clients' measure for any day of the week most convenient to himself and to them. There was no appeal from the choice. Public business of whatever magnitude must needs stand aside till a local Gas or Water Bill had been fought out. It has more than once happened that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, waiting to expound his Budget, has been blocked by a private Bill. It was no uncommon thing for a measure upon which local feeling was excited or large monetary transactions depended to be debated up to five or six o'clock. Thereafter, and only then, Ministers waiting to answer questions might take their turn, the Orders of the Day succeeding. Under the new rule if private business is not over by a quarter past two it is shunted till such time as the Chairman of Ways and Means may fix. It will come on at some convenient day when, at nine o'clock, the House resumes after dinner. Here, again, whilst the public service is guarded, no damage accrues to private interests. There is, indeed, the advantage of discouraging the lobbying which used to take place under the former régime. Members coming down as usual for questions, finding their approach barred by debate on a private Bill, became the prey of parties promoting or opposing it, who eagerly canvassed their votes. They knew nothing about the merits of the case at issue, but to oblige a friend voted in one lobby or the other. Private business coming on sharp at nine in the evening, the attendance is confined to members whose constituents are directly interested in the Bill coming on. The Standing Order dealing with disorderly conduct was, two years ago, considerably strengthened. A member having been 'named' by the Speaker or chairman of committees for disregarding the authority of the Chair, or wilfully and persistently obstructing business, a Minister, the leader of the House if he chance to be present, moves that such member be suspended from the service of the House. Straightway the Speaker puts the question, and the House divides, no amendment, adjournment, or debate being allowed. This was the last rule dealt with by the House before the debate was indefinitely adjourned. The result is very curious, and has apparently escaped the recollection of Ministers and the House. A subsection directed that the suspension on the first occasion should continue for one week, on the second occasion for a fortnight, and on the third or any subsequent occasion for a month. This penalty was found to be absurdly inadequate. An Irish member, wanting a week's holiday without risking loss of a week's wage, had only to get himself named by the Speaker, and to the placid joys of his outing. was added the enthusiastic applause of his constituents. It was proposed to make the penalty much more severe; to which end, on the 13th of February, 1902, particulars of the several terms of punishment were struck out of the clause, as a preliminary to enacting fresh penalties. Four days later, the House returned to consideration of the matter, the sitting being adjourned before it was settled. This 17th of February turned out to be the last occasion on which the new rules were debated. The consequence is that this important section of the penal clause remains comically truncated. It reads thus: 'If any member be suspended under this order, his suspension on the first occasion Afterwards is silence. As the rule now stands, without the controlling subsection, a member suspended is sentenced for an indefinite time, certainly till the end of the existing Parliament. The difficulty arose in the case of Mr. John Dillon, and had to be met by a special order. Meanwhile, like the unfinished window in Aladdin's Tower, the rule remains a fragment, a flash of humour in the dull tome of Standing Orders. Among the rules dealing with disorderly conduct is one that has not yet been put in force. It directs that in the case of grave disorder arising in the House the Speaker may, if he think it necessary, adjourn the House without question put, or suspend any sitting for a time to be named by him. This is founded upon the custom in the French Legislative Chamber, where the President temporarily closes a noisy sitting by putting on his hat. When the new rule was accepted, members obviously had in mind the memorable scene during the committee stage of the Home Rule Bill, when a free fight took place on the floor of the House. The difficulty that suggests itself is whether upon that particular occasion the Speaker's voice could have been heard above the tumult, and whether his quittance of the Chair would have had any appreciable effect upon the scene. For a certain period gentlemen above the gangway on the Opposition side were so earnestly engaged upon the task of pommelling each other in the avowed interests of free speech that they were not in a position to notice whether the Speaker's chair was empty or occupied. As it happened, the outbreak occurred in Committee, and when, after considerable interval, the Speaker appeared on the scene, party passion was stilled. A reform of procedure the House of Commons has frequently coquetted with is the carrying over of unfinished Bills to the next Session. It seems a preposterous thing that a body of business men should occupy themselves through weeks, even months, of a Session in framing a measure of legislation, and see their labour lost by the arbitrary interference of a particular date. In Congress at Washington, where legislative work is conducted on strictly business principles, Bills dropped in one Session are taken up in the next, at the point achieved, and carried forward to the end. It is the same in France, Spain, Belgium, Austria-Hungary, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Greece, and even Portugal. The only legislative chambers that in this respect follow the British method are those of Germany and Italy. In 1890, Mr. W. H. Smith, with the enthusiasm of a convert, attempted to draft this proposal on his already far-reaching scheme of reform of procedure. He laid on the table a new Standing Order authorising the carrying-over of Bills left unfinished at the close of a Session. Mr. Gladstone, then leading the Opposition, objected to so grave a change in the usage of Parliament and the practice of the Constitution, before the matter had been carefully examined by a Select Committee. Such a Committee was appointed, with the result that the majority approved the proposal. Mr. Gladstone, his innate and ineradicable Conservatism touched, presented a draft report showing that similar proposals had been under the consideration of the House for forty years, and in every instance, in every shape, had been universally condemned. The same argument might of course have been used against the introduction of the Home Rule Bill of 1893. This powerful, though individual, opposition prevailed. The majority report was signed and circulated, but no attempt was made to frame and pass a Standing Order. It is interesting to note that not only was Mr. Balfour among the majority of the Committee favourable to reform, but he wrote the report, an able, convincing document. When, twelve years later, having risen to the position of Leader of the House, he introduced a scheme of procedure reform, he did not include this particular proposal. The day is not far distant when it will be incorporated in Standing Orders. Save a feeling of reverence for the antique, there is nothing to be said in support of procedure that every Session leads to prodigious waste of time. Another evil in parliamentary procedure crying aloud for intervention of the reforming hand is the inordinate length of speechmaking. As a rule, with few exceptions, it will be found that the length of a member's speech is in inverse ratio to the weight it carries. During the present Session, at a Friday sitting, with its maximum of five hours and a half debate, three hours and a quarter were appropriated by two members discussing a private Bill of third-rate importance. In debate on the Address carried on over three weeks few members spoke for less than an hour. There are exceedingly rare men in either House of Parliament whose information is so wide, whose counsel so sage, whose eloquence so alluring, that the House would willingly hear them beyond the space of half an hour. Save in the matter of explaining an intricate Bill or expounding a Budget, twenty minutes is the full limit to which speech should obtrude on debate. Mr. Asquith, admitted on both sides to be one of the most effective debaters in the present Parliament, rarely exceeds half an hour when taking prominent part in critical debate. But every sentence tells. Whereas a man of less intellectual capacity and dialectical skill goes mooning round to find the right word and most effective manner of introducing it. Major Rasch has made this subject his own. Ill-fortune has attended him at the ballot. There is a consensus of opinion as to the existence of the evil and the necessity for reform. Unhappily personal concern is unselfishly concentrated on desire to see a colleague or neighbour curb his tendency to verbosity. On the one occasion when opportunity presented itself of discussing the subject in the House, no contributor to the debate occupied less than forty minutes in lamenting the tendency to unduly long speeches. It is a matter on which the Mother of Parliaments would do well to take a leaf out of the book of her vigorous daughter on the other side of the Atlantic. In Congress it is ordered that no member shall occupy more than one hour in debate on any question in the House or in Committee. When, sixty-four years ago, the rule was submitted, it was, after a fashion common nearer home, assailed as an attack on liberty of speech. It has been found in practice to work admirably. Only on rare occasions does a member avail himself of his full privilege. One in charge of a Bill, having an hour at his disposal, speaks for a few minutes, then makes way for another, usually an opponent of the measure. He in turn leaves verge and scope for a third speaker, and so brisk debate goes on. At the end of the hour its original proprietor demands a division which, if the House thinks enough has been said (as it usually does) is granted and the Bill is advanced a stage. In Committee of the whole House speeches are limited to five minutes, a rule that enables every point in a clause to be threshed out by a multitude of authorities. When, as frequently happens in the House of Commons, three or four members follow each other in discourses occupying from forty minutes to an hour in duration, what is said can hardly be regarded as representative of the sense of an assembly 670 strong. It should be added that in Congress the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb. If a member may not deliver a discourse at the full length permissible at Westminster, he may have it published at the national expense. The fact that it was never delivered does not, in a free country, prevent its being reported verbatim. The Congressional Record is the sepulchre of this abortive eloquence. Each senator is entitled, free of charge, to eighty-eight copies of the daily issue, each representative being content with threescore. Thus are they enabled to gratify the family circle and cheer a wider range of personal friends with opportunity of studying their eloquence. Something over 41,000l. is paid by a grateful country for enjoyment of this intellectual luxury. It is money well expended, as making possible the existence of a rule of Spartan simplicity and severity that smooths and accelerates the wheels of the legislative machine. It would be a small price to pay for the accomplishment of similar results in the House of Commons. HENRY W LUCY. IN CHINESE DREAMLAND THE Chinese people have never associated dreams with indigestion. An outline of what they have thought and written about dreams during the past twenty-five centuries will be attempted in the following pages. The Book of History, a collection of old historical documents, edited by Confucius in the fifth century B.C., records how in B.C. 1321 the Emperor Wu Ting dreamed that God sent him an able Minister to aid in the administration of government. On awaking, his Majesty was able to describe the man so minutely that a picture was prepared, and sent about the empire until the required sage was found, of course in a humble position. And it may be as well to state here that Chinese artists represent dreams pictorially by means of a spiral or curl, as of vapour, proceeding from the dreamer's head, and broadening out until large enough to receive the figures or scenery which enter into and compose the dream. Turning to the Odes, the old ballads of the eighth, ninth, and possibly earlier centuries B.C., edited later on by Confucius, we find three entries in which dreams are mentioned, of which one will suffice as a specimen. Referring to a palace just built for the suzerain ruler of feudal China, the Pindar of the day writes a congratulatory ode in which these words occur: With the rush mat below and the bamboo mat above, Sleep and awaken! . . . 'Oh, interpret our dream: Say what dreams are lucky: Ours was of bears and gorillas, Of serpents and snakes.' Then the Grand Augur will interpret: 'Bears and gorillas Are an omen of sons; Serpents and snakes Are an omen of daughters.' The Grand Augur, we are told, reasoned thus: Bears and gorillas belong to the positive or male principle in Nature, the |