Ministers look with cold disfavour on the proposal. They are generally suspicious of private members’ little Bills, and private members themselves are not ordinarily enthusiastic about the legislative bantlings of other private members. One other remedy has been suggested for hastening the dispatch of business in the House of Commons—the limitation of speeches. For every member who made speeches in the House of Commons half a century ago fifty make speeches now. It is not, I think, that we are more loquacious than our ancestors or more greedy of the ready publicity that is accorded to any sort of speech in Parliament. Many interests are now represented in Parliament that were not directly represented at all in the earlier days, and the problems of a more numerous population and of a more complex civilisation make corresponding demands on the time of the House of Commons. The serious man who represents these great new interests in the House of Commons never consciously squanders the time of the House in unnecessary speech. No doubt the prevailing fashion of oratory is marked by diffuseness and lack of discipline, but it is to the comparatively modern scandal of deliberate obstruction by speech that we owe the guillotine and all its attendant evils. From time to time there has been earnest debate as to whether a time limit to speeches should be fixed. That any such policy is difficult of achievement is proved by the fact that even the existing Standing Order against irrelevance and tedious repetition has fallen into almost complete abeyance.