The Speech is read in both Houses—in the Lords by the Lord Chancellor, in the Commons by the Speaker—when they reassemble after the ceremony of the opening of Parliament by the King. But before this is done each House gives a first reading to a Bill, in obedience to a Standing Order in the Lords, and in the Commons by ancient custom. The incident escapes the attention of most Lords and Commons, so unostentatiously is it done, and probably its constitutional significance is lost to most of those who may chance to notice it. In the Lords the Bill is called “Select Vestries Bill,” and in the Commons the “Bill for the more effectual Preventing of Clandestine Outlawries.” It may seem a matter of form, the procedure being that the Clerk in each House simply reads the title of his Bill, but it is meant to assert the right of Parliament to act as it thinks fit, without reference to any outside authority, to debate matters other than “the causes of summons” set forth in the Speech from the Throne. Neither of these Bills is ever heard of again during the session. The Outlawries Bill, which does service in the House of Commons, has been preserved in the drawers of the Table since the opening of the present Chamber in 1852. For one moment, at the opening of each session, it is produced by the Clerk, and is seen no more for another twelve months. CHAPTER XVIII DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS TO THE KING 1 The Commons hear the Speech from the Throne twice—by the Sovereign in the House of Lords and again at its subsequent recital in their own Chamber by the Speaker. Macaulay states in his _History_ that the first Speech of James II to Parliament in 1685—notable for its extraordinary admonition to the Commons, that if they wished to meet frequently they must treat him generously in the matter of supplies—was greeted with loud cheers by the Tory Members assembled at the Bar of the House of Lords. “Such acclamations were then usual,” says the historian. “It has now been during many years the grave and decorous usage of Parliaments to hear in respectful silence all expressions, acceptable or unacceptable, which are uttered from the Throne.” The recital of the King’s Speech by Mr. Speaker to the House of Commons was unmarked by any demonstration of Party feeling for two centuries and a quarter. But at the opening of the last session of the Balfour Parliament, in February 1905, there was a breach of the traditional decorum, which, as a change in parliamentary manners, is noteworthy enough to be placed on record. The promise in the Speech of economy, “so far as the circumstances of the case admitted,” was received with derisive laughter on the Opposition benches, while the mention of the “prospect” of a promised Redistribution Bill, by which Ireland was to lose twenty-two seats, provoked loud and angry cries of defiance from the Irish Members. Since then the reading of the Speech by the Speaker in the Commons,