464 PARLIAMENTS OF THE DOMINIONS [PART iui
this. It is’ generally provided that in cases of doubt the
English procedure shall be followed, but as yet none of the
Houses have had occasion to adopt the drastic closure rules
of the Imperial Parliament. On the other hand, they
might, it seems, be invoked in case of necessity under the
clauses in the rules which allow the adoption of the Imperial
procedure for the time being in certain cases; and on
March 24, 1904, after there had been a hopeless confusion
in the Lower House of the Cape Parliament, the Speaker
asserted and exercised the right of putting the question on
his own authority, following the example of Mr. Speaker
Brand on a famous occasion in English history! Threats of
action have, however, been made in the direction of closure
resolutions in Canada, when, in 1896, the dying Ministry
of Sir C. Tupper was endeavouring to obtain supply, in
1908, when the Opposition in the Lower House persistently
and successfully blocked operations until the Government
had to carry supply by the mere physical exhaustion of all
parties to the struggle, and in 1911 in the struggle over
reciprocity with the United States, which led to a dissolu-
tion.? In September 1910 the closure had to be used to get
any work done by the Upper House of New Zealand.3
In certain cases a time limit has been adopted for speeches :
the following are the rules in force as given in a parliamentary
return 2 of 1908 —
There are no rules in force for limiting the length of
speeches in the Parliament of the Dominson of Canada or in
the Legislatures of Quebec, New Brunswick, M. anttoba, British
Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
Rule No. 30 of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario provides
! The closure was applied on the British analogy by the Speaker in the
Assembly on November 15-16, 1909, but was not popular ; see The State
of South Africa, ii. 675. Cf. the action of the speaker in New Zealand on
Sept. 2, 1881 ; Rusden, iii. 384 seq.
* Canadian Annual Review, 1908, pp. 47, 51, 53, 54.
* See Sir J. Ward’s speech, September 27, 1910. An amusing cage of
objection to forms is seen in the elaborate protest in Western Australia
Parliamentary Debates, 1910, p. 2054, against the first reading of Bills in
dummy. As a protest against this and other irregularities, as they held,
the Labour party deserted the House in a body during the passing of the
Redistribution Bill (Act No. 6 of 1911) of 1911. ¢ H. C. 301 (revised).
