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Section 14.—: Indisposition of Speakers obviated. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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Section 14.—

Indisposition of Speakers obviated.

Art. I. To secure the national business against interruption by interruption of the sittings of the Commons House,* an occasional substitute for the Speaker shall at all times be forthcoming: Vice-Speaker is his official title.

Art. II. The Vice-Speaker shall at all times be provided by the Speaker, by an instrument of appointment consigned to the custody of the chief clerk.

The appointment is revocable by the Speaker at pleasure, on and by the appointment of another person to that office.

Art. III. For the acts of the Vice-Speaker in respect of such his office, the Speaker is responsible, as if they were his own.

Art. IV. To the office of Vice-Speaker no emolument shall, in any shape be attached.

Art. V. The House has, at all times, power to substitute to any Vice-Speaker another of its own choice.

Art. VI. In default of the Speaker and the Vice-Speaker, the functions of the Speaker shall be exercised by the chief clerk: in his default, by the clerk who is senior in standing; and so downwards, according to the length of service.

[* ]Hitherto, so long as a Speaker has been indisposed, the business of the House, and thereby the business of the nation, has been at a stand. On or without an intimation from a Monarch or a Minister, a Speaker, as well as any other man, may be indisposed whenever he pleases. The business of the nation is of no importance: a Speaker of the Commons House is not susceptible of infirmity, bodily or mental:—One or other of these maxims is what the present practice in this matter has for its ground: it rests with Honourable House to say which. For the causes, see the note †, p. 157. Under radicalism, the business of the nation will not be of no importance: under radicalism, a Speaker will not be exempt from human infirmity.

Under real and preappointed law, the man in power—monarch, minister, judge—be he what he may—is not altogether without check: there is a something, which is or may be in the eyes of everybody, and which he may be expected at least to be bound by. Under imaginary and retrospective—or, as the phrase is, ex post facto law (for such is all common law)—he is without check: on each individual occasion, he imagines whatever suits his sinister interest, and says—this is law. This (he says) is law: and, as if that were not enough, from the beginning of things down to this time, so (if you will believe him) it has been; though this is the first time that any such thing ever entered into man’s thoughts. See this in Blackstone: and this it is that makes “common law the perfection of reason.” Of reason? But in what eyes? In the eyes of all those who have or have had the making of it; and of all those others whom they have made their dupes.