§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILLI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, having regard to the fact that the legislatures of the Colonies and Dependencies of the British Empire have been framed, where they are representative, on the model of the legislature of the Mother Country, but that in these legislative systems there is no instance of a legislative council or second chamber framed on the hereditary principle, and no instance of a trace of a spiritual peerage, inquiry will be made, in view of the proposed alterations in the relations of the House of Lords and the House of Commons towards each other, as to the reason of the conscious departure in the form and structure of the Colonial legislative systems from their original by the omission in every case of a chamber of hereditary and spiritual Members, which in the British Parliament have so seriously controlled and affected the course of legislation.
§ SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI think the reasons are pretty obvious, and any formal inquiry into the matter would cause unnecessary delay.