As “Mr. Speaker” does not speak in the debates, the title of the President of the House of Commons appears, at first sight, paradoxical. The original function of the office was to sum up, like the Judge at a trial, the arguments of both sides at the close of a debate. “If any doubt arise upon a Bill,” says an Order passed in 1604, “the Speaker to explain, but not to sway the House with argument or dispute.” Mr. Speaker had also to “speak” the views of the House in its contentions with the Crown, about supplies and taxes, before the Revolution of 1688. The duties of the Speaker to-day are not so anxious or troublesome. The occasions on which he conveys the views or desires of the Commons to the Sovereign, or his representatives, the Lords Commissioners in the House of Lords, are rare, and always formal or ceremonious. He has been relieved long since of the invidious task of summing up a debate in which the contending parties had argued out their differences. His duties are now more appropriate to his office, as controller and guide of a deliberative Assembly. He keeps the talk strictly to the subject of discussion. He decides points of order. He interprets the rules of the House. He is ever ready to assist Members in doubt or difficulty about a question, a motion or a Bill. He guards with jealous care the authority, honour and dignity of the House. He is most concerned with the maintenance of its great traditions of good order, decorum, and freedom of opinion. Above all, Mr. Speaker must be scrupulously fair, absolutely just, in rulings which may affect any of the political sections of the Assembly. For the most precious attribute of the Chair of the House of Commons is impartiality. The Speaker, like the King, is supposed to have no politics. That has become almost a recognized constitutional principle. Of course, he is returned to the House originally as a supporter of one or other of the political parties. It follows also that on his first appointment to the Chair he is necessarily the choice, or the nominee, of the political Party which at the time is supreme. The Chair of the House of Commons, when vacated by resignation or death, has always been considered the legitimate prize of the Party then in office or in power. Accordingly the Speaker has invariably been chosen from the ranks of the Ministerialists. All the Speakers of the nineteenth century—Sir Henry Addington, Sir John Freeman-Mitford, Charles Abbot, Charles Manners-Sutton, James Abercromby, Charles Shaw-Lefevre, John Evelyn Denison, Henry Bouverie Brand, Arthur Wellesley Peel and William Court Gully—were so chosen and appointed, and so was James William Lowther, the first Speaker elected in the twentieth century. But whether the Speaker is first designated by the Government, or, in case of a division, is carried by the majority of the Government, when he is being conducted by his proposer and seconder from his place on the benches to the Chair, he, as it were, doffs his Party