dull facts brought out from interested witnesses at inordinate length, damps the ardour of even the most conscientious and industrious.

Ordinary commonplace men who discharge efficiently and usefully their duties as members of the Imperial Parliament, whether they sit in the Upper or Lower House, are not fitted by natural capacity or by education, or by training, to perform the delicate and difficult duties of judges or even of arbiters. Their minds are not accustomed to follow a closely reasoned argument bristling with technical details and overloaded with facts. They become weary after a time, and find relief in the pleasanter and more congenial exercise of composing answers to the illimitable body of correspondence with which even the most commonplace member of Parliament is invariably provided.

But to return to the committee-room. In front of the committee of four are the counsel-six, seven, eight, or ten of them sometimes jostling each other for places at the crowded bar, and jostling each other in argument, now pleasantly and amusingly, and again with acrimony and with real or well-simulated ill-temper. They are always eager to do their best for their clients, and they are generally willing to treat the committee courteously, and with the good-natured air of those who from an eminence of superior experience have to instruct the ignorant. Beside them or behind them are the Parliamentary agents, an honourable and valuable set of public servants whose difficult and highly technical duties have ever been performed to the satisfaction of all whose lot it is to come into business relations with them, and who by their hard work and unfailing courtesy have done much to lessen the friction which is inevitable in cases where matters of private rights and private property are sometimes roughly handled. In addition to these there are the local agents, the witnesses. skilled and unskilled, and lastly the public, or as many of them as can get into the crowded room. All these people are more or less in a state of excitement during the long and interrupted sittings during which an important Bill is passing the committee stage.

When the evidence is completed and counsel heard, the room is cleared for the deliberations of the committee, for these deliberations are always conducted with closed doors. When the public are admitted the chairman pronounces judgment. If the preamble is found proved, the Bill is then considered clause by clause. There is an unseemly and unsatisfactory scramble through the clauses and the amendments thereto, and then the committee are relieved from their uncongenial labours, and, so far as the House of Commons is concerned, the judicial stage is passed. The Bill is reported to the House, and is mumbled through its remaining stage in the same monotonous loneliness in which it passed the preliminary stages. It goes on to the House of Lords, and passes through similar experiences in that assembly. It is read formally a first and second time, it goes

through another judicial stage of wild excitement in the Select Committee, and, if it passes that ordeal safely, it returns to receive the final touches, including the royal assent. But if, on the other hand, it should miscarry, the committee find that it is inexpedient to proceed with the Bill,' and, without reason assigned, it is thrown out, and must await another session, when the identical operations are repeated, perhaps with this variation, that, as in the case of the Manchester Ship Canal, the Bill may be passed through the judicial stage in the subsequent session by the House of Lords, and be rejected in the judicial stage by the House of Commons.

Such is the normal course of procedure by which Private Bills, dealing with millions of money every year, are passed into Acts of ParliaI have described it with elementary minuteness, partly because, though it is familiar enough to professional men, it is not familiar to the general public, and partly because it is of importance that the distinction between the part played by the two Houses in their legislative and in their judicial capacities should be recognised.

There are some who think that this is a satisfactory method of getting through important work. There are others who believe that the system could be improved.

The objections to the system are notorious. They have been urged in a multitude of Select Committees of both Houses by important and experienced witnesses, and the reports of these committees cumber the shelves of political libraries. They have been urged at meetings of influential societies, associations, and municipal corporations in England, in Scotland, and in Ireland. They have been discussed in legal circles, and exposed in the leading organs of public opinion. And, finally, they have been brought before Parliament on several occasions in recent years and fully debated there. Summarised, these objections are threefold :-

(1.) The cost of the Parliamentary proceedings is enormous, and out of all proportion to the value of the judicial decisions given by the Select Committees.

(2.) These decisions are capricious, uncertain, and often contradictory; and, considering the constitution of the tribunal, it could hardly be otherwise. The men selected to adjudicate are not qualified to act the part of judges. Their judgments are founded on no principles; they are bound by no rules of practice; they are given almost at haphazard.

(3.) The lengthy speeches and discussions between counsel; the protracted evidence often inordinately long drawn out; the interruptions caused by Divisions; in the House of Commons the broken hours owing to Parliamentary business; and, above all, the double inquiry before the two Houses, constitute an undue consumption of public time, and a squandering of public energy which might be more profit

ably employed on duties which are congenial to the taste and training of members of Parliament, and for the performance of which they were sent by their constituents to Parliament.

I cannot occupy space by illustrating these three evils at any length. If anyone is curious upon this point, he will find copious instances in confirmation of these charges against the present system. cited in the debate upon the subject last March, and, even with more minuteness, in the debate of March 1883. But, with regard to the first charge-the lavish expenditure of money on the Private Bill Committees I may direct attention to a series of important Parliamentary returns bearing on this subject which were issued last year and were commented upon at some length in the debate. These returns range from the year 1872 to the year 1882, and they show that during these eleven years the average annual expenditure on the promotion of, and opposition to, Private Bills in Parliament amounts to no less a sum than three-quarters of a million sterling per annum (750,000l. a year), and that during the last fifty years (and during the whole of the period there has been loudly-expressed dissatisfaction with the system) from 35,000,000l. to 40,000,000l. have been squandered in the Committees of the House of Commons and House of Lords in litigation. And this money has all been paid to procure Parliamentary sanction for useful industrial enterprises, without which they could not have been carried out. Every day we have grievous complaints against the heavy rates and extravagant tariffs charged by the leading railway companies. But can we wonder that managers of commercial undertakings, which have been mulcted to the tune of some thirty or forty millions by a baneful system before they have been launched, should endeavour to recoup themselves for this heavy taxation by imposing exorbitant charges upon the public? We may depend upon it that the first step towards the reduction of freights and rates must be taken by lowering the expenses incurred in these initial Parliamentary proceedings. So much for the first evil connected with the present system.

As a single illustration of the second evil, namely, the haphazard character of the decisions, I would mention the fate of the Manchester Ship Canal. That costly and hitherto unfortunate undertaking was in the year 1883 passed by the Select Committee of the House of Commons and rejected by the Select Committee of the House of Lords. It was thirty-nine days before the first committee, which passed it, and ten days before the second committee, which rejected it. Last year its fate was even more tragic. It was passed by the Select Committee of the House in which it suffered shipwreck the previous year, and it was rejected by the Select Committee of the House in which it had been victorious. It was forty-one days before the first committee, which passed it, and twenty days before the committee which rejected it.

Thus this unfortunate scheme has occupied the time and attention of a Select Committee of the House of Lords for fifty-one days, and the time and attention of a Select Committee of the House of Commons for fifty-nine days; and with what results? An experience of 110 days before Parliamentary Committees cannot be bought for nothing. The promoters acknowledge an expenditure of over 100,000l. on these preliminary proceedings; and as some of the wealthiest railway companies in the kingdom, and one at least of the wealthiest corporations, were among the opponents, it is morally certain that their conjoint expenditure was certainly not lower than that of the promoters. If we put the total outlay at a quarter of a million we shall not be above the mark. And for all this expenditure of public time and money there is nothing to show, except another and a conspicuous illustration of the uncertainty and caprice of the decisions of the tribunals appointed to adjudicate upon great schemes of private enterprise. I am far from asserting that the contradictory decisions were wrong in any of the four cases. According to the custom and traditions of Select Committees no reasons were assigned, and therefore no one can judge of the soundness of the judgment. In 1883 the House of Commons found the preamble proved, and the House of Lords found that it was not expedient to proceed with the Bill. In 1884 the House of Lords found the preamble proved, and the House of Commons found it was not proved; and that is all the authentic information which the public has upon the matter. In all four cases the Houses were acting in their judicial capacity; and each House came, in 1884, to a conclusion diametrically opposed to that to which it came in 1883. All we see is the nett result of these costly and lengthy proceedings: and that is the curious one that a Bill, which has been approved by both Houses at one period or another in its eccentric career, has ended in being rejected, and is to all intents and purposes dead. The promoters, with unabated courage, are going to make their game,' as they say at the rouge-etnoir tables, a third time. They are probably right to try their luck again. We can only say, as we would to any courageous plunger at the tables, that we hope that the right cards may turn up this time in the committee-rooms.

I think I need not dwell at greater length on this branch of the question. If anyone wishes for further illustrations, he will find them in the debates already mentioned. On the third evil I shall have more to say presently. It is enough at this point to mention the fact, that each session the time of from 120 to 140 members of the House of Commons, and of a considerable number of members of the House of Lords, is occupied by these Select Committees, and it is not easy to imagine a more unsatisfactory or unprofitable way of spending time. The work is uncongenial, and the workers are by education and training unfitted to do the work efficiently.

A movement has been on foot for nearly half a century to change, or at least to modify, this system. But up till now no definite step of a practical kind has been taken to bring the dissatisfaction which undoubtedly exists, and is widespread throughout the country, to a head, nor to reduce the various projects of reform to a definite issue. This session, however, a Bill dealing with the subject has been introduced into the House of Commons, and it stands for second reading as the first order on the first Private Member's day after the reassembling of Parliament, viz. on Wednesday, the 25th of February, when it will be debated and considered by Parliament.

The time, it may be argued, is not appropriate either for the discussion of this matter in the pages of a Review, or for the consideration of it by Parliament. Men's minds are occupied with definite questions of foreign policy which are vital to the empire; with large and difficult problems affecting our colonial interests, on which the future of these dependencies may hinge; with the condition of Ireland, and the necessity of re-enacting or continuing the Crimes Act; and, lastly, with Parliamentary reform and the contingencies which will arise out of a General Election on an extended franchise. With all these big and absorbing questions before the public, why thrust forward a little one, which interests only a limited number of people? The question, I admit, is not without its relevancy, but the answer is not far to seek.

In the first place, there is only one public measure of any importance, namely, the Seats Bill, before Parliament. No other Bill was mentioned in the Speech from the Throne, and the inference is that the large schemes of domestic reform, which have generally been foreshadowed in the Queen's Speech of late years, are relegated to future Parliaments elected under the new suffrage. We have had it on official authority that the Seats Bill and the continuation of the Crimes Act are to be the leading Government measures of the session. If this be so, there may be some chance for the unambitious efforts of a private member. Consequently the time may not be unappropriate for the introduction and consideration of this measure in the ensuing session, and Parliament may not be unwilling, in default of Government business, to address itself to a reform in its Private Bill procedure, with a view of setting its house in order for the new tenant which is to occupy it after the next election.

And there is another answer to the question of appropriateness of the time. We are about to have a new House of Commons, elected on something very like manhood suffrage. The chances are-nay, the certainty is that it will be a vigorous House of Commons, set upon work, determined, it may be, to carry out projects of reform of almost a startling character. It will be a new broom, and it will act according to the proverbial character of that useful implement. The new electorate will be more exacting than the old electorate. It will