NOTE 23, p. 233.--The “committing” of a Bill followed its second reading. The House constituted itself as a Committee to consider the details of a Bill: the Speaker temporarily abandoned the Chair to another member; and the Bill was then discussed clause by clause. The House failing to agree on any point, a Division, or poll of the members, was taken. The majority vote decided. Mr. Sheldon Amos (“Primer of the English Constitution and Government,” London, 1877, p. 46) conveniently summarizes the Parliamentary history of a successful Bill: “1. _Motion_ for leave to bring in the Bill. _Order_ to bring it in. “2. _Motion_ to have Bill read a _first_ time. _Order_ that it be read a first time. “3. _Motion_ to have Bill read a _second_ time. _Order_ that it be read a _second_ time. “4. _Motion_ to have the Bill committed. _Order_ that it be committed. “5. Committee on details of Bill. Report of Committee. “6. _Motion_ that Bill be read a _third_ time. Motion that it be _passed_. Passing of a Bill and sending of it to House of Lords.” Passed by the House of Lords, it then receives the assent of the Crown--the latter now a mere formality. NOTE 24, p. 235.--How crying the need of reform had been before the great Reform Act of 1832, a glance at the previous state of England will show. It was only in name that England was ruled by a representative government. A majority of the House of Commons were actually the creatures of the peers, or of other personages high in power. Like Church livings, the great lords had seats in the Commons to dispense. Some seats were openly for sale. The value of the two seats of the town of Gatton, which had only seven electors, was commonly estimated at £100,000. At a time when such cities as Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham were actually without representation in Parliament, the paper borough of Old Sarum, which had no inhabitant at all, had two members accredited to it. Scotland was even worse off. One example of the conditions there will suffice. The county of Bute contained but one voter, who--irresistibly suggestive of Mr. Gilbert’s _Pooh-Bah_--at elections was at once chairman, proposer and seconder of his own return, recorder of the successful vote, and unanimously elected candidate! The criminal absurdity of these matters, so completely patent, long before 1832 had stirred the people and even some of the statesmen of England. Among those who had written or spoken for reform were the great Chatham, and the younger Pitt; so too had felt John Wilkes and Sir James Mackintosh. And then came the French Revolution, which England hailed as the harbinger of her own reforms. When the French had won so swiftly the battle for freedom, what could not the English do? All the world knows how, in the days of the guillotine and the Terror, these English illusions faded. Forthwith, and for nearly a generation of men, England’s whole energies were turned from her domestic troubles to crush the child of that