Among the not least substantial reforms effected in the present Session is that whereby, on the opening day, the process of balloting for places for private motions was relegated to an upper chamber. When, last year, the House of Commons, fresh from the polls, met on the eve of a memorable Session, two full hours of its precious time were wasted by a process that would not be tolerated in any other business assembly of the world. Out of a total of 670 members, 400 came down inflamed with desire to set somebody or something right. This they proposed to do either by moving a resolution or introducing a Bill. The House of Commons, whose order of procedure dates back to the Commonwealth, has ever been accustomed to this human weakness. It provided for it by the regulation that private members so possessed should ballot for precedence. Ministers, who also have a Bill or two to bring in, being masters of the situation, forthwith fix the day upon which they will take action. Private members must take the chances of the ballot. That was all very well in former times, when at the opening of a new Session ten, twenty, or at most thirty members struggled for "an early day." On Tuesday, the 1st of February, 1893, the day which marked the doom of an ancient practice, over four hundred members desired to give notice of motion. Whilst preliminary business was going forward, the stranger in the Gallery would see a long line of members slowly making their way between the table and the Front Opposition Bench, to the great inconvenience of right hon. gentlemen seated thereon. Arrived by the clerk's desk, each man wrote his name on a sheet of foolscap, and passed gloomily on, making himself a fresh nuisance by returning to his seat along the crowded back benches. Each line of the foolscap on which a name was written was numbered. The clerk at the table prepared slips of paper carrying corresponding numbers, which he twisted up and threw into the box before him. When the House presumably sat down to business, the Speaker took in hand the sheets of foolscap containing the list of members desiring to give notice. The clerk at the table tossed together the folded pieces of paper in the box, as if he were making a salad with his fingers. Then he took one out and called aloud the figure printed on it. Say it was 380. The Speaker, turning over his sheaf of papers, found that on the line 380 was written the name of Mr. Weir or Dr. Macgregor, and in sonorous voice recited it. That meant that the member in question had secured first place for his motion, and was at liberty to select what with due regard to all circumstances he looked upon as the most favourable day.