he Government and three at the disposal of private members; leaving
in all forty-four days for the Government and sixty-six for private
members. Into those forty-four nights Government must compress all its
yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the British Empire,
from the settlement of some petty dispute about land in the Hebrides, to
some question of high policy in Egypt, India, or other portions of the
Queen's world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions,
enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk, and a running
fire of cross-examination from any volunteer questioner out of the six
hundred odd members who sit outside the Government circle. The
consequence is, that Parliament is getting less able every year to
overtake the mass of business which comes before it. Each year
contributes its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated mass of
previous Sessions, and the process will go on multiplying in increasing
ratio as the complex and multiform needs of modern life increase. The
large addition recently made to the electorate of the United Kingdom is
already forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of Parliament,
as well as presenting old ones from new points of view. Plans of
devolution and Grand Committees will fail to cope with this evil. To
overcome it we need some organic change in our present Parliamentary
system, some form of decentralization, which shall leave the Imperial
Parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate to the
historic and geographical divisions of the United Kingdom the management
severally of their own local affairs.

I should have better hope from governing Ireland (if it were possible)
as we govern India, than from the present Unionist method of leaving
"things as they are." A Viceroy surrounded by a Council of trained
officials, and in semi-independence of Parliament, would have settled
the Irish question, land and all, long ago. But imagine India governed
on the model of Ireland: the Viceroy and the most important member of
his Government changing with every change of Administration at
Westminster;[19] his Council and the official class in general
consisting almost exclusively of native Mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by
religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of the
population; himself generally subordinate to his Chief Secretary, and
exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant Parliament and to the
determin