About the time a few years ago that a great outcry went up from members of the house of representatives and the country at large against Cannonism and the autocracy of the speaker of the house of representatives, great was the lamentation of the private member of the house of commons. In the United States representatives complained that they were deprived of all power because of the unlimited power usurped by the speaker. In England the complaint was directed not against the speaker—whose functions are those of a presiding officer, and who exercises them with judicial impartiality—but against the government, as we use that term in England, that is the prime minister and his colleagues of the cabinet. The “private member,” I may explain, is a member who holds no office under the government nor has ever held any. He constitutes the rank and file.