REMEDIES AND IMPROVEMENTS.
THERE are, we doubt not, many ways in which the Machinery of the House may be improved, and the defects we have pointed out remedied. The following Suggestions, we trust, would not be useless to those who might engage in that great work.
PLACE OF MEETING.
THERE must be a new building. A room that accommodates 324 mem- bers, with small comfort, [Report of the Committee on Buildings] offers very indifferent accommodation for 658 members.
It must be a new building; because it is impossible by any alteration of the old to gain space or give adaptation ; and because to patch the old will cost more, and be but a bit of patchwork when done.
The new House must have a range of rooms and offices, in imme- diate connexion with it, sufficient for the largest demands of the Legis- lature. In this respect, the old House is miserably. deficient. In 1830, there were on one occasion twenty-eight separate Committees sittings in one day ; and yet the total number of available Committee-rooms Only fourteen.
The Library, as much as the House and the Committee-rooms, calls for enlargement. It has at present less than 6,000 volumes, and, from its confined dimensions, does not afford room for the whole of them.
The expense of proper buildings, for the most ample accommo- dation of the Representatives of the People, must not stand in the way of their erection. We have spent a million to furnish a Palace for the Rang; we can spare half a million to furnish a Hall of Assembly for the Commons.
The space at Charing Cross seems to offer a suitable site ; if a larger he required, there is the Green Park.
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