London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Now arrives the moment of playing one of the most amusing and sometimes instructive games of the House-questioning and answering. On the unbound, unstitched sheets of paper containing the programme of the business of the sitting, that each member has received in entering, appears a number of queries that have to be set at rest by the heads of the Government. One evening no less than eleven pages out of sixteen were devoted to these interrogations. They numbered eighty-one in all, and seventeen Ministers were required to be in their places to answer them, as the following table will demonstrate:- | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The figures are instructive of the condition of the House of Commons at the end of the century. They show that the Irish members ask about double as many questions as their Scotch colleagues, and that the Admiralty just now is attracting three times as much attention as the War Office. It is | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
51 | unnecessary to say that the interrogatories have, during the hours of the morning, been worked out in the various Government departments. The private secretaries of the Ministers are responsible for their masters' enlightenment. On the very next evening the questions amounted to only a couple of dozen, and a strange thing happened; only one member appeared to act as interrogator of a solitary demand, so twenty-three conundrums remained without solutions. Mr. Speaker goes through the list twice, calling upon the member who has to put the question by name. This proceeding affords strangers an opportunity of being acquainted with the personal characteristics of the representatives of the people. The questions (which are asked by merely mentioning their numbers) relate to all subjects, from the building of an ironclad to the salary of an Irish Government doorkeeper; from a lost postage stamp to a matter of foreign policy of the most vital importance. By about five o'clock the question game is over, and then the House fills rapidly. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
