Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/274

 course it is aggravated by the idiotic rule which destroys at the end of each session all the work which has been begun and not completed. The system, not less imbecile, in which opinion is ascertained in Parliament is another great time-waster. It is only necessary to ask for a single moment what our grandsons, or even the younger of our children, will think of a Parliament in which a vote was taken by solemnly walking through lobbies, with elaborate arrangements for counting and checking the members (when it might all be done by the simple use of an electric signal in front of each seat in the chamber) in order to perceive the miserable inadequacy of even the mechanical arrangements of all the parliaments of the world. And if even all the crass follies and mediæval stupidities of modern parliamentary arrangements were reformed, as nine-tenths of them could be by any competent board composed of a few engineers, electricians and architects, we should still be in possession of a legislative machine such as the intelligence of a hundred years hence would laugh to scorn if its restoration were suggested.

Nor is this all. The whole institution of parliaments, as a contrivance for giving effect to the will of the peoples, has long been utterly inadequate, and must be reformed from the bottom. We elect members to carry out schemes of legislation and forms of policy