MARRIAGE BILL

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 18, 22 January 1938, Page 24

MARRIAGE BILL

HOW PARLIAMENT WORKS

Tn "The Ayes Have It The Story oAe Marriage Bill," Mr. A P Herbert relates the sequence of events which led to the passage into law of London and Birmingham a few weeks before the General Election of 1933, which led to Mr. Herbert's candidature for Oxford University; it.ends with the] author and Mr. Crossley one of _he principal opponents of the Bill, walkFng side by side to hear the Royal Assent given to it in the House of L°The story is told with great liveliness and extreme informality. There are generous , tributes to . the work_ done by Mr. Herbert's allies, such as Mr. De La Bere, Sir Arnold Wilson, Mrs: Tate, and Lord Eltisley, as also to theassistance rendered by the Law Officers, the Treasury Solicitor, and some of the Law Lords; and there are also magnanimous compliments to the courtesy and fairness with which, with one named exception, the opponents of the Bill carried out their resistance to it It is possible that a fuller analysis of the arguments employed 'in the', debates would add to the book's. interest. _ Its main value, as it stands, lies in the insight which it will give the general reader into the' machinery of Parliament, and the procedure by which that machinery Is made to work. The man who has heard of "Second Reading," "Committee Stage," and "Report " with vague or no understanding of the meaning of those terms, will put the'book down with a clear and exact knowledge. There is also a most valuable; explanation of the Transferable Vote. Mr. Herbert might have imitated Mr. Belloc's "Economics for Helen" and called the book "Politics for Bobby," for it explains much of the spirit as well as the mechanism of Parliament. He tells how he made friends with a member by likening him to "an elephant floundering in a hip bath,"-and records the verdict that Parliament is. "a strange place, but a fine. one.".. . •