It is to be feared that many M.P.’s give up this task in despair. Instead of attempting to arrive at independent conclusions by personal investigation and study, they are content to rely upon their Party leaders to direct them on the right path in regard to Government measures dealing with the main public questions of the day, and upon their Whips as to whether they should oppose or support the Bills of private Members. Yet it is not always plain sailing, even when the lazy course is pursued of just giving one’s ear to the leaders on both sides attacking and defending. “The worst effect on myself resulting from listening to the debates in Parliament,” writes Monckton Milnes, “is that it prevents me from forming any clear political opinion on any subject.” Of the 300 Bills brought in every session, very few are passed. So supreme is the command of the Ministry over the time of the House of Commons that the private Members have little chance of carrying legislation. Only the Bills of the Government set out on their course through both Houses of Parliament with a fair prospect of reaching the Statute Book. Furthermore, the M.P. who is ambitious “the listening Senate to command,” also soon discovers that the opportunities for talking are flagrantly restricted in the interest of the Government. He may have devoted many days to the making and colouring of artificial flowers of rhetoric with which to decorate his speech in a great debate. Sometimes he may get the chance to deliver it in a House almost empty, and containing but two interested listeners—one the hon. Member who hopes to follow, and is impatient of his prolixity, and the other his wife in the Ladies’ Gallery, fuming at the indifference with which his eloquent periods are being received. That is bad enough; but there is a worse fate still. He may sit night after night on the pounce to “catch the Speaker’s eye” and yet fail to fix the attention of that wandering orb. Meanwhile he may hear his arguments and his epigrams made use of by luckier men, who probably got them in the Library from the same shelf, the same book, the same page as himself. Finally, the debate may be brought to an end, leaving him baulked in his design, with a mind further oppressed by the burden of a weighty unspoken speech. Then his constituents say unpleasant things of him because they do not see his name in the newspaper reports. He is neglecting his duty, or he is an empty-minded “silent Member,” who, having nothing to say, says it.