9 JUNE 1894, Page 3

A curious Parliamentary incident happened on Thursday, when Mr. T.

W. Russell called the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the fact that the Local Veto Bill had disappeared from the Order Book of the House, and begged to know if that implied that the Government had made up their minds to drop it for the Session. Sir William Harcourt replied in the negative. The omission was purely accidental, and it would be restored to the Order Book at once. Further interrogated as to when he would resume the discussion of the Bill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer replied that he .could give the honourable Member for the present no further consolation on the subject. No doubt. And doubt- less, too, the Local Veto Bill had dropped out of the Order Book partly through the inattention which always besets measures which every one knows to be virtually, though not formally, abandoned. No more disastrous course can be imagined than this habit of crowding the Order Book with measures which can never pass, but which can go a great way towards killing other measures which might be carried but for the waste of public time devoted to the early stages of impossible Bills only as a mode of showing the constituencies the barren honour in which these impossible measures are held by the Government. Such mischievous tributes of respect should be omitted altogether.