I say that the setting up of four Standing Committees, and the institution of the guillotine closure have so far failed to relieve appreciably the pressure of business in the House of Commons. Another method has been tried that might reasonably have been expected to produce more fruitful results. I refer to the prolongation of the session of Parliament. In 1906 we had an autumn sitting. In 1907 we sat until August 28th. In 1908 we had an autumn sitting. In 1909 we sat for practically the whole year. The session of 1910 was agreeably diversified by a strenuously contested General Election at either end of it. In 1911 we had yet another autumn sitting, and this year we are threatened with a continuous session extending from February until Christmas time. True enough, a good part of the work of these sessions was wasted by the action of a House of Lords which has since lost some of its powers for obstructive mischief, but it will be observed that of the first class measures destroyed by the Lords, only two—the Education Bill (in a different form), and the Scotch Small Holders Bill—have subsequently made considerable demands on the attention of the House of Commons. The time gained by extending the sittings of these several Parliaments has been chiefly wanted for new legislation. Even if the House of Lords had found it convenient to pass the Liberal measures which it rejected, the pressure of business in the House of Commons must have necessitated the resort to autumn sittings in two or three of the years under consideration. Now, it is a commonplace that autumn sittings are permissible only in very exceptional circumstances. From the point of view of all Members of Parliament, autumn sittings are an unqualified disadvantage. Members, like other folk, want their holidays, and, unlike other folk, have constituencies to look after. Ministers of the Crown who are members of the House of Commons stand in even greater need of holidays than private members, and are not less under obligation to cultivate their constituencies. In addition, they need leisure for the preparation of the great Government measures that are to figure in the King’s Speech, Departmental Bills for the ensuing session, and generally for the overhauling of the work of their departments. It is astonishing that the work of the great administrative departments should have been done so well in recent years when regard is had to the extreme pressure under which Ministers have been working. If Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith had not had at their command an abundance of administrative talent of a high quality, there must have been during the last six years many cases of failure in the management of the important Parliamentary Offices of State. One of the chief functions of a Parliamentary Minister in charge of a department is the infusion of new ideas, the re-assembling and adaptation of old machinery, the bringing up