SCIENTIFIC PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 363 



making any comprehensive attempt to adapt mediaeval practice 

 to modern conditions, and has resulted in the perpetuation of 

 anachronisms which even the most sentimental regard for a 

 glorious past fails altogether to justify. A picturesque 

 instance of this survival is to be found in the Parliamentary 

 fiction of the Speaker's Eye. Any one who takes the trouble 

 to scan the pages of Hansard will discover, if his scrutiny 

 extends over any reasonable period, that some 90 per cent, of 

 the speeches in the House of Commons are made by some 10 

 per cent, of its members. While no alteration of the Standing 

 Orders of the House could endow Mr. Speaker's eye with that 

 wider range of vision so much to be desired, it should not pass 

 the wit of man to devise some means of calling upon members, 

 at once less archaic and more logical than the present system. 

 Pending such a reform, the Speaker's task would admittedly 

 be rendered more easy by the imposition, under a new Standing 

 Order, of some drastic limitation of the length of speeches. 

 The time thus set free would, more or less automatically, fall 

 to the share of those members who, under present conditions, 

 are crowded out of almost every important debate by the 

 handful of self-constituted experts who can always make good 

 their claim to be heard, and who, once on their feet, rarely 

 know when to sit down. But, often as this suggestion has been 

 made, the existing method possesses so many conveniences from 

 the point of view of those responsible for the dispatch of 

 business, in an artificially congested Assembly, that no 

 assistance can be obtained from these gentlemen in bringing 

 about so obviously desirable a reform. 



It is scarcely too much to say that, under the dexterous 

 guidance of a succession of old Parliamentary hands, the whole 

 machinery of the House of Commons has, by almost impercep- 

 tible stages, been deflected from its original purpose, and is 

 now employed to impose upon the nation the autocratic will 

 of Cabinets which, if little less tyrannical than the Stuart 

 Kings, avoid the cruder methods which so often brought 

 those interesting but misguided monarchs into conflict with 

 an assembly which was, then, still jealous of its rights and 

 privileges. 



Space does not permit of our tracing the gradual process 

 by which the virtual substitution of Cabinet for Parliamentary 

 Government has been brought about, nor need we waste time 



