to date of an organisation that may have served its purpose well in the past but is no longer adequate to the enlarged requirements of modern times. For such work as this there must be time for cool deliberation. It is scarcely possible for the most capable Minister to devise schemes of administrative reform amidst the excited rumours of the lobbies and the innumerable distractions of life in the House of Commons. Less responsible members of the House of Commons than Ministers find that it is well-nigh impossible to think clearly during the session of Parliament. Other methods have been proposed for saving time in an overburdened House of Commons. There is the proposal that measures that have reached a certain incomplete stage in one session should be revived at the same stage in the next session of the same Parliament. A Select Committee of unusual authority discussed this matter in 1890. Among the members of the Committee were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Goschen, Sir William Harcourt, the Marquis of Hartington, Mr. Dillon, Sir Edward Clarke, Mr. T. W. Russell, Mr. Labouchere, and Mr. Sexton. Proposals for abridging the procedure on partly considered Bills had been mooted in 1848, in 1861, and again in 1869, but the objects in view of the earlier Committees entirely differed from those of the Committee of 1890. The proposal emanated from the House of Lords, and the original design was to give the Upper House power to hang up Bills coming from the House of Commons. The Lords complained, as they have often complained since, that Bills were sent up to them at a period of the session too late to admit of the exercise of the Lords’ rights of revision and amendment. They urged, too, and with some force, that Bills were frequently sent up to them which had not been adequately discussed in the lower House. They desired, therefore, to possess themselves of the power to hold over such Bills to another session. Needless to say, such a proposal as this excited fierce opposition in the House of Commons, and the deliberations of 1848, 1861, and 1869 came to nothing. The Committee of 1890 set out with wholly different intentions. Its object was merely to obviate reiterated arguments in the House of Commons on the same subjects and to save the time of the House. Thanks in a large measure to Mr. Balfour’s advocacy the Committee reported that the carrying over of Bills should become the practice of the House, as it is indeed the practice of almost every Parliament in Europe. A formidable minority, however, led by Mr. Gladstone, reported against the proposal, and nothing has yet been done to give effect to the wishes of the majority. To this day the “massacre of the innocents” is a melancholy feature of our proceedings at the end of a session. I doubt myself whether “carrying over” will ever be adopted as a part of the established and regular practice of the House of Commons.