Mr. Clement Davies' sudden operation—I am very glad to hear
he is making satisfactory progress—is particularly unfortunate at this moment, when the important Committee on Procedure is about to begin its sittings. Mr. Davies, in view of his legal knowledge and his sixteen-years' experience of the House of Commons, would have made a most valuable member of the Committee, on which he represented the small Liberal fragment ; there was, indeed, I believe, a strong probability that he would be elected chairman. That can- not be, since the Committee begins its sittings next week, with a view to presenting an interim report when the House meets on October 9th, but he should be able to take his part in its future labours. Meanwhile, I am glad to see that Sir Alan Herbert has broken a lance with Low over a cartoon of the latter's suggesting in this connection that the Government is out, in the public interest, to hack a way through a tangle of antiquated and outmoded proce- dure. Nothing could be further from the truth. Existing proce- dure (as Sir Alan has shown admirably in his instructive book The Ayes Have It), has been carefully designed, or perhaps evolved, with a view both to giving a fair and democratic hearing to all opinions and to avoiding ambiguities calculated to produce a mass of subsequent litigation. The procedure may be capable of improve- ment, but in its present form it is very far from standing con- demned. (Low, I suppose, never knew Sir Edward Clarke, but one of his hoary defenders of the old order in the cartoon in question resembles that eminent jurist in every feature.) * * * *
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