Tens of millions are shovelled out of the Treasury by an offhand, undiscussed, perfunctory resolution.

The attempt to compress infinite issues in a space too little has altered and, as some critics think, degraded the whole tenor of public life.

Parliament is no longer the Grand Inquest of the Nation, at least not in the ancient and proper meaning of the words.

The declaration of Edmund Burke to the effect that a member has no right to sacrifice his "unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience" to any set of men living may be echoed by the judges in our day, but to anyone who knows the House of Commons it is a piece of pure irony.

Party discipline cracks every session a more compelling whip; and our shepherded, regimented, and automatised representatives themselves realise that, whatever more desirable status they may have attained, they have certainly lost that of individual freedom.