THE CLOTURE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2673, 13 October 1881, Page 2

THE CLOTURE.

The cloture has been engaging the attention of the English Parliament, and the result is a State paper, embodying reports from her Majesty’s representatives in various countries, dealing with the various modes of repressing undue loquacity employed in foreign deliberative assemblies. In France the President consults the House as to whether a debate should be closed or not. Only one speaker is heard in opposition, and the question is then decided by vote. In Germany any member can propose the cessation of discussion, and if 30 members support him, the President at once takes a vote-upon the proposition without any debate at all. In Italy the same practice prevails, though one speaker is heard against the cloture. In the Netherlands five members must support the motion for its intro duction, and it is then discussed and voted upon in the one chamber, or voted upon without discussion in the other. In democratic countries such as Switzerland and the United States, the flow of talk is liable to bo checked just as speedily. In the former country the cloture is used as in France, while in America the majority can carry a motion for “the previous question” at any moment, and thus bring any debate peremptorily to a conclusion. In Austria the President of either House may propose to close a debate at any time, and a simple majority decides the point. Only one speaker from each side is heard after this. In Hungary, instead of the cloture, there is a power in the hands of the President to keep members to the point, end even stop a speech that is perskteatly verbose. Both in Belgium and in Denmark doture is erai pk-ywi—in £Lr=u c-c-uauj upon xfae doing « iheir own sweet will. Ini England, upon the morion of a Minister of the Crown, a motion to close debate may be put at any time, and if in a House of three hundred members his resolution shall be carried by a majority of 3 to 1, the Speaker becomes absolute, and rules the House as he pleases until the dictatorship entrusted to him is withdrawn. In the Commons, therefore, the depotism of its chief can be established more absolutely than anywhere else, but special authority of any kind is only entrusted to him under very special conditions. The great fact for colonists to remember is that the cloture evists iu some form or other in nearly every state in the civilised world.