Reforms of judicial procedure of course constitute only a relatively small part of the legislative work which will have been accomplished by the end of the century. Apart from the work of gradually remodelling the law with the idea (which nowhere seems to suggest itself to present-day legislators) of making it act beneficially upon public character, there will no doubt be a vast amount of work for the various parliaments of the world in codifying existing statute- and common-law systems, which in all communities have fallen into complexity and confusion of a degree which makes them highly unsatisfactory instruments of social protection: and there will also be a great amount of constructive legislation, particularly in regard to the tenure of land, to the simplification of conveyancing, to a more intelligent machinery of contracts, to the equitable handling of such accidental or conditional sources of wealth as we call "unearned increment" and the discovery of unexpected minerals, to the useful limitation of inheritance, and to other matters too numerous to be safely named. And in order that these great works may be accomplished, it is quite certain that, not only in England, but in all those States where really free parliaments exist, great reforms will have been found necessary, and will have become so much a part of the machinery of legislation and administration a hundred years hence, that our descendants will hardly be able to realise how Government was ever carried on without them. Indeed, it is by the difficulty of administering anything at all by parliamentary methods--every year more evidently breaking down--rather than by the desire to undertake large schemes of legislation, that statesmen will in a very short time be forced to initiate the changes whose full development will have become time-honoured by the end of this century. The organisation of political opposition in parliaments has reached a point which makes it evident that before long the minority in parliaments will have become a nonentity. The minority, in fact, has already, here and in other countries (of which the Austro-Hungarian empire is, at the moment, the most noticeable example), become so powerful for obstruction of business that, by a sort of paradox, its power is on the eve of complete destruction. At St Stephen's the effect of obstruction working in this manner is plainly visible. Whatever party is in power will always, so long as the existing system continues, be obliged to silence the opposition by the force of parliamentary machine; and whatever party is in power will always be accused of tyranny and autocracy by the other party. In practice there is no method by which any important government measure can be passed through the House of Commons except by force. It is a mere farce to make a show of debating the details in committee. Naturally the Opposition, when it does not want the measure passed at all, will delay its passage to the last possible