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House of Commons   /haʊs əv kˈɑmənz/   Listen
House of Commons

noun
1.
The lower house of the British parliament.  Synonym: British House of Commons.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"House of Commons" Quotes from Famous Books



... antecedents and their costume of circumstance into the every-day aspect of the gentleman of common cultivated society. That is Sir Coeur de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit; there is the Laureate in a frockcoat like your own, and the leader of the House of Commons in a necktie you do not envy. That is the kind of thing you want to take the nonsense out of you. If you are not decanted off from yourself every few days or weeks, you will think it sacrilege to brush a cobweb from ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... kingdom arose the cry of Reform which had been echoed from the second French revolution. Among all classes arose the war note of Reform. It sounded loud and high. It was borne over the continent. Nothing but Reform. Reform of the House of Commons was the ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... House of Commons blossomed to-night like a rose-garden. Yesterday, and for days before, empty benches and a fagged remnant wrestling with routine votes. To-night House crowded, and buzz of excitement filled chamber. GLADSTONE going to move hostile Resolution on Government ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... building, was actually unfinished, the council had not yet sat in it; and it was just as likely that the Doge should then propose to destroy and rebuild it, as in this year, 1853, it is that any one should propose in our House of Commons to throw down the new Houses of Parliament, under the title of the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... of the "Nonconformist Conscience," in a somewhat unlikely quarter, looked about him, rubbed his hands, wept, smiled, wept again, and then mechanically uttering a guttural "Hear! Hear!" (as though he were listening, in the House of Commons, to the jocund HARCOURT, or the jocular LAWSON, or the robustious T. W. RUSSELL, or the astute CAINE) and then, walking across the room to a well-remembered pigeon-hole, took thence an official-looking scroll, sat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 25, 1893 • Various

... Palmerston? Good. The London Correspondent of the Tattlesnivel Bleater is in the act of writing his weekly letter, finds himself rather at a loss to settle this question finally, leaves off, puts his hat on, goes down to the lobby of the House of Commons, sends in for Lord John Russell, and has him out. He draws his arm through his Lordship's, takes him aside, and says, "John, will you ever accept office under Palmerston?" His Lordship replies, "I will not." The Bleater's London Correspondent retorts, with the caution such a man is ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... K.C. under such conditions makes you realize to the full what an inestimable boon lawyers confer upon their fellow-citizens when they sink all personal ambition and flock into the House of Commons for their country's good. It makes you rejoice in that time-honoured arrangement under which the Lord Chancellorship is the reward and recognition, not of mastery of the principles and practice of jurisprudence, but of parliamentary ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... of certain other members of Parliament, more after the heart of Sir John Hawkins, he said that he grudged success to a man who made a figure by a knowledge of a few forms, though his mind was "as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet;" but then he did not grudge Burke's being the first man in the House of Commons, for he would be the first man everywhere. And Burke equally admitted Johnson's supremacy in conversation. "It is enough for me," he said to some one who regretted Johnson's monopoly of the talk on a particular occasion, "to have ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... had agitated England, with the rest of Europe, came to a close in 1815. Immediately afterward domestic polities needed adjustment. "The disabilities were swept away," says a writer, "the House of Commons was reconstituted, the municipalities were reformed, slavery was abolished."[142] In due time the nation became adjusted to peace; the popular mind lost its nervousness; the universities returned to their sober thinking; and the Church ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... plot 98, he insisted that innocent victims should be sacrificed to content the multitude. Sir William Temple writes: "We only disagreed in one point, which was the leaving some priests to the law upon the accusation of being priests only, as the House of Commons had desired; which I thought wholly unjust. Upon this point Lord Halifax and I had so sharp a debate at Lord Sunderland's lodgings, that he told me, if I would not concur in points which were so necessary for the people's satisfaction, he would tell everybody I was a Papist. And upon his affirming ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... French Ambassador in England established relations with Colonial agents in London which enabled him to follow the progress of the growing discontent and anticipate the questions which must soon be brought forward for decision. Franklin's examination before the House of Commons became the text of an elaborate despatch, harmonizing with the report of his secret agent, and opening a prospect which even the weary eyes of Louis XV. could not look upon without some return of the spirit that had won for his youth the long forfeited title of the Well-Beloved. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... mentioned that it includes various notices of the treats or dinners which the Lord Mayor and the sheriffs give by turns to the judges, sergeants, &c. at the beginning and end of the respective terms; as well as of the manner of delivering petitions to the House of Commons, which is generally done by the sheriff; the city having a right to present petitions by an officer of its own, and without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... article." Mrs. Sidgwick in "Salt and Savour," page 232, wrote: "But what intrigued her was Little Mamma's remark at breakfast," From the Parliamentary news, one learns that "Mr. Harcourt intrigued the House of Commons by his sustained silence for two years" and that "London is interested in, and not a little intrigued, by the statement." This use of intrigue in the sense of "perplex, puzzle, trick, or deceive" dates from 1600. Then it fell into a state of somnolence, and after an existence ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser

... Lords and the country, hesitated and chaffered, in the end reluctantly giving in. Something of the same thing happened when, six years later, STANLEY, now succeeded to the earldom of Derby, formed an Administration and proposed to make DIZZY Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Among the most strenuous objectors to the proposal was QUEEN VICTORIA. But DISRAELI was invincible because he was indispensable. How courageously and with what matchless skill he fought against overwhelming odds, and won the day, is a fascinating story that in the skilled hands ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various

... you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university; and more home truths are to be learnt from listening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from attending a formal one in the House of Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often know more of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusing anecdotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, and gossiped in a country town ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... glance Shelley's position as a practical politician, I shall anticipate the course of a few years, and compare his Irish pamphlets with an essay published in 1817, under the title of "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom". He saw that the House of Commons did not represent the country; and acting upon his principle that government is the servant of the governed, he sought means for ascertaining the real will of the nation with regard to its Parliament, and for bringing the collective ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... oratory resolves itself into the conviction that I should have heard Cicero under certain conditions of time and place, which is identical with my expectation that I shall hear a certain speaker to-morrow if I go to the House of Commons.[140] However this be, the thing to note is that such retrospective beliefs, when once formed, tend to approximate in character to recollections. This is true even of new beliefs in recent events directly made known by present objective consequences ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... of parliamentary rights by Colonel Pride, in 1649. At the head of two regiments of soldiers he surrounded the House of Commons, seized forty-one of the members and shut out 160 others. None were allowed into the House but those most friendly to Cromwell. This fag-end went by the name of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... he observes, that "in the time occupied in declining, a man of science might test the merits." This is, alas! too true; so well do applicants of this kind know how to stick on. But every rule has its exception: I have heard of one. The late Lord Spencer[28]—the Lord Althorp of the House of Commons—told me that a speculator once got access to him at the Home Office, and was proceeding to unfold his way of serving the public. "I do not understand these things," said Lord Althorp, "but I happen to have —— (naming an eminent engineer) upstairs; suppose you ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... there is a lofty hall of stately appearance, with marble pillars, and tesselated pavement, which forms the central lobby, or grand vestibule. I might mention, that the debating chambers are only ten feet in length and width less than the British House of Commons. Adjoining the central lobby is the parliamentary library, a large apartment, with galleries above each other reaching to the full height of the building. The usual refreshment, luncheon, and smoking rooms have not been forgotten, in connection with the comfort ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... Lord Mayors from 1769-1775 (inclusive) we find Beckford, Trecothick, Crosby, Townshend, Bull, Wilkes, and Sawbridge. 'Where did Beckford and Trecothick learn English?' asked Johnson (ante, iii. 76). Crosby, in the year of his mayoralty (1770-1), was committed to the Tower by the House of Commons, for having himself committed to prison a messenger of the House when attempting to arrest the printer of the London Evening Debates, who was accused of a breach of privilege in reporting the Debates (Parl. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... passion which is the instinct of all great souls. He worshipped that goddess, wheresoever she appeared; but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favorite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House of Commons. Besides the characters of the individuals that compose our body, it is impossible, Mr. Speaker, not to observe that this House has a collective character of its own. That character, too, however imperfect, is not unamiable. Like all great public collections of men, you possess ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Kearney, the House of Commons in any way reflects college distinction? Do you look for senior-wranglers and double-firsts on the Treasury bench? and are not the men who carry away distinction the men of breadth, not depth? Is it not the wide acquaintance with a large field of knowledge, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... literature. The political institutions of Great Britain are rapidly approaching our own. While progressive, the people of that country are also conservative, but with each successive decade they extend the power of the House of Commons so that already in some respects it represents better the public sentiment than the Congress of the United States. It responds quickly to a change of popular opinion. The functions of the crown are now more limited than those of our President, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... that. 'He will probably be at the House of Commons, or too busy somewhere to come to me then. But why do you ask? Do you wish to ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... Campbell had given notice of intention to move rejection. Everything pointed to long dreary evening, the serving-up of that "thrice boiled cole-wort" which Carlyle honestly believed to form the principal dish in the House of Commons shilling dinner. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various

... was so deeply stirred by the manner in which English investors and borrowing states had suffered from the system by which the business of international finance was handled, that a Select Committee of the House of Commons was "appointed to inquire into the circumstances attending the making of contracts for Loans with certain Foreign States and also the causes which have led to the non-payment of the principal moneys and interest due in respect of such loans." Its report is a very interesting document, well ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... place, or quantity of matter to be explored, we may sometimes learn, within the given limits, all that there is to know: as all the bones of a particular animal, or the list of English monarchs hitherto, or the names of all the members of the House of Commons at the present time. Such cases, however, do not invalidate the above logical truth that few general terms are exhaustively known in their denotation; for the very fact of assigning limits of time and place impairs the generality of a term. The bones of a certain animal may ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... Promenade, and to have detected in the act of squeezing Miss Pupford's hand, and to have heard pronounce the words, "Cruel Euphemia, ever thine!"—or something like that. Miss Linx hazarded a guess that he might be House of Commons, or Money Market, or Court Circular, or Fashionable Movements; which would account for his getting into the paper so often. But, it was fatally objected by the pupil-mind, that none of those notabilities could possibly ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens

... elected President of the Royal Academy, and became practically a British painter. Copley was more of an American than West, and more of a painter. Some of his portraits are exceptionally fine, and his figure pieces, like Charles I. demanding the Five Members of House of Commons are excellent in color and composition. C. W. Peale (1741-1827), a pupil of both Copley and West, was perhaps more fortunate in having celebrated characters like Washington for sitters than in his art. Trumbull (1756-1843) preserved on canvas the Revolutionary ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... subduing of the flesh, by wearing a hair shirt, taking a log for a pillow, and whipping himself on Fridays. At the age of twenty-one he entered Parliament, and soon after he had been called to the bar he was made Under-Sheriff of London. In 1503 he opposed in the House of Commons Henry VII.'s proposal for a subsidy on account of the marriage portion of his daughter Margaret; and he opposed with so much energy that the House refused to grant it. One went and told the king that a beardless boy had disappointed all his expectations. ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... in hand, both for revolution. The former denied the absolute sovereignty of the king and sought a great change in the form, the spirit, and the structure of government. They held that the ultimate power of control should rest in the House of Commons as the representative of the people. The latter party sought the same process within the church. They held that it should be controlled by assemblages of the people, maintained that decentralization should take ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... own house, with his tenants, and in the great iron-works—almost a town in itself—which fed his fine fortune. While from his equals—even from his fellow-members of that not over-reverent or easily impressible body, the House of Commons—he required and received a degree of deference such as men yield only to an unusually powerful character. And there was now just such underlying energy in Katherine's expression. Her eyes were dark, as a clear midnight ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... particularly curious to witness the debut of the Hon. Member for Preston, in an assembly so little accustomed, as that so long misnamed the House of Commons, to such an out-and-outer of the Demos coming between the wind and their nobility—to see whether any gaucherie of manner would betray an uneasy consciousness of his not being quite at ease among those scions of aristocracy, who occupy benches ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various

... Parliament. He gave (thanks to his wife) six of the grandest dinners, and two of the most crowded balls of the season. He made a successful first speech in the House of Commons. He endowed a church in a poor neighborhood. He wrote an article which attracted attention in a quarterly review. He discovered, denounced, and remedied a crying abuse in the administration of a public charity. He received (thanks once more to his wife) a ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... a Provost of Eton, a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and representative of Truro in the Long Parliament. This "old illiterate Jew," as Wood abusively termed him, had made a verse translation of the Psalms, which the House of Commons cordially recommended. The House of Lords, on the other hand, preferred Barton's translation, and many other contemporaneous attempts were made to meet the growing demand for a good metrical rendering—a demand which, by the way, has remained but imperfectly ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... be a hundred and twenty years since Burke first took his seat, in the House of Commons, and it is eighty-five years since his voice ceased to be heard there. Since his death, as during his life, opinion as to the place to which he is entitled among the eminent men of his country has touched every extreme. Tories have extolled him ...
— Burke • John Morley

... a plain tendency of all civilized governments toward plutocracy. The power of wealth in the English House of Commons has steadily increased for fifty years. The history of the present French Republic has shown an extraordinary development of plutocratic spirit and measures. In the United States many plutocratic doctrines have a currency which is not granted them anywhere else; that is, a man's right to have ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... than the rest—and as incredulous of St. Remy's saintship as a Protestant Bishop, or Positivist Philosopher—took upon him to dispute the King's and the Church's claim, in the manner, suppose, of a Liberal opposition in the House of Commons; and disputed it with such security of support by the public opinion of the fifth century, that—the king persisting in his request—the fearless soldier dashed the vase to pieces with his war-axe, exclaiming "Thou shalt have no more ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... to the House of Commons by Messrs. Lyon Playfair, Walpole and Ashley, in the spring of 1875, but was withdrawn on the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole question. Some account of the Anti-Vivisection ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... that would lead to an increase of famines in India were fully pointed out by me in 1871 in the "Experiences of a Planter," in letters to the "Times," and in the evidence I gave when examined by the India Finance Committee of the House of Commons in 1872. There were two principal causes—the spread of the use of money instead of grain as a medium of exchange, and such a restricted development of communications that, while these were sufficient to drain the countries in the interior of their grain, they were ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... Executive branch: British monarch, governor general, prime minister, deputy prime minister, Cabinet Legislative branch: bicameral Parliament (Parlement) consists of an upper house or Senate (Senat) and a lower house or House of Commons (Chambre des Communes) Judicial branch: Supreme Court Leaders: Chief of State: Queen ELIZABETH II (since 6 February 1952), represented by Governor General Raymond John HNATSHYN (since 29 January 1990) Head of Government: Prime Minister (Martin) Brian MULRONEY (since 4 September ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... he, with an intention to keep my life of honour in view, in the declaration I made her; but, as it has been said of a certain orator in the House of Commons, who more than once, in a long speech, convinced himself as he went along, and concluded against the side he set out intending to favour, so I in earnest pressed without reserve for matrimony in the progress of my harangue, which state I little thought of urging upon her with so much strength ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... Edinburgh to read for the law, and incidentally to develop with the aid of an amateur debating society the oratorical talents that were in time to make him the logical successor of Pitt, Fox, and Burke in the House of Commons. He continued none the less a lover of pleasure, some of which, however, he now took in the healthy form of long walking trips through the Highlands. In this way he acquired a desire for travel, and when, in the autumn of 1799, an opportunity came for an extended tour of Denmark, Sweden, and ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... proves that while wine and brandy are the tipple of slaves, whiskey and ale are the drink of the free: sentiments of a similar kind distinguish his "Earnest Cry and Prayer to the Scotch Representatives in the House of Commons," each of whom he exhorts by name to defend the remaining liberties and immunities of his country. A higher tone distinguishes the "Address to the Deil:" he records all the names, and some of them are strange ones; and all the acts, and some of them are as whimsical as they are terrible, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... air from the lower to the upper rooms. The lower part of this house was repeatedly set on fire in the presence, among others, of the King and Queen, the members of Parliament, the Lord Mayor, and the Aldermen. The House of Commons granted Hartley L2,500 in aid of the expenses incurred, and the Corporation erected in the grounds an obelisk—which can be plainly seen from the Kingston Road—recording the experiments of the grant. The heath was the scene of many duels, among others, ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... of the British House of Commons are disappointing to the pilgrim in search of decorum. The Mother of Parliaments has trouble with her ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons, and the Earl of Delawar, Chairman of the Committees ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... object—of those who have yielded in this matter to the arguments of the reformers. There had arisen in England a system of patronage, under which it had become gradually necessary for politicians to use their influence for the purchase of political support. A member of the House of Commons, holding office, who might chance to have five clerkships to give away in a year, found himself compelled to distribute them among those who sent him to the House. In this there was nothing pleasant to the distributer ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... more after his friend, and disturbing the monsignore, who was at breakfast with Lothair one morning, Bertram obstinately outstayed the priest, and then said: "I tell you what, old fellow, you are rather hippish; I wish you were in the House of Commons." ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... as to the antiquity of this dance, it may interest him as well as others of the readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES" to know, that when Walpole made up his mind to abandon his Excise bill (which met with a still fiercer opposition out of doors than in the House of Commons), he signified his intention to a party of his adherents at the supper-table, by quoting the first line ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various

... engaged with a two-pronged iron fork—the heir of Britannia with a BIDENT! The man of genius who drew that picture saw little of the society which he satirized and amused. Gilray watched public characters as they walked by the shop in St. James's Street, or passed through the lobby of the House of Commons. His studio was a garret, or little better; his place of amusement a tavern-parlor, where his club held its nightly sittings over their pipes and sanded floor. You could not have society represented by men to whom it was not familiar. When Gavarni came to England a few years since—one of the ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the social and political condition of many countries, having mixed much with men and women at home and abroad, Errington thought it time to take his place in the great commonwealth—to marry, and to try for a seat in the House of Commons. He therefore selected Lady Alice Mordaunt. She was rather pretty, graceful, gentle, and quite at his service. He really like her in a sort of fatherly way; he looked forward with quiet pleasure to making her very happy, and did ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... 1795 my father was presented to the living of Collon, in the county of Louth, where he resided from that time. His vicarage was within five minutes' walk of the residence of Mr. Foster, then Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, the dear friend of Mr. Edgeworth, who came to Collon in the spring of 1798 several times, and at last offered me his ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... called himself when he got old and poor—a rent-charge on Providence. . . . . Yes, I must try that way,' she continued, with a sarcasm towards people out of hearing. I must buy a "Peerage" for one thing, and a "Baronetage," and a "House of Commons," and a "Landed Gentry," and learn what people are about me. 'I must go to Doctors' Commons and read up wills of the parents of any likely gudgeons I may know. I must get a Herald to invent an escutcheon of my family, and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... his—this determination to be his own priest—is, if not the strongest, certainly the steadiest and most constant feeling that he manifests. We trace it throughout his whole career. The first thing we hear of him in the House of Commons is a protest, a sort of ominous growl, against the promotion of some Arminian or semi-Popish divine. "If these are the steps to church preferment, what are we to expect!" Almost the first glimpse we catch of him when he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... that he proposed to write a work called "An Introduction to Astrology," in which he would satisfy the whole kingdom of the lawfulness of that art. Many of the soldiers were for it, he says, and many of the Independent party, and abundance of worthy men in the House of Commons, his assured friends, and able to take his part against the Presbyterians, who would have silenced his predictions if they could. He afterwards carried his plan into execution, and when his book was published, went with another astrologer named Booker to the headquarters of the parliamentary ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... late Mr. Joseph Hume called in the House of Commons for a return of all Indian surveys carried on during the ten previous years. The result proved that no less than a score had been suddenly "broken up," by order ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... cavernous dinner under the House of Commons came to the conclusion that Benham was a dreamer. And over against Amanda at her dinner-party sat Sir Sidney Umber, one of those men who know ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... was at this turning-point in the career of his large-headed but diminutive hero that the grotesque humour of the Reader would play upon the risible nerves of his hearers, as, according to Mr. Disraeli's phrase, Sir Robert Peel used to play upon the House of Commons, "like an old fiddle." Determined to Go Into Society in style, with his twelve thousand odd hundred, Mr. Chops, we are told, "sent for a young man he knowed, as had a very genteel appearance, and was a Bonnet at ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... are equally inaccessible to them; for though, perhaps, in theory a Monkey could be promoted to the Bench if he had served his party sufficiently long and faithfully in the House of Commons (to which body he is admissible—at least I can find no rule or custom, let alone a statute, against it), yet he is cut off from such an ambition at the very outset by his inadmissibility to a legal career. The Inns ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... properly within the precincts of the Castle-wall. The lady even dared to be present while the ceremony was performed by the Reverend Master Solsgrace, who had once preached a sermon of three hours' length before the House of Commons, upon a thanksgiving occasion after the relief of Exeter. Sir Geoffrey Peveril took care to be absent the whole day from the Castle, and it was only from the great interest which he took in the washing, perfuming, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... Duchess revelled in radicals to her heart's content; for Aubrey House was their head-quarters, and all were out in full force. It was cheering to our spinster to find that things had moved a good deal since a former visit, five or six years before, when Mill had carried into the House of Commons a Woman's Rights petition that filled both arms. People laughed then, and the stout-hearted women laughed also, but said, 'Our next petition shall be so big it will have to go in a wheel-barrow.' Now the same people talked over the question soberly, and began to think something besides fun might ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... allusion to India, Paul wrote: "Curiously enough, the very day I read this I heard in the House of Commons the wonderful story of the gifts presented to the British Government for war purposes by the Indian princes. Such a passionate outburst of loyalty has never been equalled. This gratitude and devotion we have won not by the rule of force, but by that of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... These colonies granted more than their proportion to the support of the war. They raised, clothed, and maintained nearly twenty-five thousand men, and so sensible were the people of England of our great exertions, that a message was annually sent to the House of Commons purporting, "that his Majesty, being highly satisfied with the zeal and vigor with which his faithful subjects in North America had exerted themselves in defense of his Majesty's just rights and possessions, recommend it to the House to take ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... 1801, Pitt resigned office, he was succeeded by Henry Addington, who had been speaker of the house of commons for over eleven years, and who now received the seals of office as first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer on March 14, 1801. He was able to retain the services of the Duke of Portland as home secretary, of Lord Chatham ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... that did not pretend, either that the system was good in itself, or that by their conduct they had mitigated or had purified it, and that the poison, by passing through their constitution, had acquired salutary properties. But if you look at his defence before the House of Commons, you will see that that very system upon which he governed, and under which he now justifies his actions, did appear to himself a system pregnant with a thousand ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Whatever you think of the Catholics, there they are—you cannot get rid of them. Your alternative is to give them a lawful place for stating their grievances, or an unlawful one. If you do not admit them to the House of Commons, they will hold their Parliament in Potatoe Place, Dublin, and be ten times as violent and inflammatory as they would be in Westminster. Nothing would give me such an idea of security as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parliament, looked upon by all the Catholics ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... addition to a piano, a mustel organ to accompany the pathetic passages in the films. Moreover, the commissionaire outside, whose medals prove that he has seen service in the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the Great Raid on the House of Commons in 1910, is not one of those blatant-voiced showmen who clamour for patronage; he is a quiet and dignified receptionnaire, content to rely on the fame and good repute of his theatre. Sometimes evening dress (from "The Laburnums," Meadowsweet Avenue, who are on the Stock Exchange) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... the foundation of the Board of Agriculture. On May 15, 1793, Sir John Sinclair[504] moved in the House of Commons, 'that His Majesty would take into his consideration the advantages which might be derived from the establishment of such a board, for though in some particular districts improved methods of cultivating the soil were practised, yet in the greatest ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... returned. "This is the day Lord George Gordon presents the petition against the Catholics, and his lordship has declared he won't present it to the House of Commons at all unless it is attended to the door by forty thousand good men and true, at least. There's a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... her great feat in forcibly feeding a wicked bishop who had written a letter to the Press against forcible, feeding. Misunderstood by the crowd was Mrs. Trudge, who wheeled a perambulator containing two babies. The onlookers thought that Mrs. Trudge was about to take her innocent offspring to the House of Commons, and those out of hat-pin range murmured, "Shime," "Give the kids a chawnce." They did not know that Mrs. Trudge was no base slave of man, that she had no children of her own, and that the wax babies she wheeled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various

... government officials applies also to members of Parliament, with the sole difference that they have had to recommend themselves to a constituency. This, however, only adds hypocrisy to the other qualities of a ruling caste. Whoever has stood in the lobby of the House of Commons watching members emerge with wandering eye and hypothetical smile, until the constituent is espied, his arm taken, "my dear fellow" whispered in his ear, and his steps guided toward the inner precincts—whoever, observing this, has realized that these ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... living who could recall the day when France had a real parliament, the Estates-General as it was called. This body had at one time all the essentials of a representative assembly. It might have become, as the English House of Commons became, the grand inquest of the nation. But it did not do so. The waxing personal strength of the monarchy curbed its influence, its authority weakened, and throughout the great century of French ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... greatest orators that ever the world produced. There was Colonel Barre, who had been among our fathers, and knew that they had courage enough to die for their rights. There was Charles James Fox, who never rested until he had silenced our enemies in the House of Commons. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... What can twelve ladies do scattered about a drawing-room, so called, intended for the accommodation of two hundred? The drawing-room at the Ocean Hotel, Newport, is not as big as Westminster Hall, but would, I should think, make a very good House of Commons for the British nation. Fancy the feelings of a lady when she walks into such a room, intending to spend her evening there, and finds six or seven other ladies located on various sofas at terrible distances, all strangers to her. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... real revolution since the Middle Ages) find it very hard to understand this steady passion for being a nuisance, and mistake it for mere whimsical impulsiveness and folly. When an Irish member holds up the whole business of the House of Commons by talking of his bleeding country for five or six hours, the simple English members suppose that he is a sentimentalist. The truth is that he is a scornful realist who alone remains unaffected by the sentimentalism of the House of Commons. The Irishman is neither ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... spoken in the British House of Commons give us Mr. Winston Churchill's deliberate judgment as to the relations between Germany and Great Britain. Further Mr. Allen knows that during the past two years various peace delegations composed of people of the highest standing in each country have exchanged visits. I understand from private ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... early part of 1812 an agitation for a government grant in recognition of Crompton's work made great progress. Mr. Perceval, the then Prime Minister, was proceeding to the House of Commons to move that a grant of L20,000 be made to Crompton, when he was shot by an assassin named Bellingham. There is no doubt, had this disastrous affair never happened and Perceval made his proposal, a grant much larger than was actually voted (L5000) ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... was a member of Parliament, received a unanimous vote of praise from the House of Commons, and the youthful Wolfe, who returned shortly after the victory to England, was hailed as the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... did not seem to think it quaint. He told us about the policeman first—a Highlander. Robin had made his acquaintance in Edinburgh, apparently about the same time that he made ours, and had renewed it some years later outside the House of Commons, when a rapturous mutual recognition had taken place. The policeman's name ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... time the unimportant doings of the sect of the Agapemonites, or as did at an earlier time the dreary dishonesties of the Rhodesian financiers. Questions were asked about it, and even answered, in the House of Commons. The Government was solemnly denounced in the papers for not having done something, nobody knew what, to prevent the window being broken. An enormous subscription was started to reimburse Mr. Gordon, ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... George were to die to-morrow, she would still be a Marchioness, and the coming boy, his grandson, would be the Marquis. He himself was young for his age. He might yet live to hear his grandson make a speech in the House of Commons as Lord Popenjoy. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... Highlanders, hard on the heels of the gallant Black Watch. This regiment, known as the old 78th, was celebrated in many ways. This is the corps raised by Lord Lovat, that Pitt was said to have had in mind when in the British House of Commons he delivered the famous ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... dear! It is very kind of you to call. I don't suppose you have any news. This morning's paper talked of an ultimatum. There has been a very exciting debate in the English House of Commons!" ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... chimney-piece is your's—the pictures are your's—the house is your's. You gave me all I have—my friend—my father—my benefactor!" He dined with me; and in the evening I caught the tear glistening in his fine blue eye, when he saw poor little Jack, the creature of his bounty, rising in the House of Commons, to reply to a Right Honourable. Poor Boyse! he is now gone; and no suitor had a larger deposit of practical benevolence in the Court above. This is his wine—let us ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... English wit some years afterward perpetrated the same witticism on the occasion of Edmund Burke's leaving the House of Commons in a rage, because he was interrupted in one of his great speeches ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... wrote the first 'lady's book' upon the Coast, pointed out at the beginning that sickness was due quite as much to want of care as to the climate. In 1830 Mr. John Cormack, merchant and resident since 1800, stated to a Committee of the House of Commons that out of twenty-six Europeans in his service seven had died, seven had remained in Africa, and of twelve who returned to England all save two or three were in good health. We meet with a medical opinion as early as 1836 that 'not one-fourth ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... meetings of Common Hall were summoned, at which addresses to the King were voted, praying His Majesty to dismiss his Ministers, and terminate the conflict with the American Colonies. More than once the citizens have been in conflict with the House of Commons: for the liberty of the press in 1770, when Brass Crosby, the Lord Mayor, was committed to the Tower; and in 1805, when the liverymen in their Common Hall supported Sir Francis Burdett, who was upholding against the House of Commons the cherished right of liberty of speech. In ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... as your lordships have already been informed, was made only a few days before the senate rose, it was natural to consider, whether the consent of the senate should not be demanded; but when it appeared upon reflection, that to bring an affair of so great importance before the last remnant of a house of commons, after far the greater part had retired to the care of their own affairs, would be suspected as fraudulent, and might give the nation reason to fear, that such measures were intended as the ministers were afraid of laying before a full senate. It was thought ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... of this unfortunate woman, and the cruel state of the law in regard to females, then attracted attention. On the 10th of May, 1790, Sir Benjamin Hammett, in his place in the House of Commons, called the attention of that House to the then state of the law. He mentioned that it had been his official duty to attend on the melancholy occasion of the burning of the female in the preceding year (it is understood he was then one of the sheriffs of London), he moved ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various

... of measles in camp of a very severe type, and naturally there were many deaths among the children. The doctor and nurses worked to the very utmost, and I am pleased to say the epidemic is stamped out. No doubt this is what caused the talk by the pro-Boers in the House of Commons and elsewhere, but it is one of those epidemics which could not be prevented among the class of people we have here. They had absolutely no regard for sanitary conveniences, and the officials had the greatest difficulty in enforcing ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... for Merthyr without interruption for a period of seventeen years. He had been ten years in the House of Commons when, in the November of 1862, he was nominated to office by Lord Palmerston; and it is worthy of remark that he was then appointed Under-Secretary of the very department over which he now presides—the post which was conferred the other ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... side of the church, where the recumbent form of Sir Arthur Onslow is apparently giving vague directions to an imaginary audience. Wrapped in a Roman toga, he waves a sleeveless right arm; his left is propped by a set of Journals of the House of Commons. It is a relief to pass beyond such tawdry pomposities into the solemn little chapel, sacred to one of the great regiments of the Army, the Queen's, the old Second of the Line. Their badge, the Lamb and Flag, and their name they get from Katherine of Braganza, Charles the Second's ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... brother, succeeding to the estates, and residing chiefly in the neighbourhood, became, like his father before him, member for the county, and was one of the country gentlemen most looked up to in the House of Commons. A sensible and frequent, though uncommonly prosy speaker, singularly independent (for he had a clear fourteen thousand pounds a year, and did not desire office), and valuing himself on not being a party man, so that his ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... The House of Commons voted 2500l. to Mr. Hartley to defray the expences of this building; the sovereign considered it a popular act to give him countenance; and a patriotic lord-mayor and the corporation of London, to impress the public with ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... be shifted here and there with a hope of meeting obvious mischances all too familiar in the past. In industry and education administrative reform is constantly going on, with the hope of reducing friction and increasing efficiency. The House of Commons not long ago came to new terms with the peers. The League of Nations has already had to adjust the functions and influence of the ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... was called to the Bar, commencing his political career in 1830, and in 1834 he went to India, as a member of the Supreme Council, returning in 1838 to England, where for a few years he pursued politics and letters, representing Edinburgh in the House of Commons, but being rejected, on appearing for re-election, he devoted himself to literature. During the last twelve years of his life his time was almost wholly occupied with his History of England, four volumes of which he had completed and published, and a fifth left partly ready ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... martial law. A few months later Buckingham was assassinated by one John Felton at Portsmouth. Certain taxes called tonnage and poundage, Charles continued to levy by his own authority. A patriotic leader and a prominent speaker in the House of Commons was Sir John Eliot. The king dissolved Parliament (1629), and sent Eliot and two other members of the House to prison. No other Parliament was summoned for eleven years. The king aimed to establish an absolute system of rule such as Richelieu ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... assistant-secretaries, and especially by its late most respectable chief clerk, that it may be said to stand quite alone as a high model for all other public offices whatever. It is exactly antipodistic of the Circumlocution Office, and as such is always referred to in the House of Commons by the gentleman representing the Government when any attack on the Civil ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... more tape and flannel"; and they remark, "It is very queer that Union meetings are held only in places which trade with the South." Out of regard to their Southern brethren, a member of the British House of Commons was insulted in Faneuil Hall by a portion of the Boston people, and forthwith the New Orleans Delta, instead of gratefully acknowledging the compliment, remarks, that their "good Union-loving friends in Boston are now solacing the South with sugar-plums in the shape of resolutions ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock

... Parliament and seats on either Front Bench matters of concern to him. His manifold task was done. His brilliant course was run. But, until he took the oath and signed the roll, he was not de jure a Member of the House of Commons, and his vote might not be available by the Whips for a pair on a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... of this tragical flourish was never very well understood; but in the course of the evening she had made several attempts to fasten on his Lordship, and was shunned: certain it is, she had not, like Burke in the House of Commons, premeditatedly brought a dagger in her reticule, on purpose for the scene; but, seeing herself an object of scorn, she seized the first weapon she could find—some said a pair of scissors—others, more scandalously, broken jelly-glass, and attempted an incision of the jugular, to the consternation ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... government, the nature and regulation of the finances, the different branches of commerce, the politics that prevail, and the connexions that subsist among the different powers of Europe; for on all these subjects the deliberations of a House of Commons occasionally turn. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... principles of international commerce. The second William Pitt was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time the provisional articles of peace with the United States were signed, in November, 1782; and in March, 1783, he introduced into the House of Commons a bill for regulating temporarily the intercourse between the two nations, so far as dependent upon the action of Great Britain, until it should be possible to establish a mutual arrangement by treaty. ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... just a case where an aristocratic society could and should have shown its superiority over a democratic society with its rough rule of equality. For equality is only half-way on the road to justice. More than once the House of Commons has recognised this fundamental truth; it condemned Clive but added that he had rendered "great and distinguished services to his country"; and no one thought of punishing him for ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... The old House of Commons was destroyed by fire on 16 Oct., 1834, and it was not until September, 1837, that the first contracts for the commencement of the construction of the new works, in connection with the present building, were entered into. They were for the formation of an embankment 886 feet in length, projecting ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... does not like the Khilafat agitation that is daily gathering force. In answer to questions put in the House of Commons, he is reported to have said that whilst he acknowledged that I had rendered distinguished services to the country in the past, he could not look upon my present attitude with equanimity and that it was ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... closed car from door to door. Wrap up like a mummy. I wish the Committee room wasn't down those abominable House of Commons corridors...." ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... about the King. The people go about their business as if he didn't exist, of course. They begin work much later than we do. You'll not find any of the shops open till about ten o'clock. The sun doesn't shine except once in a while and you don't know it's daylight till about ten. You know the House of Commons has night sessions always. Nobody is in the Government offices, except clerks and secretaries, till the afternoon. We dine at eight, and, when we have a big ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... Parliament for, I think, North Cork, which I do not remember to have seen in print. Another M.P., whose name was Monk, had a habit of clipping, where possible, the last syllable from the surnames of his intimate friends. One day, he met Vincent Scully in the House of Commons, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... they occurred, the reader will find very little perspective, a great deal of the mood of the moment, and none at all of that profound wisdom which comes after the event. For the latter he must look home—to the lower walks of journalism and the back benches of the House of Commons. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... satisfactory. Jenny Lind carried off a world of money from here. Miss Glyn, or Mrs. Dallas, is playing Lady Macbeth at the theatre, and Mr. Shirley Brooks is giving two lectures at the Philosophical Society on the House of Commons and Horace Walpole. Grisi's farewell benefits are (I think) on my ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... roar of applause, he knew that he had triumphed, for he saw Desmond's glowing countenance, radiant with pleasure, transfigured by amazement and admiration. Next day a great newspaper hailed the Harrow boy as one destined to delight and to lead, perhaps, an all-conquering party in the House of Commons. And yet, warmed to the core by this praise, John counted it as nothing compared with his mother's ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... utterly inevitable. His denial did her not the faintest damage, as I have pointed out. It was, so to speak, an official quibble, rendered necessary by the circumstances of the case. Not to have denied the marriage in the House of Commons would have meant ruin to both of them. As months passed, more serious difficulties awaited the unhappily wedded pair. What boots it to repeat the story of the Princes great debts and desperation? It was clear that there was but one way of getting ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... inured to it in school, where practically all the teachers are bores trying to do the work of artists, and all the books artless, that we acquire a truly frightful power of enduring boredom. We even acquire the notion that fine art is lascivious and destructive to the character. In church, in the House of Commons, at public meetings, we sit solemnly listening to bores and twaddlers because from the time we could walk or speak we have been snubbed, scolded, bullied, beaten and imprisoned whenever we dared to resent being bored or twaddled at, or to express our natural impatience and derision of bores ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... sorry to part with her, I was absolutely obliged to sell the Maid for pocket-money, Lady Hilda—I assure you, for pocket-money. My tenants won't pay up, and nothing will make them. They've got the cash actually in the bank; but they keep it there, waiting for a set of sentimentalists in the House of Commons to interfere between us, and make them a present of my property. Rolling in money, some of them are, I can tell you. One man, I know as a positive fact, sold a pig last week, and yet pretends he can't pay me. All the fault of these horrid communists ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... any of the things that have been lately published about the negroes? We have just read a very small pamphlet of about ten pages, merely an account of the facts stated to the House of Commons. Twenty-five thousand people in England have absolutely left off eating West India sugar, from the hope that when there is no longer any demand for sugar the slaves will not be so cruelly treated. Children in several schools have given up sweet things, which ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... That was perfectly natural. Evolutionists know that evolution never proceeds on any other plan than by reproduction, with modification, of existing structures. America led the way. She said, "England has a House of Commons; therefore we must have a House of Representatives. England has also a House of Lords; nature has not dowered us with those exalted products, but we will do what we can; we will imitate it by a Senate." Monarchical France followed her lead; so did Belgium, ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... bill introduced into the House of Commons by Sir Andrew Agnew, and thrown out by that House on the motion for the second reading, on the 18th of May in the present year, by a majority of 32, may very fairly be taken as a test of the length to which the fanatics, of which the honourable Baronet ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... motives) if he had not some personal provocation; for the acrimony of his answer seemed to me, as I had read it, to involve it. Courtenay said 'he had; that, when in Ireland (being an Irishman), at the bar of the Irish House of Commons, Flood had made a personal and unfair attack upon himself, who, not being a member of that House, could not defend himself, and that some years afterwards the opportunity of retort offering in the English Parliament, he could not resist it.' He certainly ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... friends. Before the electors of Dublin he completely broke down in his first attempt at public speaking, and the great city which has since showered upon him the highest honors it can give, rejected him. In 1875, he entered the House of Commons for the first time as member for Meath. For the first few years of his Parliamentary life he was mainly distinguished for the skill and unwearied persistency of his tactics as an obstructionist, though he also succeeded in carrying useful amendments ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... reluctance in all quarters to adapt simple and obvious remedies to a growing evil, the article need never have appeared. It so happens, that the case principally before the public mind at present, is the deadlock in the House of Commons; yet, had that stood alone, the author would not have ventured to meddle with the subject. The difficulty, however, is widely felt: and the principles here put forward are perfectly general; being applicable wherever deliberative bodies ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... private secretary and interpreter to Lord Nelson, was present on the Victory at Trafalgar, entered the College in 1786, and became a scholar of the College 3rd November 1789. Fletcher Norton, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1770 to 1780, and first Lord Grantley, entered the College in 1734. With him, in a way, was connected John Horne (afterwards Horne Tooke), who entered in 1754; for Horne, for purposes of his own, libelled Fletcher Norton when Speaker. Horne Tooke's stormy career belongs ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott

... of conduct. He says in his diary for the 15th April, 1828,—"Dined with Sir Robert Inglis, and met Sir Thomas Acland, my old and kind friend. I was happy to see him. He may be considered now as the head of the religious party in the House of Commons—a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a difficult situation, for the adaptation of religious motives to earthly policy is apt—among the infinite delusions of the human heart—to be a snare."[37] His letters ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... through the increase of English commerce promised to give him a revenue which, if peace were preserved, would save him from any further need of fresh appeals to the Commons. Charles was too wise however to look upon Parliaments as utterly at an end: and he used this respite to secure a House of Commons which should really be at his disposal. The strength of the Country party had been broken by its own dissensions over the Exclusion Bill and by the flight or death of its more prominent leaders. Whatever strength it retained lay chiefly in the towns, whose representation ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green

... throughout Europe and America. No! And while I ask you, my friends, to ponder this fact in relation to that disastrous struggle of giants which so recently occurred in our day—the Crimean War—I ask you whether any English gentleman, any member of the British House of Commons, any member of the British House of Peers, abandoned the ease of home, abandoned his easy hours at home, and went into the country among his friends, tenants, and fellow-countrymen, volunteering there to raise troops ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... British Admiralty announces in House of Commons that 460,628 tons of British shipping, other than warships, have been sunk or captured by the German Navy since the beginning of the war; that the number of persons killed in connection with the sinkings is 1,556; that the tonnage of German shipping, not warships, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the close of the year 1825, Mr. Huskisson's free trade policy was advocated in the House of Commons by a vote of 223 to 40. In the same year lotteries were suppressed in England. In 1828 branches of the Bank of England were established—a measure, of course, unpopular among the provincial ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... preserve with my great apron and bib on; so I bade Leonard come in from the garden and open the door. But I would have washed his face first, if I had known who it was! It was Mr Bradshaw and the Mr Donne that they hope to send up to the House of Commons, as member of Parliament for Eccleston, and another gentleman, whose name I never heard. They had come canvassing; and when they found my brother was out, they asked Leonard if they could see me. The child said, 'Yes! if I could leave the damsons;' and straightway ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... were jealously reserved to the professional administrator. In England the next step in constitutional development, the addition to the national assembly of a Third Estate, was brilliantly successful, since the House of Commons was chiefly recruited from families which had long been active partners in local administration. In France the Third Estate, though constantly summoned in the fourteenth century, proved itself ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... complete the form of expression. Take the following sentence: "I never take up a paper full of Congress squabbles, reported as if sunrise depended upon them, without thinking of that idle English nobleman at Florence, who when his brother, just arrived from London, happened to mention the House of Commons, languidly asked, Ah! is that thing still going?" It is rather curious that very rarely will a student keep the thought of such a sentence suspended and connected until he arrives at the real point at the end. He will first say that he never takes up a paper, though of course he ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... bad grammar," said Cobbett, "to say of the House of Commons, 'It is a sink of iniquity, and they are a set of rascally swindlers.'" Of course, the bad grammar is almost immaterial. The expression is either a gross libel or a lamentable fact. "If a man," said Sydney Smith, "were to kill the minister and churchwardens ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... that this rejection was in 1895 ratified by the approval of the electorate of the United Kingdom A Leap in the Dark will assuredly remind my readers that in 1893 the hereditary House of Lords, and not the newly elected House of Commons, truly represented the will of the nation. This is a fact never to be forgotten. It is of special import at the present moment. Another equally undoubted fact deserves attention. Home Rulers themselves despair of carrying ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... farmer, forbidding the importation of foreign grain, the price of wheat had reached 80s. per quarter; political societies, under the name of "Hampden Clubs," are formed all over the country. There is a cry for reform in the House of Commons; the Ministry, influenced by Lord Castlereagh, refuses all change; the price of wheat continues to ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... sufficient to sweep the Whigs from power. Together, and combined as they were with the prestige of the Queen's public support of Harley and the newly appointed Tory Ministers, these issues were irresistible. Harley found himself with an "immoderate" House of Commons. The Tories held 320 seats, the Whigs only 150, and there were 40 seats whose votes were "doubtful."[2] Many of the new Parliamentarians were High-Church zealots, and most were anxious to turn the nation away from the policies ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe

... Gov. Johnstone's speech in the House of Commons, March, 9th, 1779, to be found in the Philadelphia Library in a volume of the Pennsylvania Packet, February 20th, ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... 'Particularly Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell [Mrs. Cameron was a Campbell] told me, and others whom he could trust, that in the year 1748, or 1749, I don't remember which, as he, Sir Duncan, was going out of the House of Commons, Mr. Henry Pelham, brother to the Duke of Newcastle, and Secretary of State, called on him, and asked if he knew Glengarry? Sir Duncan answered he knew the old man, but not the young. Pelham replied, it was Young Glengarry he spoke of; for that he came to him offering his most ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... un homme de beaucoup d'esprit, a ce qu'on dit, a ce que je crois meme, mais il faut vous apprendre qu'il n'est pas des NOTRES." My father spoke of Pamela, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, and explained how he had defended her in the Irish House of Commons; instead of being pleased or touched, her mind instantly diverged into an elaborate and artificial exculpation of Lady Edward and herself, proving, or attempting to prove, that she never knew any of her husband's plans, that she utterly disapproved of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... English Premier declared in the House of Commons that it was one of England's principal tasks to prevent food for the German population from reaching Germany via neutral ports. Since March 1 England has been taking from neutral ships without further formality all merchandise ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... at once by the absence of the general public which in the old days used to crowd the galleries to overflowing. The political excitement of the revolution has passed, and today there were no more spectators than are usually to be found in the gallery of the House of Commons. The character of the Soviet itself had not changed. Practically every man sitting on the benches was obviously a workman and keenly intent on what was being said. Litvinov practically repeated his speech of last night, making it, however, a little more demagogic in character, pointing out that ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... States, the burden of the suffrage campaign had shifted from the shoulders of the pioneers to their daughters, and they were carrying on with vigor, pressing for the passage of a franchise bill in the House of Commons. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... invested a level million sterling in the War Loan, while he was constantly giving great donations to various charities. Somewhat eccentric, he preferred living abroad to spending his time in England, because, it was said, of some personal quarrel with another Member of the House of Commons which had arisen over a debate soon after he had ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... certified of the death of the testator. He withstood both the angry gentlemen, who finally departed in a state of great resentment—Harry declaring that the old land-lubber would not believe that he was his own father's son; and Mr. Rivers, no less incensed, that the House of Commons had been insulted in his person, because he did not carry all ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... for the bitter hatred which was borne to him by a large body of his country-men, [12] and which found its expression in the malignant insinuations in which Burke, to his everlasting shame, indulged in the House of Commons. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... Congress, in 1886, and its application was extended to our diplomatic relations by the unanimous concurrence of the Senate and House of the Fifty-first Congress in 1890. The latter resolution was accepted as the basis of negotiations with us by the British House of Commons in 1893, and upon our invitation a treaty of arbitration between the United States and Great Britain was signed at Washington and transmitted to the Senate for its ratification in January last. Since this treaty is clearly the result of our own ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... that they are willing, if necessary, to force it upon an unwilling population at the point of the bayonet. It then proceeds to argue that, while capitalism retains its hold over propaganda and its means of corruption, Parliamentary methods are very unlikely to give a majority for Communism in the House of Commons, or to lead to effective action by such a majority even if it existed. Communists point out how the people are deceived, and how their chosen leaders have again and again betrayed them. From this they argue that the destruction of capitalism ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... seen. She was in her Corsair state of mind, divided between her jewels and her poetry, and caring not very much for the increased rank which Lord Fawn could give her. "The Sawab's case is coming on in the House of Commons this very night," he said, in answer to a question from Miss Macnulty. Then he turned to Lady Eustace. "Your cousin, Mr. Greystock, is going to ask a question in ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... England's new Chains Discovered,' this was read in many Baptist meeting-houses, and the congregations called upon to subscribe it: fortunately, they were peaceably disposed, and denounced it to the House of Commons in a petition, dated April 2, 1649. Mr. Kiffin and the others were called in, when the Speaker returned them this answer—'The House doth take notice of the good affection to the Parliament and public you have expressed, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... dress, but not more. There are several Catholic priests in their long black gowns, and with crucifixes hanging from their necks. No member wears his hat. One may see by these details that the aspects are not those of an evening sitting of an English House of Commons, but rather those of a sitting of our House ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... restoration, he was chosen member of parliament for East-Grimstead, and distinguished himself while he was in the House of Commons. The sprightliness of his wit, and a most exceeding good-nature, recommended him very early to the favour of Charles the IId, and those of the greatest distinction in the court; but his mind being more turned to books, and polite ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... not only come under discussion in these provincial assemblies, but are shaped and decided by them. The services thus rendered must therefore be very valuable, and it is worth considering whether our over-worked House of Commons might not be relieved of some of its burthens, and the business better done, by similar representative bodies, entrusted with legislative powers so far as concerns matters of local interest. Such assemblies would well ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... replied humorously, 'that I am a member of the British House of Commons, but I beg you won't think too meanly of me. I protest that I have still ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... gives the finest description we have of the scene that followed. The Field Marshal in command of the British forces had that morning been sent for by a Cabinet Council then being held in the Prime Minister's room at the House of Commons. With nine members of his staff, the white-haired Field Marshal rode slowly into the City, in full uniform. His instructions were for unconditional surrender, and a request for the immediate consideration of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... rather specifically one of the educated, one of the generally sound and generally pleasant; yet, though to that degree neither extraordinary nor abnormal, he would have failed to play straight into an observer's hands. He was young for the House of Commons, he was loose for the army. He was refined, as might have been said, for the city, and, quite apart from the cut of his cloth, he was sceptical, it might have been felt, for the church. On the other hand he was credulous for diplomacy, or perhaps even for science, while ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... machinery. National conspiracy, the council-chamber, popular ebullition, and the tardy but powerful action of public justice, had been my tutors; and I was now felt, by the higher powers, to be not unfit for trust in a larger field. A seat in the English House of Commons soon enabled me to give satisfactory evidence that I had not altogether overlooked the character of the crisis; and, after some interviews with the premier, his approval of my conduct in Ireland was followed by the proposal of office, with a seat in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... Wellington, who had sorted out from his Cabinet any who were tainted with sympathy for reform; but, as the election of July which resulted in his resignation showed, the country, however one-sided its representation might have been in the House of Commons, had been long in a state of political ferment. This state of affairs, the gradual breaking up of the Tory party dating from the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, the brewing social troubles, and the prospect of power crossing to the party which was determined on meeting ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell



Words linked to "House of Commons" :   house, British House of Commons, British Parliament, Member of Parliament, parliamentarian



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