§ COLONEL FRENCHsaid, he wished to ask the Chairman of the Standing Orders Committee, If, after the experience of the plan for facilitating Public Business in the House of Commons recommended by the Select Committee during this Session, it is his intention to move for a Committee to revise the Standing Orders?
§ COLONEL WILSON PATTENsaid, he was not authorized by the Committee on Standing Orders to make any Motion of the kind. Having consulted Mr. Speaker, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir James Graham), who was Chairman of the Committee on Public 802 Business which sat in the early part of the Session, and other hon. Members, he found it to be the impression that the House had not had sufficient experience of the recommendations of that Committee to warrant him in moving for a Committee to revise the Standing Orders. If those recommendations had not been favourable in some of their results, unquestionably they had been so in others. It had been supposed by more than one hon. Member that the plan of putting Supply down for Tuesday evenings would prove abortive; but the experience of Tuesday last afforded ground for supposing that the fact would be otherwise. Under these circumstances, he should not move for a Committee to revise the Standing Orders. Indeed, under any circumstances he should scarcely feel justified in taking such a step, after the appointment of a Committee presided over by so distinguished a Member of the House as the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle.