees. Committees are either " of the whole house," or 

 " select." The former are, in fact, the house itself, with a chairman 

 instead of the Lord Chancellor or Speaker presiding. There is a more 

 free and unlimited power of debate when the house is in committee, 

 as members may speak any number of times upon the same question, 

 from which they are restrained on other occasions. Select committees 

 are specially appointed, generally for inquiring into particular subjects 

 connected with legislation. It is usual to give them the " power to 

 aend for persons, papers, and records ;." but in cage of any disobedience 

 to then- orders, they have no direct means of enforcing compliance, 

 but must report tie circumstance to the house, which will imme- 

 diately interfere. 



In case of an equality of voices, the chairman, who is chosen by the 

 committee out of its own members, gives the casting vote. Some 

 misconception appears to have existed as to the precise nature of the 

 chairman's right of voting. In 1836, the House of Commons was 

 informed that the chairman of a select committee had first claimed the 

 privilege to vote as a member of the committee, and afterwards, when 

 the voices were equal, of giving a casting vote as chairman, and that 

 such practice had of late years prevailed in some select committees ; 

 when it was declared by the house that, according to the established 

 rules of [parliament, the chairman of a select committee can only vote 

 when there is an equality of voices. (91 ' Commons' Journals,' p. 214.) 

 This error was very probably occasioned by the practice of election 

 committees, which was however confined to them, and only existed 

 under the provisions of Acts of parliament. 



In 1837 some regulations were made by the House of Commons for 

 rendering select committees more efficient and responsible. The num- 

 ber of members on a committee was limited to fifteen. Lists of their 

 name* are to be fixed in some conspicuous place in the committee-clerk's 

 office and the lobby. Members moving for the committee are to ascer- 

 tain whether the gentlemen they propose to name will attend. To 

 every question asked of a witness, the name of the member who asked 

 it is prefixed in the minutes of evidence laid before the bonne ; and 

 the names of the members present at each sitting, and, in the event of 

 any division, the question proposed, the name of the proposer, and the 

 votes of each member, are entered on the minutes and reported to the 

 house. [COMMITTEES.] 



It is not intended to touch upon the elective franchise, or upon the 

 proceedings at elections ; but the mode of trying election petitions will 

 require a notice in this place. 



Trial of eiectiuH Petition*. Ketnre the year 1770, controverted 

 elections were tried and determined by the whole House of Commons, 

 as mere party questions, upon which the strength of contending 

 factions might be tested. In 1741, Sir Robert Walpole, after repeated 

 attacks upon his government, was at last driven from office by a vote 

 upon the Chippenham election petition. " Instead of trusting to the 

 merits of their respective causes," said Mr. Grenville, in proposing the 

 measure which has since borne his name, " the principal dependence of 

 both parties is their private interest among us, and it is scandalously 



notorious that we are as earnestly canvassed to attend in favour of the 

 opposite sides, as if we were wholly self-elective anfl not bound to act 

 by the principles of justice, but by the discretionary impulse of our 

 inclinations ; nay, it is well known that in every contested election, 

 many members of this house, who are ultimately to judge in a kind of 

 judicial capacity between the competitors, enlist themselves as parties 

 in the contention, and take upon themselves the partial management 

 of the very business upon which they should determine with the 

 strictest impartiality." The principle of the Grenville Act, and of 

 others which were passed at different times since 1770, was to select 

 committees for the trial of election petitions by lot. By the last of 

 these (9 Geo. IV., cap. 22), thirty-three names were balloted from the 

 members present at the time, and each of the parties to the election 

 was entitled to strike off eleven names, and thus reduce the number of 

 the committee to eleven. Whichever party attended on the day 

 appointed for a ballot in the greatest force, was likely to have a pre- 

 ponderance in the committee, and the expedient of chance did not 

 therefore operate as a sufficient check to party spirit in the appoint- 

 ment of election committees. Partiality or incompetence was very 

 generally complained of in the decisions of committees appointed in 

 this manner, and in 1839 an Act passed establishing a new system, 

 upon different principles, increasing the responsibility of individual 

 members, and leaving scarcely anything to the operation of chance. 



The following is an outline of the present mode of selecting members 

 for the trial of election petitions : At the beginning of a session the 

 Speaker appoints a general committee of six members, to any or all of 

 whom the house may object, in which case the Speaker is bound to 

 apioint others. If by irreconcileable disagreement of opinion, or by 

 the continued absence of more than two members, the committee, 

 when appointed, should be unable to proceed in the discharge of its 

 duties, or if the house should determine that it shall be dissolved, its 

 functions are to cease. To this general committee all election petitions 

 are referred. The names of all the members of the house are put into 

 an alphabetical list and called over, when certain excuses are allowed 

 to be made ; but all who do not then excuse themselves from serving 

 are bound to act as members of election committees when hereafter 

 chosen. This list is taken by the general committee, from which are 

 elected six, eight, ten, or twelve members, but in no case to exceed 

 eighteen, who, on signifying their willingness to serve, are formed into 

 " the chairman's panel." The list ia then divided into five panels by 

 the general committee, exclusive of the chairman, the order of which 

 is decided by lot, and a number attached to each in the order in which 

 it is drawn. These panels are to be corrected from time to time by 

 the general committee, according to circumstances. The general com- 

 mittee gives three weeks' notice to the parties before it proceeds to 

 appoint a committee for the trial of an election petition. At the 

 expiration of that time it chooses, from the panel standing first ill 

 order of service, four members, whose names are read to the parties, 

 who have power to object to any of them on grounds of disqualification 

 specified in the Act. When the four members are finally chosen, the 

 chairman's panel appoint one of their own body to act as chairman, 

 who is added accordingly to the general committee. The committee, 

 when thus completed, is sworn, and proceeds to business. All questions 

 are decided by a majority. 



As witnesses giving false evidence before an election committee are 

 guilty of perjury, it is usual for the house, when acquainted with such 

 misconduct, to instruct the attorney-general to prosecute the parties. 

 The same course has also been pursued with respect to persons proved 

 to have been concerned in bribery. 



The determinations of election committees are final, and are imme- 

 diately carried into effect by the house. If an election be reported 

 void, a new writ is issued ; if it be decided that a member has not 

 been duly elected, and that another candidate should have been 

 returned, the deputy clerk of the crown is ordered to attend and 

 amend the return, after which the new member is sworn, and takes his 

 seat; and if a petition or the opposition to it be held by the committee 

 to have been frivolous and vexatious, the petitioner or sitting member, 

 as the case may be, is liable to the payment of all the costs. 



The last proceeding in parliament which we shall describe is that of 



l:n/,cachment. Impeachment by the commons is a proceeding of 

 great importance, involving the exercise of the highest judicial powers 

 by parliament ; and though in modern times it has rarely been resorted 

 to, in former periods of our history it was of frequent occurrence. The 

 earliest instance of impeachment by the commons at the bar of the 

 House of Lords was in the reign of Edward III. (1376). Before that 

 time the lords appear to have tried both peers and commoners for 

 great public offences, but not upon complaints addressed to them by 

 the commons. During the next four reigns, cases of regular impeach- 

 ment were frequent ; but no instances occurred in the reigns of 

 Edward IV., Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., Queen Mary, or 

 Queen Elizabeth. The constitution " had fallen into disuse," says Mr. 

 Hallam, " partly from the loss of that control which the commons had 

 obtained under Richard II. and the Lancastrian kings, and partly from 

 the preference the Tudor princes had given to bills of attainder or of 

 pains and penalties, when they wished to turn the arm of parliament 

 against an obnoxious subject." Prosecutions also in the Star-Chamber 

 during that time were perpetually resorted to by the crown for the 

 punishment of state offenders. In the reign of James I., the practice 



