[DEBATES INTRODUCED BY PRINTED STATEMENTS.]

As this single device could be adopted alone, I will try and meet the objections to it, if I am only fortunate enough to light on any.  My experience of public bodies suggests but very few; and I think the strongest is the reluctance to take the requisite trouble.  Most men think beforehand what they are to say in introducing a resolution to a public body, but do not consider it necessary to write down their speech at full.  Then, again, there is a peculiar satisfaction in holding the attention of a meeting for a certain time, great in proportion to the success of the effort.  But, on the other hand, many persons do write their speeches, and many are not so much at ease in speaking but that they would dispense with it willingly.  The conclusive answer on the whole is—­the greater good of the commonwealth.  Such objections as these are not of a kind to weigh down the manifest advantages, at all events, in the case of corporations full of business and pressed for time.

I believe that a debate so introduced would be shortened by more than the time gained by cutting off the speech of the mover.  The greater preparation of everyone’s mind at the commencement would make people satisfied with a less amount of speaking, and what there was would be more to the purpose.

We can best understand the effects of such an innovation by referring to the familiar experience of having to decide on the Report of Committee, which has been previously circulated among the members.  This is usually the most summary act of a deliberative body; partly owing, no doubt, to the fact that the concurrence of a certain proportion is already gained; while the pros and cons have been sifted by a regular conference and debate.  Yet we all feel that we are in a much better position by having had before us in print, for some time previous, the materials necessary to a conclusion.  At a later stage, I will consider the modes of raising the quality and status of the introductory speech to something of the nature of a Committee’s Report.[19]

The second step is to impose upon the mover of every amendment the same obligation to hand in his speech, in writing, along with the terms of the amendment.  Many public bodies do not require notice of amendments.  It would be in all cases a great improvement to insist upon such notice, and of course a still greater improvement to require the reasons to be given in also, that they might be circulated as above.  The debate is now two steps in advance without a moment’s loss of time to the constituted meeting; while what remains is likely to be much more rapidly gone through.

The movers of resolutions and of amendments should, as a matter of course, have the right of reply; a portion of the oral system that would, I presume, survive all the advances towards printing direct.