Obstruction or no obstruction, closure by guillotine or by compartments has come to stay as long as our Parliament attempts the otherwise impossible task of legislating for several provinces, and an empire at the same time. Nowadays almost every great Bill is subjected sooner or later to the guillotine. Let us see what this means. A debate in Committee, let us say, has been in progress for some days or weeks. Discussion has been free, and only occasionally, perhaps, has the ordinary form of closure been exercised. A bare half dozen clauses have been disposed of. There remain four or five score more clauses and a motley group of schedules. It becomes obvious that unless something is done to speed up the machinery, the Bill will never get through the House. Then it is that the leader of the House braces himself to his most unwelcome task, and, rising in his place, proposes a rigid time-table for the discussion of the remaining clauses and schedules. A certain number of days are allotted, and to each portion of time is allotted a section of the Bill. Thus, a whole Parliamentary day may be allotted to three clauses. The whole of this day, perhaps, is spent in debating the first line of the first of the three clauses. However this may be, the guillotine falls with remorseless severity at the end of the allotted day, and only Government amendments to the undiscussed parts of the three clauses are taken. Could anything be more clumsy? Was it possible for the ingenuity of man to invent a less businesslike remedy for the congestion of business in Parliament? Indeed, the absurdity of the system is universally acknowledged. I know of no more distressing spectacle than that of the leader of the House of Commons exerting himself to excuse a policy that he, in common with all who reverence the House of Commons, holds in detestation. On such occasions as this, the arguments advanced for what is confessedly a rude invasion of the rights of free speech are of a set pattern. It is urged that the debate has now been in progress for so many days or weeks, and that little advance has been made. Regret is expressed that resort should be had to such an unpopular device as the guillotine. But by what other means, it is asked, is a Government to carry controversial measures? After all, the time-table proposed is a generous one, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, and is certainly more generous than that allowed by the party opposite on such and such an occasion in the past. The leader of the Opposition, in rising, lays his hand on his heart and calls the House to witness that if on former occasions he has made use of the guillotine, he has done so far less frequently than the head of the present administration, and with an entire absence of the levity that marks the present proceedings. The guillotine resolution is carried. There are ineffectual ebullitions of wrath on the opposition side of the House,