The anomaly, however, remains. How is it to be met? Obviously it is but a temporary difficulty if, as the Prime Minister has suggested in his speech on the first reading, the Bill is to be regarded as but the first step in a general devolution of the legislative powers of the Imperial Parliament. But everything depends on how far that devolution is to be carried. The Prime Minister’s reference to a change in the Standing Orders suggests a further development of the Committee system already in operation in the case of the Scottish Standing Committee by which the House has delegated a certain degree of provincial autonomy to a group of members. It would be possible to extend this to the creation of a Standing Committee for England and Wales. Under such a system Irish Members would be excluded from the Committee stages of legislation which was neither Irish nor Imperial. But there remains the Report stage, which is always apt to resolve itself into a Second Committee stage(58) in which the whole House participates. Moreover, an impassable limit is set to this process of domestic devolution by the necessity that the Government of to-day should command a majority in each of these Committees. A Liberal Ministry would probably find itself in a minority in an English Standing Committee, and a Unionist Ministry would, with equal probability, find itself in a minority in a Scottish Committee. Committees have become not so much a sphere for the legislative initiative of the private member as a new outlet for Government business. Contentious bills introduced or adopted by the Government are referred to them, and the moment this is the case the Minister in charge who is confronted in Committee with amendments which he does not care to accept may invite the whole House on the Report stage of the Bill to disallow them. The House itself, jealous of any surrender of its prerogatives, is only too apt to turn the Report stage into a second Committee stage. The responsibility of a Government department for the preparation and execution of legislation is to-day so indispensable that effective legislative devolution is almost impossible without devolution of the executive also. A Committee to which the Minister in charge of the Bill is not responsible is not in a position to exercise effectual control over legislation. Indeed it seems impossible to contemplate a devolution of legislative power without a corresponding devolution of executive power. So long as we have but one Executive in the House of Commons it is impossible to have two or three legislatures within the walls of that House. Moreover, it is just as imperative to restore the diminishing control of members of Parliament over administration as it is to re-establish their authority in legislation. There is a growing and regrettable tendency to confer upon Government departments both legislative and judicial powers—powers to make statutory orders and to