(_All rights reserved_) PREFACE The purpose of this book, briefly stated, is to describe Parliament doing its work, as a living organization, in the framing of laws, in the levying of taxes and in their spending, and in the consideration of the discontents, anxieties and necessities of the Commonwealth, with a view to their removal or amelioration. I have embodied in my book—if I may say so without sounding the loud timbrel too vain-gloriously—considerable experience as a journalist of General Elections and by-elections in all parts of Great Britain and Ireland, and of thirty-five years’ observation of the two Houses of Parliament from the Reporters’ Gallery, supplemented by a study of their history and traditions, laws and procedure, the careers of leading statesmen, and the political principles by which they guided their management of public affairs. There are many valuable text-books on the Constitution by learned lawyers and philosophical writers. My book does not aspire to be classed with these grave and profound treatises. They are of high documentary value, but I think it is doubtful whether one can really get to know Parliament from a study of them alone. They ignore the human side of Parliament. Often they seem to present Parliament as a mere abstraction—a thing of rules, principles and theories unrelated to the human personalities who compose its membership. Parliament cannot be divorced from life any more than Literature. Rightly to appreciate Parliament in its strength and in its weakness you must have an acquaintance with it in being, and an understanding of the politicians who, whether in office or out of office, whether in Government or Opposition, bend it, or try to bend it, to their will. Mr. Speaker Lowther, presiding at a lecture on the House of Commons, told a story which serves to illustrate the difference between theory and experience. When Sir William Anson, the author, as Mr. Lowther truly said, of “a very grave and almost classical work” on the British Constitution, was being escorted up the floor of the House of Commons to take the oath and his seat for the first time, an old and witty Radical member who happened to be sitting beside Mr. Lowther said to him: “Is this the gentleman who has written a great work on the House of Commons?” “Yes, that is the very man,” replied Mr. Lowther. “Well,” the other remarked, “he will find it a very different place from what he thought it was.” It is idle for historical writers to try to depreciate the importance of personality in affairs. Certainly in Parliament it is personality that, even more than opinion, is the determining factor in every great political crisis.