The changes made in order to save time are commonly attributed to the increase in the amount of business the House is called upon to despatch, and if in that business be included the enlarged control of the House over administrative detail by means of questions and otherwise, this is undoubtedly true, but so far as legislation is concerned, it would be more accurate to attribute the changes to the fact that it requires more time to transact business than it did formerly. There are a far larger number of members who want to interrogate and criticise the ministers, and to take part in debate. The pages of Hansard are more numerous in proportion to those of the statute-book. Now the old procedure was very elaborate. In the passage of an ordinary public bill through the House there were, apart from amendments, more than a score of different steps, upon each of which debate might take place, and a division might be claimed. Then motions to adjourn, and other dilatory tactics could be used indefinitely. Moreover, the general rule that amendments and debate must be relevant to the question before the House[258:1] was subject to wide exceptions, if, indeed, there could be said to be any such general rule at all. The debate upon a dilatory motion, for example, was not limited to the motion itself;[258:2] and every time a motion was made to go into Committee of the Whole on Supply, any grievance could be brought forward and discussed.[258:3] All this was unimportant so long as the battles between the parties were confined to occasional full-dress debates, and the rest of the time was devoted to the real work of legislation. But when systematic obstruction arose, and when without any intent to obstruct it became the recognised business of the Opposition to oppose, and in the case of measures that aroused strong party feeling to oppose at every step, the opportunities for doing so were too numerous to endure. Some of the steps in the enactment of a bill, such as engrossment,[258:4] passage,[258:5] and first and second reading in the Committee of the Whole,[258:6] have been discontinued altogether. Others, such as taking up the consideration of a bill,[258:7] or going into Committee of the Whole on a bill,[258:8] or bringing up a report from Committee of the Whole,[258:9] are taken as a matter of course without question put. In other cases again the question is put, but no debate is allowed.[258:10] With the same object debate upon a dilatory motion has been limited to the subject-matter of the motion, and the Speaker or Chairman has been empowered to forbid debate upon it, or even to refuse to put the question at all, if he considers the motion an abuse of the rules of the House.[258:11]