With a view to enlarging the legislative capacity of Parliament a select committee on Procedure in the House of Commons reported on May 25, 1906, in favour of increasing the number of standing committees from two to four, and making the reference of bills to them the normal, instead of an exceptional, proceeding. In pursuance of this recommendation the House on April 16, 1907, changed standing orders 46, 47, and 48[273:1] so that there should be four standing committees, one of which is in effect the former Scotch Committee, while the other three are to consider any bills that may be referred to them, and not as heretofore only those relating to law or to trade.[273:2] All bills, except money bills and bills for confirming provisional orders, are to be referred to one of the standing committees, unless the House otherwise order on a motion to be decided without amendment or debate; and the bills are to be distributed among the committees by the Speaker. The object of the change was to give a better chance of enactment for measures which there is not time to debate in Committee of the Whole; and the provision that the House may vote not to send a bill to a standing committee was designed chiefly for the great party measures of the government which must always be debated in the House itself. The new procedure has not been in operation long enough to judge of its effects, but something will be said of its relation to the parliamentary form of government in the chapter on the "Cabinet's Control of the Commons." [Sidenote: The Procedure on Public Bills.] The steps through which an ordinary public bill must still pass are very numerous, but while formerly a debate and division might take place at each of them, of late years the opportunity for this--and practically the number of steps--has been much reduced by causing some of them to be taken as a matter of course without a vote, and by permitting no debate on others. This is well illustrated at the outset of a bill's career, where, indeed, an old complex procedure and a later and simpler one continue to exist side by side. [Sidenote: Introduction and First Reading.]