not less helplessly than willingly, to try the new method, it was brought at once into life and action; and it promptly became far too indispensable to each parliamentary programme to be ever afterwards abandoned. Thus was begun an altogether new parliamentary system, by which successive ministries could meet, easily and adequately, the legislative wants of their time, and the Government of our advancing country could be piloted with comparative facility through centuries of after progress.
Various remarkable and beneficial changes followed in the wake of the "Special Hansard." The system certainly developed a more wide and free and careful expression of view; and there was an almost instantaneous collapse of all unseemly or disturbing scenes. Again, when so much of parliamentary work was transferred from the floor of the House to that of the bureau, alike with members generally as with ministers, and when, by "Special Hansard," so much of the House's time was saved, the parliamentary hours took a prompt accordance to the new circumstances. A minister could now be carrying through, all at one and the same time, as many great measures as there was occasion for, and yet be simultaneously and quietly conducting the other and ordinary business of Parliament, and all within some few reasonable and convenient hours of the afternoon or evening.
No after consequence of this "Special Hansard" system was either more striking or more generally useful than the habit it encouraged, or rather of necessity enforced, of concise expression. Indeed, from the very first, every reasonable mind must have foreseen that the chief chance of being attended to,
