A friend of mine once went to Roebuck to ask his attention to some point coming up in the House of Commons, and offered him a paper to read.  Roebuck said, “I will not read, but I will hear”.  This well illustrates one of the favourable aspects of speech.  People with time on their hands prefer being instructed by the living voice; the exertion is less, and the enlivening tones of a speaker impart an extraneous interest, to which we have to add the sympathy of the surrounding multitude.  The early stages of instruction must be conducted viva voce; it is a late acquirement to be able to extract information from a printed page.  Yet circumstances arise when the advantage of the printed page predominates.  The more frequent experience in approaching public men is to be told, that they will not listen but will read.  An hour’s address can be read in ten minutes:  it is not impossible, therefore, to master a Parliamentary debate in one-tenth of the time occupied in the delivery.

A passing remark is enough to point out the revolution that would take place in Parliamentary reporting, and in the diffusion of political instruction through the press, by the system of printing the speeches direct.  The full importance of this result will be more apparent in a little.  There has been much talk of late about the desirability of a more perfect system of reporting, with a view to the preservation of the debates.  Yet it may be very much doubted, whether the House of Commons would ever incur the expense of making up for the defects of newspaper reporting, by providing short-hand writers to take down every word, with a view to printing in full.

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[SECONDING EXTENDED TO A PLURALITY OF BACKERS.]

[PROPORTIONING OF BACKERS.]

Before completing the survey of possible improvements in deliberative procedure, I propose to extend the employment of another device already in use, but scarcely more than a form; I mean the requiring of a seconder before a proposal can be debated.  The signification of this must be, that in order to obtain the judgment of an assembly on any proposal, the mover must have the concurrence of one other member; a most reasonable condition surely.  What I would urge farther in the same direction is that, instead of demanding one person in addition to the mover, as necessary in all cases, there should be a varying number according to the number of the assembly.  In a copartnery of three or four, to demand a seconder to a motion would be absurd; in a body of six or eight it is scarcely admissible.  I have known bodies of ten and twelve, where motions could be discussed without a seconder; but even with these, there would be a manifest propriety in compelling a member to convince at least one other person privately before putting the body to the trouble of a discussion.  If, however, we should begin the practice of seconding with ten, is one seconder enough for twenty, fifty, a hundred, or six hundred?