Let it not be supposed that the House of Commons is unconscious of its own demerits as a legislative machine. It is nearly sixty years since Sir John Pakington’s Committee was appointed to consider “whether by any alteration in the forms and proceedings of this House, the dispatch of public business would be more effectually promoted.” Committees with similar references were set up in 1861, in 1878, and in 1886. As a result of these inquiries two Standing Committees were established at the instance of Mr. W. H. Smith in 1888. The relegation of measures of the second rank to the two Standing Committees was expected to lighten the legislative burdens of the House of Commons very considerably, and this result was in some measure achieved. But the problem of congestion was so far from being solved that it was thought necessary to appoint yet another Committee (Sir Henry Fowler’s) in 1906. This Committee recommended the setting up of four Standing Committees, and it is under this system that we are now working. With considerable diffidence I advance the opinion that an even larger use of Standing Committees might be made than has yet been attempted. Part II. of the National Insurance Bill was sent “upstairs,” and the result amply justified what was regarded by cautious Parliamentarians as a daring experiment. But this part of the Insurance Bill was in a large degree uncontroversial. The House of Commons is jealous, and naturally jealous, of its rights over controversial measures of the first class, and has never yet shown any readiness to accept as conclusive the decisions of Standing Committees. Nor should it be forgotten that attendance on a Standing Committee imposes a severe strain on members who are also keenly interested in the business of the House itself. By the time Mr. Speaker takes the chair at a quarter to three o’clock, the members of such Committees have often completed a very fair day’s work. Meanwhile, other and more questionable expedients for facilitating the dispatch of business were coming into general use. It is to Mr. Joseph Ronayne, a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the ’seventies of last century, that we owe the policy of organised and scientific obstruction in the House of Commons, and, as a consequence, the drastic use of the closure. Mr. Ronayne was a back-bench member of the Irish Party, of unobtrusive manners but of settled opinions. He was profoundly dissatisfied with the unaggressive tactics of Mr. Isaac Butt, the then leader of the Irish Party.