The regular session of Parliament opens about the beginning of February, and the first business is the address in reply to the King's speech. Formerly it was an elaborate affair, which referred to the clauses of the speech in succession, but since 1890 it has taken the form of a single resolution expressing simply the thanks of the Commons for his Majesty's most gracious speech. Amendments are moved by the various sections of the Opposition in the shape of additions thereto, pointing out how the government has done things it ought not to have done, and left undone things it ought to have done; and even members of the majority, who are disgruntled because their pet hobbies have been left unnoticed, follow the same course. The debates on the address take practically the whole time of the House for two or three weeks.[308:1] As soon as they are over, the Committee of Supply is set up, and sits one or two days each week, the rest of the sittings being taken up with government measures, and with business introduced by private members. Hope springs eternal in the legislative breast, and every assembly undertakes more work than it can accomplish thoroughly. In some legislatures this results in a headlong rushing through of measures almost without discussion at the end of the session. But while, under closure by compartments and the supply rule, this may be true in England of certain clauses of bills and of large parts of the appropriations, it is not true of bills as a whole. Parliament is, primarily, a forum for debate, rather than a machine for legislation, and bills that cannot be discussed at some length are dropped. After the Whitsuntide recess every year, the leader of the House announces that owing to lack of time the government has found it necessary to abandon such and such measures, a proceeding familiarly known as the slaughter of the innocents. But it is not their own bills alone that the ministers are obliged to slay. In order to get through their own remaining work they have long been in the habit of taking by special order, after the Easter recess, a part of the sittings reserved for private members, and of seizing all the rest soon after Whitsuntide. The practice was regulated and made systematic by the new rules of 1902; but this brings us to the relation of the cabinet and of private members to the work of the House, which forms the subject of the following chapter. FOOTNOTES: