Ought there not to be a scale of steady increase in the numbers whose opinions have been gained beforehand?  Let us say three or four for an assembly of five-and-twenty, six for fifty, ten or fifteen for a hundred, forty for six hundred.  It is permissible, no doubt, to bring before a public body resolutions that there is no immediate chance of carrying; what is termed “ventilating” an opinion is a recognized usage, and is not to be prohibited.  But when business multiplies, and time is precious, a certain check should be put upon the ventilating of views that have as yet not got beyond one or two individuals; the process of conversion by out-of-door agency should have made some progress in order to justify an appeal to the body in the regular course of business.  That the House of Commons should ever be occupied by a debate, where the movers could not command more than four or five votes, is apparently out of all reason.  The power of the individual is unduly exalted at the expense of the collective body.  There are plenty of other opportunities of gaining adherents to any proposal that has something to be said for it; and these should be plied up to the point of securing a certain minimum of concurrence, before the ear of the House can be commanded.  With a body of six hundred and fifty, the number of previously obtained adherents would not be extravagantly high, if it were fixed at forty.  Yet considering that the current business, in large assemblies, is carried on by perhaps one-third or one-fourth of the whole, and that the quorum in the House of Commons is such as to make it possible for twenty-one votes to carry a decision of the House, there would be an inconsistency in requiring more than twenty names to back every bill and every resolution and amendment that churned to be discussed.  Now I can hardly imagine restriction upon the liberty of individual members more defensible than this.  If it were impossible to find any other access to the minds of individual members than by speeches in the House, or if all other modes of conversion to new views were difficult and inefficient in comparison, then we should say that the time of the House must be taxed for the ventilating process.  Nothing of the kind, however, can be maintained.  Moreover, although the House may be obliged to listen to a speech for a proposal that has merely half a dozen of known supporters, yet, whenever this is understood to be the case, scarcely any one will be at the trouble of counter-arguing it, and the question really makes no way; the mover is looked upon as a bore, and the House is impatient for the extinguisher of a division.  The securing of twenty names would cost nothing to the Government, or to any of the parties or sections that make up the House:  an individual standing alone should be made to work privately, until he has secured his backing of nineteen more names, and the exercise would be most wholesome as a preparation for convincing a majority of the House.