Parliamentary Prolixity

New Zealand Tablet, 30 August 1906, Page 9

Parliamentary Prolixity

Our law-makers have once more begun to exhibit their wind-power In the House, and to address their constituents, as usual, through the pa-gee of ' Hansard '. The notoiious and mostly vapid garrulity" of our Pailiament swells inordinately the bulk of ' Hansard ', and makes it as dull, Hat, and stale as the pages of a ' Ready Reckoner '—without the l Ready Reckoners ' saving quality of usefulness. To many of the members, we might say what the Countess of Pembioke addressed to Chaucer of the halting tongue and fluent pen : that their silence pleases infinitely betUr t-han their speech. ' This diffuseness and incontinence of speech '„ says Lccky, in his ' Democracy and Liberty', 'has not been the characteristic of the deliberative assemblies that have left the greatest mark on the lustoiy of the world '. Washington and Benjamin Franklin seldom spoke for ten minutes at a time. The Duke of Wellington, Russell, Palmer ston, and Disraeli were usually direct, terse, and pointed. The British and the New Zealand Paihanients have found it necessary to protect themselves by time-limits from the dieaiy volubility of members whose clacking and too frequently lnelovant gdiiulityj recalls'Mackworth Praed's Vicar, ' Whose talk was like a stream which runs With rapid change from locks to roses It slipped from politics to puns ; It passed fiom Mahomet to Moses • Beginning with the laws which keep The planets in their radiant courses, And ending with some precept deep For drebsing eels or shoeing horses '.

But despite time-limits the stream of talk goes on hum-huni-hummmg like the river that babbles idly to the rocks and strands. There is, however, an element of good in all things that are not in their nature evil. « Much talking ' says Bag&hot, ' prevents much action, and if it does little to enlighten the subject, it at least greatly checks the progress of hasty and 'revolutionary legislation '. Let us therefore suffer the loquacious and be thankful for the small and uncovenanted mercies of their ball-jointed tongues. Besides, when a member has an insecure hold upon his electorate, or is a mere delegate to Parlli'am-ent, 'his lot, like the comic-opera policeman's, is not a happy one. To please, he must be heard. Moreover he must (to use Billings's phrase) be buttered on both sides— and then keep away from the fire. Democracy has

many crowning advantages. On* of its drawbacks is a tendency to parliamentary pirolixity. ' Study to be brief ', said an esteemed Australian clerical friend of ours to a candidate for Shire Council -honors ; ' I listened to that speech of yours last nigjit, and I thought you'd never, never stop '. * Yer reverence ', replied the candidate, 'many an' many's the time I said the same thing about yerself '. ' Chi parla troppo,' satys Goldoni in one of his comedies, • non puo parlar sempre benc '— ' the man that talks too much cannot always talk well '. The kernel of fche art 'of oratory— whether sacred or profane— is to know when to stop.