There was a short discussion yesterday week on some proposals,
made by Mr. Newdegate, in the view of restricting the time given to public Bills introduced by private Members of the House of Commons, and so killing off at an earlier stage Bills which, in Mr. Newdegate's estimation, only block the broad road of Parlia- mentary business, without having any chance of passing. Accord-
1 ing to the statement, there are about a hundred and twenty Go- vernment Bills introduced into the Commons, of which about a hundred get passed into law and twenty fail, while about the same number are introduced by private Members, of which about twenty get passed into law, while a hundred fail. Mr. Newde- gate's object was so to hamper with conditions the introduction of the measures of private members which are doomed to early death, as to diminish greatly the time given to them, and thereby to increase the time at the disposal of the House for Govern- ment measures. Mr. Disraeli recognised at once the generosity of Mr. Newdegate's attitude towards the Government, but deprecated his proposals. He did not wish, he said, to extinguish altogether the merely tentative legislation of the House. He did not wish to increase greatly the amount of actually finished legisla- tion; and after this expression of opinion, Mr. Newdegate's pro- posals were, of course, promptly negatived. Evidently Mr. Disraeli believes in the beneficent influence of natural selection on Naha- mentary work no less than on organic structures. He does not wish to diminish the number of competitive Bills, lest he should by chance lower the calibre of the measures which come to completion._ The present conflict for legislative existence is, he thinks, by no means too keen.
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