Notes and Queries, Number 36, July 6, 1850 | Page 4

of the House. No, every thing relating to the admission of strangers to, and their accommodation in the House of Commons, is effected by some mysterious agency for which no one is directly responsible. Mr. Barry has built galleries for strangers in the new house; but if the matter were made a subject of inquiry, it probably would puzzle him to state under what authority he has acted.
Mr. Christie wished to make the sessional order applicable to existing circumstances; and, it may be, he desired to draw from the House a direct sanction for the admission of strangers. In the latter purpose, however, if he ever entertained it, he failed. The wording of his amendment is obscure, but necessarily so. The word "gallery," as employed by him, can only refer to the gallery appropriated to members of the House; but he intended it to apply to the strangers' gallery. The order should have run thus, "admitted into any other part of the house, or into the gallery appropriated to strangers;" but Mr. Christie well knew that the House would not adopt those words, because they contain an admission that strangers are present whilst the House is sitting, whereas it is a parliamentary fiction that they are not. If a member in debate should inadvertently allude to the possibility of his observations being heard by a stranger, the Speaker would immediately call him to order; yet at other times the right honourable gentleman will listen complacently to discussions {84} arising out of the complaints of members that strangers will not publish to the world all that they hear pass in debate. This is one of the consistencies resulting from the determination of the House not expressly to recognise the presence of strangers; but, after all, I am not aware that any practical inconvenience flows from it. The non-reporting strangers occupy a gallery at the end of the house immediately opposite the Speaker's chair; but the right hon. gentleman, proving the truth of the saying, "None so blind as he who will not see," never perceives them until just as a division is about to take place, when he invariably orders them to withdraw. When a member wishes to exclude strangers he addresses the Speaker, saying, "I think, Sir, I see a stranger or strangers in the house," whereupon the Speaker instantly directs strangers to withdraw. The Speaker issues his order in these words:--"Strangers must withdraw."
C. Ross.
Strangers in the House of Commons.--As a rider to the notice of CH. in "NOTES AND QUERIES," it may be well to quote for correction the following remarks in a clever article in the last _Edinburgh Review_, on Mr. Lewis' Authority in Matters of Opinion. The Reviewer says (p. 547.):--
"This practice (viz., of publishing the debates in the House of Commons) _which, &c., is not merely unprotected by law--it is positively illegal_. Even the presence of auditors is a violation of the standing orders of the House."
ED. S. JACKSON.
* * * * *
FOLK LORE.
_High Spirits considered a Presage of impending Calamity or Death_:--
1. "How oft when men are at the point of death Have they been merry! which their keepers call A lightning before death."
_Romeo and Juliet_, Act v. Sc. 3.
2. "C'était le jour de Noel [1759]. Je m'étais levé d'assez bonne heure, et avec une humeur plus gaie que de coutume. Dans les idées de vieille femme, cela présage toujours quelque chose do triste.... Pour cette fois pourtunt le hasard justifia la croyance."--_Mémoires de J. Casanova_, vol. iii p. 29.
3. "Upon Saturday last ... the Duke did rise up, in a well-disposed humour, out of his bed, and cut a caper or two.... Lieutenant Felton made a thrust with a common tenpenny knife, over Fryer's arm at the Duke, which lighted so fatally, that he slit his heart in two, leaving the knife sticking in the body."--_Death of Duke of Buckingham_; Howell. _Fam. Letters_, Aug. 5, 1628.
4. "On this fatal evening [Feb. 20, 1435], the revels of the court were kept up to a late hour ... the prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe the cotemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared that a king should that year be slain."--Death of King James I.; Tytler, _Hist. Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 306.
5. "'I think,' said the old gardener to one of the maids, 'the gauger's _fie_;' by which word the common people express those violent spirits which they think a presage of death."--_Guy Mannering_, chap. 9.
6. "H.W.L." said: "I believe the bodies of the four persons seen by the jury, were those of G.B., W.B., J.B., and T.B. On Friday night they were all very merry, and Mrs. B. said she feared something would happen before they went to bed, because they