‘Deduced from the idea of a political assembly’

Josef Redlich published his principal work on parliamentary procedure in the United Kingdom under the title Recht und Technik des Englischen Par­laments (1905). Translated into English, Redlich’s work appeared as The Procedure of the House of Commons: A Study of its History and Present Form (1908).⁷⁶ Courtenay Ilbert, serving as Clerk to the House of Com­mons (1902-21), wrote the preface to Redlich’s work, and also contributed a chapter titled ‘Parliament as Legislative Machine’.

In his third and final volume Redlich discussed ‘the fundamental lines of the theory of parliamentary procedure, as communicated through Bentham to the continent of Europe’ under the heading ‘Bentham’s Theory of Par­liamentary Procedure and its Reception’.⁷⁸ Redlich began by reviewing the reception of Bentham’s work on the Continent. This was preceded by cita­tions to the work of three German investigators in the nineteenth century.

Redlich’s survey of Bentham’s Essay on Political Tactics - a work which had been largely untouched by scholars - praised Bentham for the ‘practi­cal intelligence’ and ‘logical powers’ he brought to bear with ‘irresistible force’.⁷⁹ Redlich was even-handed - and perhaps too gentle - with Bentham’s analytics. ‘The eccentricity, which only too often disfigures his writings, was almost entirely absent: it only appears in a few passages, for instance in the somewhat grotesque proposal of a system of rewards and punishments intended to secure regular attendance, and in the crochetty persistence with which he advocates his gigantic “table of motions”.’⁸⁰

Redlich’s discussion addressed the Parliamentary Model’s pre-commitments.

The method of exposition which Bentham adopts is, of course, that of logical deduction, of which he had a complete mastery. The leading

‘The tactics of political assemblies’ 137 notions are stated, their content is investigated, and then sub-divided and further analysed.⁸¹

At this point Redlich observed

on close inspection it may be seen that, in the formation of his ideas, Bentham is simply drawing upon an accurate and discriminating acquaintance with the historic parliamentary procedure of the House of Commons. The forms derived from English procedure are, no doubt, subjected to most minute and logical investigation, but they form the basis of the whole.⁸²

Redlich divided his critical analysis of Bentham’s theory of parliamentary procedure within four headings or ‘ends’. Redlich was a perfect Benthamite in this approach, gathering the mediate benefits that political society may derive from well-ordered discourse. These were publicity, impartiality of the presiding officer, separation of stages in debate, and members’ freedom of speech. These benefits framed Redlich’s discussion of time-management in legislative assemblies.⁸³

The third of Bentham’s fundamental principles... points to the neces­sity for a precise separation, both in form and in substance, between the different stages in the formation of the will of a political assembly, and for a strict observance of the definite logical order of these stages.⁸⁴

For example, when Redlich traced Bentham’s exposition of the purpose of debate in a legislative assembly, Bentham defined debate in functionalist terms.

The commingling of different subjects in debate is as objectionable as the confusion of separate stages in the formation of a decision. The practical requisites laid down - by Bentham - the rule that all motions and amendments must be drawn up in writing, the definite mode of drawing up laws, and dividing them into clauses - are but logical infer­ences from this principle.⁸⁶

Redlich followed Bentham by fracturing larger subjects of discussion into smaller and more manageable issues ‘to ascertain the will of the House upon one matter, at a time’. I have termed these discrete event states.⁸⁷ Having concluded his dissection of Bentham’s Essay - with considerable emphasis

on ‘logical inferences’ from ‘principles’ locatable in the work of an idealised assembly - Redlich assessed the utility of the Essay as follows.

The foregoing series of main principles comprises Bentham’s whole theory of the order of business and procedure of parliament. They are enunciated as if they were deduced from the “Idea of a political assem­bly”; but, to tell the truth, they are nothing but the results of a discrimi­nating study of the characteristics of the British Parliament at the end of the eighteenth century.⁸⁸

Redlich’s point-by-point analysis of Bentham’s Essay put Bentham, on criti­cal points, squarely in the tradition evolved by Hatsell and followed by Jef­ferson. Redlich also offered his own insights; these touched on issues current at the opening of the twentieth century.

Discussion of a bill in committee is taken section by section: each section is taken in subsections, these again in lines, and the lines are considered word by word. The order given by the text of the bill is adopted and the amendments and sub-amendments are discussed and voted upon in the succession so determined.

We may, then, say that the centre of gravity of the whole legislative action of the House of Commons lies in the region of the work of com­mittee of the whole House. It is in committee that the fate of a bill is really decided; its ultimate form is there settled in the clash of parties and opinions or by the compromises made between them. In this stage debate is quite free: members may speak to each question as often as necessary.⁸9

Here Redlich played the driver debate-and-ballot against the driver auction- and-bargaining. He positioned these two drivers as offering a ‘clash of... opinions’ or ‘compromises’. Redlich exposed the means by which these driv­ers encouraged members to ‘speak to each question as often as necessary’.⁹⁰ According to Redlich, following Bentham on this point, the intersection between time-management and word-management was defined by amend­ments divided within the three headings ‘suppressive, additive, or substi­tutive’.⁹¹ Bentham’s editor italicised the first appearance of these terms. ‘Amendments which relate to terms, can only have for their object one or other of these three objects - to suppress, to add, or to substitute. This last operation is effected by the union of the two first’.⁹²

Bentham framed members’ choices in managing ideas through limited formal outcomes. In this presentation of logically possible choices Bentham underscored his insistence that the value of ideas may be scored as mem­bers invoke them. In other words, debate-and-ballot offered members the opportunity to exchange ideas and simultaneously score the utility of these ideas to civil society.

‘The tactics of political assemblies’ 139 collective proximity to ideas that served as fuel when members went about exercising their collaborative ‘intelligence’. Word and number choices were proxies for the real intellectual effect, translated into the detailed kinetics of word insertion, addition, or substitution. Here we observe the heart and soul of Bentham’s ‘tactics’. This activity - addressed to the five things members can do with words - enabled members to unite, divide, or transpose the ideas thereby invoked. Above all, Bentham’s ‘tactics’ enabled members to score each other’s preferences via the ‘comparative number of suffrages’.⁹³

That there are only five things an assembly can do with words, a finitude, enabled an assembly to take account of the merit outcome of its efforts - ‘the fate of the bill’ - via the efficient consumption of energy in the assem­bly. Consumption of energy was also fixed by finitude. This singularity was marked off by the 24 hours of a calendar day. ‘About the middle of the eighteenth century’, Redlich remarked, ‘the House appears to have begun to feel the need of some more efficient method of grappling with its load of work and of some greater security for the carrying out of its programme’.⁹⁴

The visualisation to be employed, Redlich argued, called on the rule­writer to see how votes ‘in the succession so determined’ - Redlich’s phrase - would cumulate word choices that enabled the assembly or committee to score progress towards eventual adoption or rejection of the entire bill or resolution. This chaining of successive stages permitted quantification of the possibility of failure by the ‘comparative number of suffrages’. More impor­tantly, this quantification was revealed in scoring which became known to all members at the same time.

In his Historical Note Redlich offered his further general remarks on the issues raised at the intersection of time- and word-management.

the time of the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty... the group of members of Parliament... represented by the leaders of a constant majority in the House of Commons... had in its hands all the real power of the House, as well in respective of the order in which business should be done [as well] as of all other parliamentary matters’.⁹⁵

By the turn of the twentieth century, parliamentary procedure and practice had evolved into another government tool for accomplishing its merit objec­tives. In framing matters to this effect Redlich brought merit and process into a single unified perspective and thereby devalued what process had to offer merit outcomes. The ‘order in which business should be done’ is given equal weight by party ‘leaders’ with ‘all other parliamentary matters’. This was not eighteenth-century thinking, to say the least, and Redlich was one of the first to sound the alarm.

Redlich’s work offered favourable treatment of Bentham’s Essay; on this account alone, Redlich’s own views deserve critical examination. The overrid­ing tactical objective of party leaders was to exert control over their adherents and depress defections or, at least, reliably render them unlikely to undermine leaders’ objectives. Parliamentary procedure and practice were, on this account, very nearly a ruse. The surrender of time-management into the control of ‘the leaders of a constant majority in the House of Commons [who] held ‘all the real power of the House’ - Redlich’s observation - masked the more sinister effort by party leaders (on the government side of the House) to control their backbenchers. I underline this point. In some dark and distant world the goal of twentieth-century dictators was to oppress opponents. To Josef Redlich the road to disaster began when government oppressed its adherents.

To the eighteenth century time-management was ancillary to word­management. The core competence of members lived and breathed the five things one can do with words (as well as pounds sterling, dollars, dates, and other data): adding, deleting and substituting them in text brought forward for the approval or rejection by an assembly or committee. Time-management was a supportive enterprise: assemblies paid careful attention as its rules net­ted the acquisition by members of energy against members’ consumption of energy. Bentham pointed the way forwards by means of his conjecture that this netting was subject to quantitative measurement and that the variable of interest was the projected longevity of the law project written into law.

De-linkage came about in the nineteenth century, as Redlich informs us. Time-management became a tool of the party controlling the assembly. Once time-management became a tool of the government of the day, word­management did not survive on its own. The core competence could have survived; there is no logical reason why parliamentary procedure had to die so that majority rule over an assembly’s procedures might live.

A Benthamite would argue, and correctly so, that application of the States- General’s regime governing discussion sucked the life of out of any parlia­mentary discussion. The sterile expression of views in a modern legislative assembly likewise is attributable to the tit-for-tat interchange of speeches. Party affiliation fixes the order of speakers, standing in for the rankings the States-General valued. Fixed arrangements were and are incompatible with any serious commitment to word-management. Bentham explained the mechanical operations at work by reference to the core competence of legis­lators as modelled. He deserves a second reading on that score alone.