Churchill, Randolph Henry Spencer, Lord, 1849-1895
As with the Employers’ Liability Bill, so with Hares and Rabbits, and so
with Burials, though the task of perfecting these two latter measures
seems principally to have been discharged by Mr. Balfour and Sir Henry
Wolff. At every point the Fourth Party were armed with facts and
arguments; on every question they had a plan, in all difficulties they
sustained each other. The Government were repeatedly exhorted to spare
no labour for the public weal. Legislation of an important character,
they were reminded, could not be passed in haste, or without proper
intervals for reflection on the part of those who were responsible for
it. Whenever the Government and their partisans showed signs of
impatience--and, judging by the interruptions which are sprinkled in the
columns of ‘Hansard,’ this was not infrequent--a motion, or the threat
of a motion, to report progress or to adjourn was found an admirable
weapon to employ; while all the time the House as a whole was kept in
subjection and often in good-humour, by the excellent quality of the
speeches, the wit by which they were adorned, the fertility of resource
which distinguished them and the reality of the arguments advanced.
Not content with discharging--however conscientiously--the functions of
criticism, the Fourth Party aspired to legislate constructively. With
the object of encouraging private thrift and ready-money transactions,
Lord Randolph introduced in 1881 a Small Debts Bill which sought to make
debts of under one hundred pounds irrecoverable after one year from the
date of their being contracted. Sir Henry Wolff carried a measure
satirically described by Sir William Harcourt as the ‘Bournemouth Reform
Bill,’ which enabled the inhabitants of seaside resorts to let their
houses for short periods without impairing their voting qualification.
In every Parliamentary incident, great or small, the four allies were
prominent, if not supreme. The question of erecting a monument in
Westminster Abbey to the Prince Imperial of France, killed in the Zulu
War, produced differences in the Government, and from the division by
which the proposal was rejected several Ministers abstained by
withdrawing to the two small rooms behind the Chair which are used for
the minor consultations of colleagues or opponents. Sir Henry Wolff at
once raised a debate upon this alleged impropriety and, although Sir
Stafford Northcote deprecated his action, a long wrangle followed, from
which the Government emerged with ruffled plumes. When Mr. Dodson, the
President of the Local Government Board, by an absurd mistake got
himself elected for a second constituency without having previously
applied for the Chiltern Hundreds, it was Lord Randolph Churchill who
drew attention to the irregularity; and as the procedure of the House
rendered it difficult to debate the matter without some artful device,
he himself moved for a new writ for the borough of Chester, while Mr.
Gorst--by collusion, as Mr.
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