and there are sinking hearts on the Ministerial Benches. On every such occasion it is felt in all parts of the House that a deadly blow has been aimed at the dignity and the prestige of Parliament. But the House of Commons is meant to be a deliberative assembly! It holds still the highest place among the democratic assemblies of the world, and its rules and forms and customs have been adopted with unquestioning veneration, wherever democratic communities have set up legislating for themselves. In point of _personnel_, recent Parliaments have shown no falling off from the standards of other days. In manners, in public spirit, in devotion to parliamentary duty, and in the range of their knowledge and experience, the members of the present Parliament compare most favourably with their predecessors in any Parliament in our history. If they are gagged and closured and guillotined, it is not because their speeches would be unworthy of the place or of the occasion. The simple reason is that there is no time for them. The mother of Parliaments is trying to do the work of four or five Parliaments, and is signally failing in the attempt. Let this be noted. Though the outcry against the guillotine closure, whenever it is proposed to be exercised, is loudest on the opposition side of the House, the guillotine operates just as much to the disadvantage of private members on the Government side. They are expected to support the Government Bill in broad outline, but they are under no obligation to support it in every detail. They entertain, and are entitled to entertain, their own views as to points of detail, and are no more willing than members opposite that their pet amendments should be sacrificed arbitrarily at the end of an allotted day. Indeed, since they are, _ex hypothesi_, devoted to the main principles of the Bill, they are likely to be even more solicitous than members of the Opposition that the Bill should be as perfect in detail as in its general scope. Little wonder that under the operation of the guillotine, private Ministerial members tend more and more to become passive and, in the long run, indifferent spectators of the drama that is enacted on the floor of the House when a great Bill is going through, and it is in this respect and not in any other, I think, that modern Parliaments are inferior to others.