Nowhere in the whole range of British institutions does the interaction of law and custom baffle any attempt at logical description so much as in the case of procedure in Parliament. The cabinet, which is becoming more and more exclusively the motive force in all important legislative action, is not, indeed, so completely unknown to the rules of the House as it is to the statute-book; and yet a study of the rules alone would give but a faint idea of the authority of the Treasury Bench. On the other hand, it is impossible to understand how the government is attacked, and how it carries through its plans, unless one is familiar with the rules themselves. At the present day the discussions connected with appropriations, for example, turn little on financial questions, and are used mainly as an opportunity for criticising administrative conduct; but to understand how this is done, and to what extent the government has sought to limit the practice, a knowledge of the process of granting supply is essential. The actual working of the House of Commons involves three problems: first, the regular forms of procedure; second, the action of the cabinet and of private members, operating subject to those forms; and third, the methods by which the cabinet maintains a control over its own supporters, and through them over the House itself. To deal with these three matters together would involve so much confusion, that it has seemed better to take up one of them at a time. This chapter and the two succeeding ones are, therefore, devoted solely to the organisation of the House and the forms of procedure on public matters, the relation of the government to the work of the House being described in the chapters that follow, while the machinery for keeping the majority compact and under the lead of the Treasury Bench will be dealt with at a later stage under the head of "Party Organisation in Parliament." Legislation for private and local objects, which has had a peculiar and instructive development, is treated in a chapter by itself. [Sidenote: The Method of Voting.] [Sidenote: A division.]