The number of members sent to Parliament was something so enormous,
that it seems as if the people must have had a perfect mania for
being represented. Nowadays we get along splendidly with only
fifteen members (one for each Province) and a speaker. Formerly
several hundred was not thought too many, and before the
constitution was revised in 1935, there were actually over seven
hundred representatives assembled at Ottawa every year. Perhaps
this was all right under the circumstances, as there did not then
exist any organization for training men for Parliamentary duties,
or selecting them for candidature such as now exists; so there was
safety in numbers, though the floods of talk must at times have
been overwhelming. Besides the Central Parliament at Ottawa, there
was a Local Parliament to every Province, and in some Provinces two
Houses. It seems a mystery to us, now, how any measure could be got
through in less than twelve months, but our forefathers apparently
took pleasure in interminable harangues and oceans of verbosity,
and prominent men contrived to make themselves heard above the
universal clatter of tongues, so that good measures got pushed
through somehow to the satisfaction of a much-enduring public.
Nowadays our fifteen members put by as much work in two days as
would have kept an old Parliament talking for two years. Provincial
Parliaments, with their crowds of M.P.P's, were abolished in 1935,
and it was then also that the number of members at Ottawa was
reduced from the absurd total of 750 to 15, and the round million
or so which they cost the country saved. Members are not now paid;
the honor of the position is sufficient emolument. When these and
other changes were made, the expenses of government were enormously
reduced, so much so, that after ten years, that is in 1945, taxes
were abolished altogether, and from that time forward not a cent of
taxation has been put upon the people. The revenue is now obtained
in this way. Up to 1935 the revenue of the country stood at
something over $150,000,000. When the constitution was changed
the expenses of government were lessened to $50,000,000. It was
then agreed that for ten years longer the revenue should remain
at $150,000,000 (people were prosperous and willing enough to have
contributed double), so that every year of the ten $100,000,000
might be invested. Thus at the end of ten years the Government
possessed a capital of $1,000,000,000, and the interest