Every year the amount of business that falls to be transacted in the House of Commons grows in volume. Every year fresh proofs are afforded that the legislative machinery of the House of Commons is not only unequal to the strain imposed by the growing volume of business, but that it is incapable even of dealing effectively with the affairs that have always been regarded as coming within its special province. For instance, the House of Commons has practically lost all control over the details of finance. It is true that a fairly generous allowance of Parliamentary time is allotted to the Estimates, but the House rarely, if ever, comes to close grips with the nation’s balance sheet, or indeed with the details of any particular vote. Yet a vigilant supervision over finance is one of the primary functions of the House of Commons. How far the recently established Select Committee on Estimates will be able to assist in promoting national economy remains to be seen. The creation of such a body has not met with universal approval in the House itself. As in the case of all parliamentary Committees, no matter how influential their _personnel_, the House as a whole may not be found willing to accept the decisions of the new Select Committee as authoritative. In the sphere of Bill legislation, the condition of things is even worse. Notwithstanding the desperate shifts which have been resorted to in recent years to secure the dispatch of business, we are confronted in every succeeding session with greater congestion in the House of Commons. Big Bills are hustled through with the aid of every undesirable expedient known to parliamentary procedure, and little Bills in pathetic shoals are massacred at the end of each session. The plain fact is that we have not sufficient time in which to do anything properly. No matter what strain we impose on the physical endurance of Members, no matter how far we invade the undoubted privileges of the House of Commons as a deliberative assembly, Parliament is less and less able to fulfil its manifold duties as the paramount legislature in a world-wide state. The damage to local interests is scarcely less serious. Irish finance, for instance, and Irish legislation suffer from the disability of Imperial Parliament to give them due consideration.