the House on the second reading of a Bill is to preclude further impeachment of its principles. We owe it to Onslow that these two important rules are now generally recognised, if not invariably observed. He is said to have succeeded in enforcing them during his own time. But attempts more or less successful to evade them continued to be made for many years afterwards. And even now, though they are obeyed in the letter, they are occasionally broken in the spirit. The present Session will supply some instances to the memory of our readers. In the case of the Benefices Bill, for instance, after the House had decided by a large majority that it should be referred to a Standing Committee, when it came back from the Committee, Mr. Foster argued for some time against that decision, asserting that the Bill ought not to have been so referred. In this, according to Onslow, he was clearly out of order. And the custom of making second reading speeches against a Bill when it has reached Committee, notwithstanding that the practice is defended by Sir W. Harcourt, clearly violates in the spirit if not in the letter the rule laid down by Onslow. But, for all this, Parliament is under deep obligations to Onslow as the first Speaker who took the question of order systematically in hand, and made it his object to establish fixed rules for the conduct of debate, which continued to be respected and to exercise a salutary effect for more than a century.

Onslow is still looked up to as our chief authority on all questions of parliamentary practice. It is enough to trace any usage up to his time to settle all doubts of its legitimacy. In 1814, when exception was taken to Lord Colchester's speech on the prorogation of Parliament in the preceding August on the ground that he had not confined himself to financial measures, but had commented on other proceedings of the House, meaning the rejection of the Roman Catholic Bill, it was chiefly by the example of Onslow that he justified himself; and when he retired in 1816, the pension assigned to Onslow was the standard by which his own was regulated. Parliament has not been prorogued by the Sovereign in person since 1854, so that the public have grown unfamiliar with the speeches on the presentation of Supply Bills. But in the above-named year Mr. Shaw Lefevre made a speech to the Queen which covered a whole page of Hansard, referring to all the principal proceedings of the Session, and not forgetting, of course, the war with Russia.

That Onslow was re-elected to the Chair five times without a dissentient

a dissentient voice, that his resignation was received with expressions of esteem and regret from all parties, and that for nearly a hundred and forty years his pre-eminent fitness for the post has continued to be recognised, are facts which sufficiently answer the attacks made upon him in his lifetime. It has been attributed to Sir Robert Walpole that he procured his election in the hope that a young man, who owed his advancement exclusively to the favour of the Prime Minister, would be a pliant instrument in his hands. If so, he was certainly disappointed; for Onslow did not scruple in some of his Prorogation speeches to attack the policy of the Government, and on one occasion he spoke strongly against all continental wars and alliances. His correspondence with the Duke of Newcastle, preserved in the British Museum, relates chiefly to patronage; and when the Duke himself referred to other matters, Onslow replied he would rather talk them over with him.

Onslow, we must remember, prided himself on being a pure Whig. I kept firm,' he tells his son, 'to my original Whig principles upon conscience, and never deviated from them to serve any party cause whatsoever.' Of course, if we take our estimate of him from Horace Walpole and Lord Fanny,' such assertions go for nothing, and his moral value as a witness is reduced to zero. But taking the more favourable view of his character, for which there is a great preponderance of testimony, we find in these Papers matter of deep historical interest. Onslow, then, was a pure Whig, an honest Whig, having no connexion with Pulteney's party, and no sympathy with their attitude towards the Government. He regarded Walpole as his friend and patron, and the Whigs who followed him even in his errors as the regular Whig party. His opinion of Bolingbroke we have already given. He considered him a statesman of brilliant parts, which he dedicated exclusively to the service of ambition; power at any price, power for its own sake, being his sole object. It would be difficult to find a better witness; and his evidence is to the effect, that the Tory Opposition in the reign of George II. was not merely the factious offspring of political disappointment or the last effort of a waning superstition, but rested upon solid public grounds, and that what is so constantly designated as mere frothy and frivolous rhetoric was really the expression of just and natural indignation. Brief as these Papers are, they supply ample material for supporting the above conclusion. Hitherto the vindication of the Tory party at that epoch has been left mainly to interested advocates. In Onslow we have a perfectly disinterested, and to

some

some extent unwilling, witness, who makes us turn with renewed confidence to Bolingbroke and Wyndham, who, in the Speaker's opinion, clearly did well to be angry.

Of the Jacobite as distinct from the Tory Opposition, whatever else we may say, we cannot say that it was insincere. It represented a real principle, which has played and still plays a great part in the world's history, and has found an eloquent defender even in M. Renan: the principle, namely, of hereditary right. The Jacobites were the Yorkists of the eighteenth century; and in all the undoubted abuses of the Walpole system we had to pay the penalty of a disputed succession. Gie the honest man his mear again,' says Major Galbraith, and the distractions of the Lennox will be mended in those of the land.' This was the Jacobite view. They had plausible reasons for urging that by the Revolution we only sprang out of the frying-pan into the fire. The position occupied by Shippen and Cotton was therefore perfectly intelligible and perfectly appreciable. About the Jacobites, however, Onslow has little to say. He seems to have regarded them as a small band of irreconcilables' who, whatever they might fancy themselves, had no real following in the country. Here, we believe, he was wrong. If Lord Shelburne can be trusted, the north, the west, and the northwest of England were altogether in favour of them. It was thought necessary to keep cannon at Whitehall in George 1.'s reign to overawe the London mob. But the Stuart star, and the Stuart character, were all against them; and Onslow, as a pure Whig of the true 1688 breed, had no inclination to consider what there was to be said in their favour, which he was perfectly willing to do for the constitutional Tory party, whose only desire was to see an honourable, dignified Government.'

Men who founded their opinion on a knowledge of Onslow, believed that a strong Speaker can always keep the House in order. Supposing Onslow to have been all that his admirers represent him, and the greatest Speaker who has ever presided over the deliberations of the House of Commons, we should like to know what he would say to the present state of things in Parliament, and the deliberate attempt of politicians to make all legislation impossible. The conditions of parliamentary warfare are now so completely changed, that no man, were he possessed of more than Onslow's calibre and reputation, could remedy the disorders which threaten the very existence of representative government. In his time the party struggle was conducted, so to speak, with closed doors. In our time the newspaper press has made the whole country participators in it. De conducendo loquitur jam rhetore

Thule."

Thule.' Party divisions are commensurate with the extent of the population. In George II.'s reign not a tenth part took any interest in the parliamentary debates. The freemen and potwallopers were riotous enough at election time, but when the poll was declared their interest in the matter ceased, except when agitated by some measure of exceptional unpopularity, such as the Excise Bill or the Gin Act. Nowadays it is not too much to say that almost the whole nation forms a ring round the parliamentary combatants for the entire session, making it a much more difficult business for the Speaker to interfere with them than it was in Onslow's reign. A still more important difference, perhaps, is to be found in the fact that the House of Commons now contains members who only submit to its rules and regulations because they are obliged, and not out of any moral respect for them; men who see nothing to regret in scenes of anarchy and disorder because they only bring the time nearer when honest folks will get their own. With all these new germs of turbulence, and this new audience ready to applaud it, we may doubt whether even another Onslow would not find the maintenance of order upon the old system a task beyond his strength. The principle of authority is indeed everywhere on the wane, and parliamentary government must take its share of the consequences as well as other institutions. Onslow lived in an age when in spite of the Revolution this principle was still venerated, and prescription, custom, and tradition were allowed the force of law.

Onslow, who lived on to 1768, must have watched with keen interest the renewal by George III. of the experiment which George II. had once been willing to try. But if he made any remarks upon it, none have been preserved. We know that he disapproved of Walpole's system of government by one set of men only, and we suppose that he would have sympathised with George III.'s reply to Mr. Pitt, who told the King that he could not carry on his government without the assistance of the great Revolution families who had placed his family on the throne. 'Well, Mr. Pitt,' was the answer, this won't do.' Yet we can hardly suppose that Onslow would have approved of the alternative which was adopted by the King and Lord North. However, it is something to know that there was one old Whig, at all events in the eighteenth century, who, being perfectly independent, disliked Walpole's system, and condemned the policy of proscription.

ART.

ART. VIII.-1. La Elezione del Papa, Storia e Documenti. Per G. Berthelet. Roma, 1891.

2. Le Conclave: Origines-Histoire-Organisation-Législation, ancienne et moderne. Par Lucius Lector. Paris, 1894.

3. Papal Conclaves. By W. C. Cartwright. Edinburgh, 1868. 4. The Papal Conclaves, as they were and as they are. By J. A. Trollope. London, 1876.

5. The Church in Italy. By the Rev. Arthur R. Pennington, M.A., Prebendary of Lincoln. London, 1893.

ITHERTO the history of Papal elections has hardly been

touched, because the materials for writing it were, till the present day, almost inaccessible. Now, however, students are beginning to turn their attention to the Italian archives, which have recently been opened to their enquiries. The richness of these virgin mines, as they may almost be called, exceeds description. Until their treasures have been explored, the exact form of particular Conclaves cannot be recovered. But when these archives have been fully examined, the result will, we suspect, reveal a striking contrast between the petty intrigues, the paltry jealousies, the mean causes, which have often turned Papal elections, and the momentous character of the issues that have depended upon their decision.

Points of interest connected with Conclaves, involved in mystery only because they are intricate, have, however, been clearly ascertained by those writers whose works stand at the head of this article. Mr. Cartwright has examined the materials which were available for their history up to the date at which he wrote, and in a learned and laborious work has collected a store of information on their general movements, and on the laws by which they were regulated. Mr. Trollope, in a volume which shows great learning, research, and ability, has given a history of the abuses which led to the institution of the Conclave. He has explained the modifications which, as the result of experience, have altered the laws governing these assemblies, and has proved that they have not answered the end they were designed to secure. Prebendary Pennington, in his history of the Church in Italy, has traced from the earliest times the growth of the system of Papal elections. Commendatore Berthelet has lately collected a large number of previously unpublished documents, illustrating the views taken by different Pontiffs of the question of nepotism, the temporal power, the duties and rights of the Cardinals, and the mode of electing the Pope. Finally, the recent work on Papal Conclaves by Lucius Lector is at once interesting and remarkable. The

author,