Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/184

 purpose. This was the first point of practice I raised, and I need scarcely insist that it was not impeding public business to recommend a course that would have saved the waste of a day. On the second occasion the leader of the House gave notice of a motion to make five a quorum in committees, and he very graciously indicated that he did so at my suggestion. I might ask the House to consider the bearing and significance of that fact. No select committee can proceed to business in the absence of any of its members, unless a quorum has been fixed, and if I had desired, as had been shamefully alleged, to thwart the Government I had only to hold my tongue, and all the committees appointed would be paralysed until a complete attendance was obtained, but I crossed the floor, and mentioned the difficulty and its remedy to the leader of the House, and to no other person whatever. This is the course I would have taken on all similar occasions, but that on the debate on Cross Benches an arrangement unknown in the House of Commons and established here in total ignorance of Parliamentary usage, the gentlemen on the Treasury Benches took a tone of contemptuous indifference to Parliamentary usages which demanded a signal lesson, and they got the lesson they needed. Under the Parliamentary practice which we were bound by the Constitution to follow, some class of Bills must originate in Committee of the whole House, and if by mistake this form has been omitted all subsequent proceedings are void, and must be commenced again. Would any man venture to say I retarded public business by preventing Bills being carried through several stages in error, which in the end would have to be withdrawn and commenced anew? The Commissioner of Customs, in fact, did introduce a Money Bill without the necessary preliminary, and when I pointed out the consequences he silently withdrew' it and introduced it anew. One other instance is the last I would mention. On the day of the Budget speech, Mr. Michie very properly insisted that the financial statement should be made in Committee, and the Government were in consternation, as they had not yet appointed their Chairman of Ways and Means, and thought it could not be done without formal notice, and once for all. Well, how did I exhibit my propensity to impede public