the articles and amendments. France entrusts the making of rules and regulations - that is, administrative law - to specialists, its administrators. Evidently on minor matters of policy it imposes great confidence in the judgment of its committees, who doubtless are watched closely by the Ministry. Americans will be long in accepting such a system, if indeed they ever go to the French extreme, but it is not rash to predict that the pressure of work will drive us toward getting rid of debate on details.

The desirability of this might at first glance seem inconsistent with the fact that at least in the National House the most effective debate takes place under a five-minute rule in the Committee of the Whole. Yet the two things can be reconciled by saying that if we must have debate on detail, it can hardly be better handled than on the House system. The speeches, necessarily compact, are directed to a definite point, and the interest bred by sharp controversy induces members to keep quiet and listen. However, no adequate treatment of any important theme is possible in five minutes or in five times five minutes. To be sure, there is the story of the revivalist who said on the strength of long experience, "No soul saved after the first ten minutes." It may be suspected the anecdote is apocryphal. An effective point may be scored in ten minutes or even five minutes, but to treat with such celerity any matter of intricacy is out of the question. It is possible a succession of short speeches may happen to cover all the essential phases of a question, but that is so largely a matter of chance as to leave the single, well-rounded, comprehensive argument still the better way to persuade.

One of the State Constitutions, that of Texas, says no bill is to become a law until free discussion has been allowed thereon. So far as I have observed, no other State is confronted by any constitutional obstacle in the way of limiting debate. Several of the Legislatures have found it expedient to put limits into their rules. The most drastic restriction I have noted is that of the Missouri House, where no member, except when reporting a bill or resolution from a committee, may speak more than five minutes, unless by unanimous consent. The most generous to come to my notice is the hour rule in Georgia. Between these extremes are at least nine other States. Alabama and Washington have a ten-minute rule; Mississippi also, but with a limit of five minutes on amendments; Texas also, except that the mover or the committee member in charge may speak twenty minutes in opening and again in

closing, extension of time for more than ten minutes to be only by unanimous consent. North Carolina permits thirty minutes in opening, fifteen for rejoinder; Tennessee makes the like figures fifteen and ten. Louisiana lets a member speak twice, half an hour at a time; North Dakota twice, twenty minutes the first time and ten the second. In the New York Assembly no member is to speak for more than fifteen minutes at a time, except by consent of two thirds of the members present.

Such narrow limitations are of doubtful expediency, and the fact that most of the Legislatures get along without them indicates that they are not a necessity. Even a body with as much business as the Canadian Parliament can transact it without time limits. At the various readings a man may speak only once on the same question, Sir J. G. Bourinot says, but there is no limit to the length of his speech except what good taste and the patience of the House impose upon him. "In Committee there is no limit to the number of speeches on any part of the bill, but, as a matter of fact, the remarks are generally short and practical, unless there should be a bill under consideration to which there is a violent party antagonism, and a disposition is shown to speak against time and weary the Government into making concessions, or even withdrawing the objectionable features of the measure." 1

Evidently in Canada, as in the Legislatures of our eastern States and some of the others, the annoyance of unduly long speeches is kept within bounds by unwritten standards of propriety that most men instinctively observe.

In the British House of Commons, on the contrary, conditions much like those in Congress are imposing like necessities. Not long ago it was found that of the ninety-five Standing Orders regulating the public business of the House, no less than thirtyfour dealt in some form or other with the restriction of debate. The draft report recommended by the Chairmen and supported by three members of the Select Committee on Procedure in 1914 would have put on speeches time limits running from ten to thirty minutes, according to specified conditions. Mr. Asquith told that committee he thought a full-dress debate on the first. reading of a bill to be really waste of parliamentary time, and though he would not apply to it rigidly a ten-minute rule, he would confine it to a couple of speeches. Mr. Whitley pointed 1 Canadian Studies in Comparative Politics, 59.

out that the tendency to discuss private bills and provisional order confirmation bills had greatly increased in recent years. Mr. Balfour said that whereas in what are called the great days of parliamentary institutions most of the members were content to be silent, and to act as jurymen while the great cases were pleaded before them by distinguished counsel on either side, your Pitts and your Foxes, your Peels and your Althorps or Russells, now the whole thing is changed. This he explained by saying that all the members of Parliament now have a degree of practice in public speaking which was given to very few a hundred years ago; all of them have constituencies who closely watch their action, and who are divided between the anxiety of getting their member down to a smoking concert and the anxiety of seeing him make a speech or ask a question in the House of Commons. He saw no way of getting over the difficulty unless, as under Lord Robert Cecil's proposal of Grand Committees, a method should be found by which many of the members could speak at once.

Quite apart from the question of limiting the length of speeches is that of limiting the total of debate. Here the judgment of a good presiding officer or floor leader, with a sense of proportion, is invaluable. Standing orders or special rules cannot fully meet the need. Curiously enough, they sometimes increase that need. In the National House now and then it may be observed that the Hour Rule and the agreements for a specified duration of debate actually tend to needless prolongation of talk. If the bargain is that each side shall have not more than an hour, then each side tries to fill every minute of the hour, or makes but faint attempt to conclude in less than an hour. Those in charge seem often to view the minutes as gifts to dispense in the fullest measure possible. Rarely will any speaker sit down before the hammer falls. The result is that matters which ought to be and might be disposed of in a few minutes, get hours. For example, on the 12th of May, 1920, with the end of the session hoped to be less than a month away, there were on the House Calendar 258 favorable committee reports awaiting action. In the course of the sitting on that day the House succeeded in taking up three bills, all unanimously favored by the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, known to be a cautious, trustworthy committee. No serious opposition to any one of them showed itself on the floor. A few objectionable amendments were presented. The

three bills ought easily to have been disposed of in an hour or two. Yet the House was unable even to conclude the third. Had there been no time limits or arrangements, and had the motion for the previous question been ruthlessly applied, two or three times as much ground could have been covered that afternoon.

The Alabama Senate has an admirable rule that limits debate on an adverse committee report to sixty minutes. An altogether needless waste of time is caused by lengthy discussion of adverse reports. Experience shows that only rarely does a bill reported adversely run the gantlet of both Houses and the Governor. The chances of success are too small to warrant giving such a bill in the first instance more than time enough to persuade the House, if possible, that in spite of the position of the committee, the proposal ought at least to be considered.

Criticism of Congress or any other legislative body that is based on mere volume of speeches is quite beside the mark. "It is said by eminent censors of the press that this debate will yield about thirty hours of talk, and will end in no result," Mr. Bright is quoted as having remarked on one occasion in the House of Commons. "I have observed that all great questions in this country require thirty hours of talk many times repeated before they are settled. There is much shower and much sunshine between the sowing and the reaping of the harvest, but the harvest is generally reaped after all."

CHAPTER XII

CLOSURE

DEBATE can be stopped by decision to take a vote: (1) never; or (2) on another day if at all; or (3) speedily; or (4) forthwith.

It is believed that in the development of parliamentary law the first device to avoid ever passing judgment on a proposal was introduced in 1604, taking the form, "Shall the main question be put?" Instead of "main" the adjective "previous" has come into use, but without changing the intent, for either word contemplates a decision as to what shall be done about the principal subject under consideration.

In the Short or Long Parliament the insertion of a little word, of but three letters, totally changed the nature of the motion. That word was "now" "Shall the main question be now put?" It is said that Sir Harry Vane was responsible for this, that he invented it in order to silence the friends of the Crown, and that Sir Robert Howard declared "it was like the image of its author, a perpetual disturbance."

Whoever devised it, that word "now" made trouble not only for the Royalists of the time, but for parliamentary bodies long afterward. What were its implications? Did an answer in the negative mean that the House merely refused to take an instant vote, or refused to take a vote that day, or refused to take a vote until debate was exhausted, or refused ever to take a vote? Did an answer in the affirmative cut off debate? Could the main question be discussed while the motion for putting it "now" was pending? Could further amendments be offered while that motion was pending, or after it had been decided in the affirmative? By the time Jefferson came to compile his "Manual," Parliament had ceased to hold that a decision in the negative meant the vote on the main question should not be taken until debate was exhausted, and had decided it meant the main question was suppressed for the day, which usually was interpreted as a defeat, with the anomalous corollary that when a motion for the previous question was decided in the negative, it was said to be carried. This awkwardness was emphasized by the form used in the Congress of the Confederation, and perhaps then used