finally effected, and which, as I am now about to explain, acquired the name of the "Special Hansard," all attempted remedies had the defect, more or less, of saving time by the prevention, exclusion, or suppression of discussion. Mind and opinion, good, bad, or indifferent, were thus alike shut out. Such a system, failing the possibility of any other, might be of necessity submitted to in cases of predetermined obstruction, and of glaring abuses of parliamentary privileges. But it proved intolerable in any general application, and thus the parliamentary block remained substantially uncured by such mere shifts as the "cloture," and got worse and worse from session to session, and from day to day. The accumulation of postponed, or abortive, or wholly unattempted measures had reduced successive premiers and ministries at last to blank despair.
Necessity is ever the fertile mother of invention or expedient. Very early in my retrospect, it happened that one of the overwhelmed premiers of that time, after exhibiting to the House the otherwise hopeless aspects of his case, besought its tolerance of the experiment of a new procedure. The suggestion was substantially this, that instead of the usual speeches upon important propositions, members should give their views in writing. These written views formed a special publication of parliament, which took the afterwards famous name of the "Special Hansard." Sufficient intervals and opportunities were given for adequate discussion, reconsideration, or suggestion, after which each successive measure went swiftly and quietly to final division. Parliament having assented, perhaps, at the time,
