The cases in which a member of Parliament finds it his duty to support a measure which he believes to be positively bad, on the ground that greater evils would follow its rejection, are happily not very numerous. He can extricate himself from many moral difficulties by sometimes abstaining from voting or from the expression of his real opinions, and most measures are of a composite character in which good and evil elements combine, and may in some degree be separated. In such measures it is often possible to accept the general principle while opposing particular details, and there is considerable scope for compromise and modification. But the cases in which a member of Parliament is compelled to vote for measures about which he has no real knowledge or conviction are very many. Crowds of measures of a highly complex and technical character, affecting departments of life with which he has had no experience, relating to the multitudinous industries, interests and conditions of a great people, are brought before him at very short notice; and no intellect, however powerful, no industry, however great, can master them. It is utterly impossible that mere extemporised knowledge, the listening to a short debate, the brief study which a member of Parliament can give to a new subject, can place him on a real level of competence with those who can bring to it a lifelong knowledge or experience. A member of Parliament will soon find that he must select a class of subjects which he can himself master, while on many others he must vote blindly with his party. The two or three capital measures in a session are debated with such a fulness that both the House and the country become thoroughly competent to judge them, and in those cases the preponderance of argument will have great weight. A powerful ministry and a strongly organised party may carry such a measure in spite of it, but they will be obliged to accept amendments and modifications, and if they persist in their policy their position both in the House and in the country will sooner or later be inevitably changed. But a large number of measures have a more restricted interest, and are far less widely understood. The House of Commons is rich in expert knowledge, and few subjects are brought before it which some of its members do not thoroughly understand; but in a vast number of cases the majority who decide the question are obliged to do so on the most superficial knowledge. Very often it is physically impossible for a member to obtain the knowledge he requires. The most important and detailed investigation has taken place in a committee upstairs to which he did not belong, or he is detained elsewhere on important parliamentary business while the debate is going on. Even when this is not the case, scarcely any one has the physical or mental power which would enable him to sit intelligently through all the debates. Every member of Parliament is