MEMORIES OF LORD PEEL.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1614, 4 December 1912, Page 5

MEMORIES OF LORD PEEL.

1 STERN AND DRAMATIC SPEAKER. ' HOW HE CHASTISED THE FIGHTING M.P.S. (By Harold Spender in the "Daily News") So Lord Peel is no more. Ho has long ■ passed from tho active stage, although lie kept up his interest in affairs almost to the last. It is only a few wcoks since one of his family described to me Ins still full and busy days. But the light was flickering—that, light which oiice burned so steadily and so well.' And now it has gone out. ' Those who have only known Lord Peel in these latter days can have no conception of the part he played in the larliamentary life of the nineties. He was far and away the most dramatic Speaker ot our times. She Speaker of to-day has tried a great human experiment—tho experiment of riding tho House of Commons with a loose rein—soothing its passions with good-humoured jests, good English jests that raise a laugh and leave 110 sting. For ordinary days this new method has been eminently successful. But for extraordinary occasions—for times of pas--1 sion as must arise in an assembly where, after all, great human tides meet and conflict —Speaker Lowther's method has proved a failure. No good-humour— no easy coaxing—is of any use to restrain tho House at those times. It was precisely at such seasons of stress and storm that Speaker Peel shone out. On easy days, to tell tho truth, the House was a little tired of that stately presence, that splendid voice, that reiterated cry of "Order! Order!" True, no Minister could tlien.be subjected to the insolence of question time in these days. That "Order! Order \" of Lord Peel s kept the average member in a state of quiescent submission, and, for good or for ill, the Houso of Commons was a much better belraved place. The plain fact is that Lord Peel rather frightened the House of Commons. It was a terrible thing to be by him. His frown hung over the House like a thunder-cloud, and when he 6poke it was lightning that forked across the Parliamentary sky. Two or three memories come back. Une is the . great Parliamentary fight of 1893, when, for several minutes, members' or Parliament swung to and fro in close personal conflict below the gangway. Speaker Peel was sent for. Ho entered from behind the Speaker's Chair, fully robed, stern, pale to the lips—a really trcmendous figure. Then lie rose and spoke to them. He swept aside all smaller considerations of personal responsibility. He chastised them not as men—and he chastised them with scorpions. He reminded them of their great position. Ho recalled them to a sense of their histoiic responsibilities. He asked them not to 6liame their traditions. And under this great rebuke—-a mighty and scathing rebuke—the whole House sat like a body of whipped schoolboys, vowing to be better boys on the morrow. That was liow He treated the House of Commons. Another memory. Someone—a ltadicai M.P.—had written a letter to the press criticising his conduct. Some busybody there are always such—asked Speaker Peel what he x had to say. He roso m black wrath, and told the House plainly that if such, things were repeated ho should resign, "his position. The House sat in dumb dismay. It was an accepted view in those days that there coiild bo no other Speaker—that Peel was the last —that he stood above them as a god, a Colossus who bestrode the world. The offender grovelled, and the godhead w«is satisfied. But the House of Commons never dared to criticise Speaker * Peel again. . • _ There came once a glimpso of the grey world that lay behind all this. Speaker. Peel once gave mo a very human account of the life of labour that lay behind all the flashing drama. "My life," lie said, "is a slavery. I am steeped in Standing Orders. You think I havo my 'iiiornings. Not a bit of it. From breakfast to lunch I am studying precedents, deciding open questions, preparing- for those few minutes of rapid decision in the afternoon. .Then you think I am off on Committee nights. No. I havo to Tie roady to coin e back at any moment.' I havo to be always. there, in the Speaker's House, ready, to appear." These things are a little relaxed now. But tho revelations brought home to me the immense machinery of human fatigue that lies behind the smooth surface of Parliament.