use, may be suspended from
service. Except in committee, a member may not speak twice upon the
same question, although he may be allowed the floor a second time to
explain a portion of his speech which has been misunderstood. Undue
obstruction is not tolerated, and the Speaker may decline to put a
motion which he considers dilatory.

[Footnote 205: On parliamentary oratory see Graham,
The Mother of Parliaments, 203-224.]

*147. Closure and the Guillotine.*--For the further limitation of debate
two important and drastic devices are at all times available. One is
ordinary closure and the other is "the guillotine." Closure dates
originally from 1881. It was introduced in the standing orders of (p. 140)
the House in 1882, and it assumed its present form in 1888.[206] It
sprang from the efforts of the House to curb the intolerably
obstructionist tactics employed a generation ago by the Irish
Nationalists, but by reason of the increasing mass of business to be
disposed of and the tendency of large deliberative bodies to waste
time, it has been found too useful to be given up. "After a question
has been proposed," reads Standing Order 26, "a member rising in his
place may claim to move 'that the Question be now put,' and unless it
shall appear to the Chair that such motion is an abuse of the Rules of
the House, or an infringement of the rights of the minority, the
Question 'that the Question be now put' shall be put forthwith and
decided without amendment or debate." Discussion may thus be cut off
instantly and a vote precipitated. Closure is inoperative, however,
unless the number of members voting in the majority for its adoption
is at least one hundred, or, in a standing committee, twenty.

A more generally effective device by which discussion is limited and
the transaction of business is facilitated is that known as "closure
by compartments," or "the guillotine." When this is employed the House
in advance of the consideration of a bill agrees upon an allotment of
time to the various parts or stages of the measure, and at the
expiration of each period debate, whether concluded or not, is closed,
a vote is taken, and a majority adopts that portion of the bill upon
which the guillotine has fallen. In recent years this device has been
employed almost invariably when an important Government bill is
reserved for consideration in Committee of the Whole. Its advantage is
the saving of time