the Asquith motion applying the guillotine to committee stage of the licensing bill, there were no precedents between 1887 and 1906 for so free a use of this device as had been made since 1906.

But it has to be borne in mind that never before in the history of parliament-not even after the reform acts of 1832 and 1867—was there a house of commons so consumed with a zeal for work as that which since January, 1906, has afforded such unprecedented majorities for the Campbell-Bannerman and the Asquith governments. Reform measures enacted by liberal governments came to an end with the parish and district council acts of 1894, for which the Rosebery government of 1894-1895 was responsible. An era of reaction had preceded the general election of 1906. Social legislation, according to liberal principles, had fallen into arrears; and as Sir Courtenay Ilbert points out in his clearly-written and valuable supplementary chapter to Professor Redlich's work-the chapter covering the changes made in 1906 and 1907-the social character of the house of commons had undergone an extraordinary change as a result of the general election of 1906.

Consequent upon this change-a change more marked than in any previous house of commons, and a change which brought up the number of labor members to forty-five or fifty-when the house turned its attention to new rules to economize time it "was found to contain a smaller proportion of habitual diners out than its predecessor, a larger number who were content with a frugal and hasty meal within the precincts." "And it soon appeared," continues Sir Courtenay Ilbert, "that the members of this parliament were set on two things; first a postponement of the hour of meeting, which under the system of 1902 trenched severely on necessary morning work at the government offices, in committees, in the city or at home; and secondly on fixing the hour of rising at a time when the man of small or moderate means could make sure of getting home with the help of a public conveyance. But they were also full of zeal for work; and the problem was to combine shorter parliamentary hours with sufficient time for necessary work."

Several changes in the rules governing the hours of opening and closing the sittings and also the interval for dinner were made in 1906 with a view to shortening the working day; and in 1907, in order to

increase the working efficiency of the house, new standing orders were adopted under which four standing committees have been brought into service. To these committees, of each of which twenty members form a quorum, are referred all bills which have been read a second time. Unless the house otherwise order immediately after it has read a bill a second time and thereby accepted the principle, all bills go to one or other of these four standing committees except (1) money bills and (2) bills for confirming provisional orders issued by the board of trade or other state departments empowered to issue provisional orders. One of these committees includes all the members from Scotland; and to it go all public measures relating exclusively to Scotland. Other bills are distributed among the other three standing committees by the speaker.

By this procedure committee stage in the house for these bills is saved. The committees sit in the rooms upstairs, usually before the daily sitting of the house begins; and after reference to one of these committees the stage at which the house is next concerned with the bill is report stage-the stage between committee and third reading. Economy of the time of the house was the principal reason for making this important change; but it is claimed, and with good ground, that when the general principle of a bill has been affirmed on second reading, a reasonable chance ought to be afforded of having the provisions discussed. This chance is more assured under the standing committee procedure than under the old procedure, which, except for an interval when standing committees for bills on law and trade were tried in 1882-1883, was continuous from as far back as the reign of James I, when as the journals record, committees of the whole had their place in the stages of a bill. As a rule discussion in standing committee is more business-like and more effective than discussion in committee of the whole; and, moreover, it is obvious to anyone who is acquainted with the actual work of the house of commons that the time of the house is saved by dividing it into compartments for threshing out the details of legislative measures.

The rolls of parliament and the journals of the house of commons are silent on a number of points on which students of parliamentary history would like to be informed. When and why three readings of a bill were adopted is one of these questions that has so far eluded

research. Equally elusive are the reasons which impelled the house of commons to end the procedure of the sixteenth century of referring bills for consideration of detail to small committees which held their sessions two miles away from St. Stephen's, and to adopt the plan of taking this stage of a measure in committee of the whole. It is significant, however, that the plan adopted in 1907 of referring bills to standing committees is a reversion to that in service in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when committee stage of a bill of which the house had affirmed the general principle was frequently taken by a select committee sitting in the hall of Lincoln's Inn, Sergeant's Inn, or the Middle Temple.

It would be interesting to follow the changes of the last twenty-five years which have so greatly curtailed the opportunities of unofficial members for carrying a bill through its several stages of the house of commons. Here, however, it can only be observed that private members' bills can only be taken at the short sittings on Friday; and that later than the fourth Friday after Whitsuntide, government business has a right of way over private members' bills.

Private members intent on legislation on their own initiative are thus nowadays, as Professor Redlich notes, "confined to a very small proportion of parliamentary time." But the loss of opportunities to which private members have had to submit does not necessarily mean that all the time once available for private members has accrued wholly to the advantage of the government. The government, it is true, is in possession of much more of the time of the house than was the case when private members had larger opportunities. But nowadays, and especially since 1906, with the increasing demand for legislation in the constituencies, and with the growing tendency of electors to insist on pledges from parliamentary candidates, the government is being compelled to take up measures which twenty or thirty years ago would have been left in the hands of private members.

It was the extent to which members of all political parties were pledged at the general election of 1906 to legislation which should put the trade unions back into the position in which they stood before the judgment of the house of lords in the Taff Vale case that made it incumbent on the Campbell-Bannerman administration to pass the trades disputes act of 1906, with its clause granting immunity of trade union

funds from judgments like that awarded to the Taff Vale Railway Company. It was the same pressure from outside also that impelled the Asquith government to change its attitude on the question of the parliamentary enfranchisement of women. Up to the session of 1908 bills for granting the suffrage to women had always been in the hands of private members, and governments had stood aloof. In the session of 1908, however, pressure in and out of the house of commonsmost of it from outside the house-made it necessary that the Asquith government should on this question reconsider its position and this reconsideration resulted in Asquith undertaking to give parliamentary facilities for a measure enfranchising women when the government brings in its promised bill for adjusting a number of inequalities in the existing parliamentary electoral code. Private members have admittedly lost many of the opportunities which were formerly theirs; but this does not mean that the volume of legislation is less than it was when a comparatively large number of bills were pushed through the house of commons by private members. The general result of the change is that an increasing number of bills come before the house as government measures, and that governments today have less choice as to what bills they will adopt, and what bills they will leave to the chances of private member's exertions, than they had twenty-five or thirty years ago.

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION AND THE DEFECTS OF

THE CONFEDERATION

MAX FARRAND

Yale University

While it has frequently been stated that in framing the Constitution of the United States the federal convention of 1787 was engaged in a very practical piece of work, it never seems to have been realized how completely the members of that convention were dependent upon their own experience. With the Declaration of Independence the colonies organized themselves as States, framing and adopting constitutions. In the course of the Revolution, those States united under the Articles of Confederation. When this latter instrument of government proved to be inadequate, a fresh essay was made and our present Constitution was the result. That the Constitution was framed because of defects in the Articles of Confederation is universally accepted, but it does not seem to be recognized that experience had shown certain specific defects to exist, that the convention was called for the purpose of correcting those specific defects, and that the Constitution embodied in itself little more than the remedies for those defects.1

In order to appreciate this point of view, which it is believed is the true historical interpretation of the action of the federal convention in framing our Constitution, it is necessary to divest oneself of preconceived ideas and prejudices due to modern misinterpretation. First of all, it is quite misleading to judge the Articles of Confederation by present day standards of government. To do so results in condemning

1 For example, George Ticknor Curtis misses the essential idea when he states that "it was an entirely novel undertaking to form a complete system of government * * * to be created at once, * * *for the accomplishment of the great objects. of human liberty and social progress. Their chief source of wisdom was necessarily to be found in seeking to avoid the errors which experience had shown to exist in the Articles of Confederation." (Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, vii, p. 237.)