ENLIGHTENED GOVERNMENT
in its infancy. In some cases there are special reasons for this. Agitators who figured as impecunious declaimers in the first session are now sober men of substance. They have found parliament a paying and a pacifying occupation. But the general explanation is that the Diet's method of procedure tends to discourage oratorical displays. Each measure of importance has to be submitted to a committee, and not until the latter's report has been received does serious debate take place. But in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred the committee's report determines the attitude of the House, and speeches are felt to be more or less superfluous. One result of this system is that business is done with a degree of celerity scarcely known in Occidental legislatures. For example, the meetings of the House of Representatives during the session 1896—1897 were thirty-two, and the number of hours occupied by the sittings aggregated a hundred and sixteen. Yet the result was fifty-five bills debated and passed, several of them measures of prime importance, as the gold-standard bill, the budget, and a statutory tariff law. Such a record seems difficult to reconcile with any idea of careful legislation; but it must be remembered that although actual sittings of the houses are comparatively few and brief, the committees remain almost constantly at work from morning to evening throughout the twelve weeks of the session's duration.
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