The incongruity of such a mode of
legislating would strike all minds, were it not that our laws are
already, as to form and construction, such a chaos, that the confusion
and contradiction seem incapable of being made greater by any addition
to the mass.
Yet even now, the utter unfitness of our legislative machinery for
its purpose is making itself practically felt every year more and
more. The mere time necessarily occupied in getting through Bills
renders Parliament more and more incapable of passing any, except on
detached and narrow points. If a Bill is prepared which even
attempts to deal with the whole of any subject (and it is impossible
to legislate properly on any part without having the whole present
to the mind), it hangs over from session to session through sheer
impossibility of finding time to dispose of it. It matters not
though the Bill may have been deliberately drawn up by the authority
deemed the best qualified, with all appliances and means to boot; or
by a select commission, chosen for their conversancy with the subject,
and having employed years in considering and digesting the
particular measure; it cannot be passed, because the House of
Commons will not forego the precious privilege of tinkering it with
their clumsy hands. The custom has of late been to some extent
introduced, when the principle of a Bill has been affirmed on the
second reading, of referring it for consideration in detail to a
Select Committee: but it has not been found that this practice
causes much less time to be lost afterwards in carrying it through the
Committee of the whole House: the opinions or private crotchets
which have been overruled by knowledge always insist on giving
themselves a second chance before the tribunal of ignorance.
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