The House of Commons on Tuesday and Wednesday showed itself
critical of the Bill to relieve new Ministers of the necessity of seeking re-election under the Statute of 9 Anne. It is ad- mittedly undesirable that a Prime Minister should be limited in his choice of a new colleague by having to consider whether he has a safe seat. On the other hand, it is equally undesirable that in the long interval between one General Election and another the electors should have no opportunity of vetoing the choice of a Minister, as they did, for example, in the cases of Mr. Churchill at Manchester in 1908 and Mr. Maaterman at Ipswich in 1914. It seems to us that Mr. Bonar Law offered a fair compromise by limiting the operation of the Bill to the nine months following a General Election. For that short period a Member may presume that his constituents still approve of him, and it would be pedantic to insist that he must be re- elected on taking office.
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