It is these Privy Councillors who are very largely responsible
for the other fad on which the Speaker laid stress—" that there has been a growing tendency in our debates for them to become the delivery of a series of set speeches." The great men take up so much time that when a back-bencher is finally called all the life has already gone out of the debate, and with it the audience. It often happens that on an important occasion it is half- past seven before a private Member is called. There is a general exodus, and the first private Member to be called is faced with nothing but a dreary desert of scattered order papers. How can lie effectively indulge, by that time, in what the Speaker called the " cut and thrust of debate " to a House that is suddenly reduced from three or four hundred to a " baker's dozen " ? There is this further difficulty under which the back-bencher labours. He never knows when he will catch the Speaker's eye or whether he will catch it at all. At the beginning he may bravely make notes for comment and criticism of each speech as it is made, but he soon realises that the chances of being called upon to follow him are slender in the extreme. Finally, after a couple of hours, when his order paper is covered with notes that he has made of speeches of men who have long since left the House altogether, he abandons the effort to make a debating contribution and returns to the speech that he had prepared in the morning. * * *
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