interpret them, which is depriving our constitution of what has hitherto been regarded by foreign students as one of its most distinctive features—the subordination of the executive to the legislature and to the courts. The distinction between Gesetz und Verordnung,(59) between statute and order, is fast disappearing in the enormous volume of statutory orders. Powers to make rules under particular statutes are entrusted to Scotch, Irish, and English Departments which have the effect of diminishing the control of the House of Commons without transferring it to any representative substitute. The great increase of grants-in-aid for administrative purposes has also given the departments a power of indirect legislation by the latitude they enjoy in the distribution of them such as is further calculated to diminish the control of the House of Commons over questions of Irish and Scotch policy. Rarely do any marked departures by the departments come under the review of the House of Commons; the claims of the Government over the time-table of the House, fortified by certain rulings of the Speaker,(60) may and frequently do preclude any examination of them. In the words of a famous resolution, one may say “the power of the Executive has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.” But it is no remedy for this state of things to provide for administrative devolution alone. To devolve the authority which a great Department of State, such as the Board of Agriculture, exercises over the whole of Great Britain by the simple process of assigning its Scotch business to the Secretary for Scotland, does not increase the control of Scottish members over the executive. This process of administrative devolution, which is always going on, is not accompanied by any measure of legislative devolution; the Secretary for Scotland is not thereby brought under the control of the Scotch Standing Committee. To create a new Scottish or Irish Department does not increase Parliamentary control over Scottish or Irish administration; rather it diminishes it. The heads of a Scottish Education Office, Local Government Board, and Department of Agriculture have been made responsible not to the House of Commons but to the Secretary for Scotland. Like the Chief Secretary for Ireland, he is a Prime Minister without a Cabinet and without a Legislature, and his policy is determined primarily not by Scottish or Irish opinion, but by the alien issues of imperial politics. Obviously there will never be any remedy for these anomalies until we have a Legislature with an executive responsible to it. Scottish Home Rule