the establishment of a system of committees to which legislative
proposals of various kinds are referred, and this is one of the most
hopeful features of recent development. But there is still one important
sphere of legislation in which drastic reform is necessary: the costly
and cumbrous methods of dealing with private bills promoted by
municipalities or by railways and other public companies. It is surely
necessary that the bulk of this work should be devolved upon subordinate
bodies.

When we pass to finance, the inefficiency of parliamentary control
becomes painfully clear. It is true that a good deal of parliamentary
time is devoted to the discussion of the estimates. But how much of this
time is given to motions to reduce the salary of the Foreign Secretary
by £100 in order to call attention to what is happening in China?
Parliament never, in fact, attempts any searching analysis of the
expenditure in this department or that. It cannot do so, because the
national accounts are presented in a form which makes such discussion
very difficult. The establishment of an Estimates Committee is an
advance. But even an Estimates Committee cannot do such work without the
aid of a whole series of special bodies intimately acquainted with the
working of various departments. In short, the House of Commons has
largely lost control over national expenditure. As for the control of
administration, we have already seen how inadequate that is, and why it
is inadequate.

These deficiencies must be corrected if Parliament is to regain its
prestige, and if our system of government is to attain real efficiency.
For this purpose two things are necessary: in the first place,
substantial changes in the procedure of Parliament; in the second place,
the delegation to subordinate bodies of such powers as can be