for our disappointment. We congratulate him on his return to health and thank him for the strain to which he must have subjected himself in preparing and delivering the speech to which we have just listened. We also desire to congratulate him upon having at last convinced the party now sitting behind him that the 217 Parliament Act, 1911 , is a constitutional safeguard. He will recall that Lord Curzon, Mr. F. E. Smith and other notabilities of the Conservative Party of 1911 promised that as soon as the Conservative Party again obtained a majority they would wipe what Lord Curzon elegantly described as "this smudge" from the Statute Book. But this afternoon, although they received his remarks with no great enthusiasm, he is at least entitled to feel that one of his major achievements in life has been to convert the Tory Party into a belief in the Parliament Act, 1911 . Our view of the Constitution was well expressed by the right hon. Gentleman in a speech he delivered on the First Reading of that Bill on 22nd February, 1911. He said: We believe in democracy, we believe in representative institutions, we believe in democracy acting through representative institutions. We believe that Ministers should back their convictions by their offices. We believe Members of Parliament are representatives and not delegates. We believe that Governments are the guides as well as the servants of the Nation. We believe that the people should choose their representatives, that they should come