‘The _clôture_,’ he said, ‘has been called an innovation--a foreign practice--but it appears to me that a proportionate majority, or what is called a two-thirds _clôture_, is a much greater innovation than the _clôture_ itself, and is absolutely foreign to all our principles, ideas, or customs. I know of nothing in the history of this country, or in its laws, or in its Constitution, which can be adduced as a precedent or as an analogy for the proposal in the amendment that the House should require two-thirds of its members to affirm any proposition. We do not require proportionate majorities for the election of our representatives, nor would any proposition to that effect have the slightest chance of being accepted by the country. London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow can return members to this House for a period of seven years by simple majorities, and the member so returned is as fully and as firmly the member of that constituency as if he had been elected unanimously. And I think that the election of a member for a great constituency for a period of seven years is a much more important matter and would seem to require a much stronger title, than the closing of an occasional debate in the House of Commons. We know, moreover, that many of the greatest reforms in our laws have been carried by majorities which did not number double figures; and it is undoubtedly, in theory, in the power of Parliament, by a majority of one, to change the Constitution of this country from a monarchy into a republic--which, again, I should say, would be a much more important matter than the closing of an occasional debate. I own I am a firm believer in the general infallibility of simple majorities: they have practically governed the British Empire from time immemorial; and I must express my surprise that the Tory party, or the Constitutional party, which recoils with horror from the Radical innovation of the _clôture_, should propose with eagerness, with anxiety, almost with desperation, the much greater Radical innovation of a two-thirds majority....