rain upon the energies and the lungs of the
comparatively small number of men by whom the actual business of the
House had to be carried on. This argument was used with much effect,
not many years before his death, by Mr. Gladstone himself, and there
can be no doubt that it maintained itself against the many successive
proposals which have been made from time to time for the enlargement of
the representative chamber. In most other legislative halls, on the
Continent or in the United States or in Canada, each member has his own
seat, and finds it ready for his occupation at any time; but in the
House of Commons on great occasions the ordinary member has to come to
the House at the earliest moment when its doors are open, hours and
hours before the business begins, in order to have even a chance of
obtaining a seat during the debate, and a large number of members are
fated, whatever their energy and their early rising, to sigh for a seat
in vain. The question has been raised again and again in the House of
Commons, and all manner of propositions have been brought forward and
plans suggested for the {272} enlargement of the debating-chamber, but
up to the present the condition of things remains just as it was when
the new Houses of Parliament were opened in the reign of Queen Victoria.

[Sidenote: 1840--Ladies in the House of Commons]

Sir Charles Barry's design has the great advantage that it renders an
increase in the size of the House of Commons possible and practicable
without a complete reconstruction of all that part of the vast building
which belongs to the representative chamber and its various offices.
In the opinion of many leading members of the House of Commons the
number of representatives is needlessly large for the purposes demanded
by an adequate and proportionate system of representation, and it is
not difficult to foresee changes which might lead, with universal
satisfaction, to a reduction in the number of members in the House of
Commons. It may also be anticipated that the system that relegates the
details of legislative measures to the consideration of Grand
Committees may be gradually extended as time goes on, and that thus the
committee work of the House of Commons itself may grow less and less by
degrees. In either case, or in both cases together, it might easily
come to pass that the present debating-chamber would supply ample
sitting room to all its members on every ordinary occasion, althoug