CONDITIONS AND METHODS OF LAW MAKING and constructive, called for is so large that it is very hard to select out of them those most urgently needed. No legislature can deal with all at once. Where many are being pressed at once by different persons they jostle one another, and like people crush ing one another in the narrow exits of a theater, they move more slowly than if they were made to pass along in some regular order. It would be easy to suggest, if one were drawing a new constitution for a new com munity, an ideal method of securing good legislation and securing it promptly. But we have actual concrete constitutions and governments to deal with, so instead of sketching ideals, I will ask you to consider the actual machinery provided in the United States and in Britain for passing statutes. This machinery differs materially in the two countries. The American plan starts from the principle that the Legislative department must be kept apart from the Executive. Accordingly, the administration in the National and in the State governments has neither the responsibility for preparing and proposing measures nor any legally provided means at its disposal for carrying them through Congress, though the Presi dent and the State governors can recom mend them, and sometimes succeed in so •using their influence as to secure a bill's passing. You rely on the zeal and wisdom of the members of Congress to think out, devise and prepare such measures as the country needs; on the committees of your assemblies to revise and amend these measures; on the general sense of the assemblies and the judgment of their pre siding officers, or of a so-called "steering committee", to advance and pass those of most consequence. We, in England, have been led by degrees to an opposite principle. The executive is with us primarily responsible for legisla tion and, to use a colloquial expression, "runs the whole show," the selection of
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topics, the preparation of bills, their piloting and their passage through Parliament. It is a frequent practice for the govern ment to appoint Royal Commissions or Departmental Committees to take evi dence and report upon topics of importance which need legislation. Such reports are often valuable, and often lead to the pass ing of good measures. They would be still more valuable but for the political pressure which usually compels a government, against its better judgment, to make commissions too large, and to place upon them persons better known as representatives of particu lar types of opinion than as experienced and impartial masters of the subject. When it comes to the actual introduc tion of a measure, the work of preparation is done by an administrative department of the government and the drafting by the government draftsman. The department supplies the matter of the bill, the latter puts it into shape. Thus both a consider able measure of practical knowledge of the subject and a high measure of profes sional competence for giving legal form to what is meant to be enacted are secured. Not only measures .which raise large political issues, but all the more im portant measures of each session are brought in by the ministry on their responsibility as leaders of the majority in the House of Commons. The most important, including those likely to raise party controversy, are considered by the Cabinet, sometimes also by a Cabinet committee, and sometimes at great length. I remember one case in which an impor tant bill was altered and reprinted in twentytwo successive drafts, and I remember the case of another large and controversial bill which occupied the whole time of the Cabinet during six meetings of the Cabinet. Bills brought in by private members are drafted by themselves, or by some lawyer whom they employ for the purpose. Should a private member ask a Minister or a depart ment for assistance, it would usually be
