Then the Clerk and the Members of the House of Commons, without a word having been spoken on their side, return to their Chamber. 2 The election of Speaker is at once proceeded with in the House of Commons. There is no ceremony at Westminster more novel and interesting, and none that illustrates more strikingly the continuity through the centuries of parliamentary customs. The Clerk of the House of Commons presides. He sits in his own seat at the Table. Immediately behind him is the untenanted high-canopied Chair of the Speaker. The Mace, that glittering emblem of the Speaker’s authority, is invisible. The Clerk may not speak a word in the discharge of his duties on this great occasion. All he is permitted to do is to rise and silently point with outstretched finger at the Member who, according to previous arrangement, is to propose the candidate for the Chair, and later on to indicate in the same dumb way the Member who is to second the motion. If there is to be no contest, and at the assembling of a new Parliament the former Speaker is invariably re-elected unanimously, the motion that he “do take the Chair of this House as Speaker” is made by a leading unofficial Ministerialist, and seconded by an old and respected Member of the Opposition. The Government take no part in the ceremony so far, in accordance with an old-established tradition that the election or re-election of a Speaker is the independent and unfettered action of the House. The motion is not put to the House in the customary manner. The Clerk does not say, “The question is that James William Lowther do take the Chair of this House as Speaker.” The Speaker-designate rises in his place on one of the back benches and humbly submits himself to the will of the House. The Commons express their unanimous approval of the motion by cheers without question put. Thus the Speaker-Elect is literally “called” to the Chair by the House.