LEAVE. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 8 February 1859)

§ MR. BERESFORD HOPE

said, he could not but congratulate the noble Lord on the rapidity with which he had opened his campaign this year on the question involved in this Bill, and the manner in which, as it were, he had taken the Session by the forelock. Every hon. Member must recollect the Bill of last year—they must remember the number of petitions presented, the cases that had been brought forward, and the statements that had been so ingeniously marshalled in favour of the proposed change. The Bill, such as it was, passed that House at every stage; it went to "another place" and was there summarily disposed of. If, therefore, the grievance so pertinaciously urged, and the misery so strenuously asserted by the noble Lord, last Session, had really existed in one tithe of the intensity represented, it was not too much to expect that that summary rejection of the measure would have raised some measure of discontent or some slight ebullition of feeling from some corner or other of the United Kingdom. But no voice had been raised to protest against the decision of the other House, except it may be in some obscure paper; the case for the Bill had been discredited by the apathy of the community, and there was the strongest con- 189 clusive evidence that the agitation which had been got up on the subject was fictitious or a mere matter of business. At so early a period of the Session, when there was so much real legislation to be done, was it worth while to take up the time of the House in discussing a Bill which, whatever its fate might be there, would not, for a very long time certainly, become the law of the land? If the measure passed that House it must be thrown out elsewhere. It marshalled against itself the respectability of England; and the Presbyterians of Scotland and the Roman Catholics of Ireland, distinct from each other in almost every shade of thought, were at one upon this matter. It would upset the social condition in this country, and the chief object of its promoters was to save from the penalties of the existing law a few persons who had not restrained their passions, but who had overleaped the easy restraints of our tolerant marriage law, and then asked for indemnity for their offence. Those who violated the existing law were not the persons to come forward and plead the violation of the law as their excuse for seeking a change in that law. The noble Lord had already acquired for himself not a little distinction in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen. He had shown himself master of the Hudson's Bay question, and in his speeches, which had come back to us from America during the recess, had confirmed his reputation, and he besought him not to damage his reputation by lending himself with irritating pertinacity to an aimless agitation, and by arraying against himself the regrets and worse of earnest and thinking men by pressing on the House a Bill which others had unsuccessfully endeavoured to pass into a law. Other honourable and distinguished Members had brought the question forward once, some had done so for a second time, but no one yet had been found to press it for a third Session. He trusted his noble Friend would not be the first to place himself in this position; anyhow, if he was pertinacious in his advocacy of the change, he would not weary out the patience of its opponents, but he would find them on every occasion ready and prepared to resist him with an equal pertinacity. If, however, the noble Lord pressed the Bill to a second reading, he ought to be prepared with some better argument than had yet been advanced in favour of it; because the fact that the existing law was violated, might with as much justice 190 be brought forward as a reason for repealing any other law in the Statute-book which pressed upon men's desires, and of legalising any system of immorality down to the doctrine of "free love" itself. But he (Mr. Beresford Hope) would not argue the question at that stage of the Bill. A Bill on this subject having already passed the House, the present one had an ostensible claim for a first reading. But the Motion having been made without an accompanying statement, he could not allow it to pass without protest, and if any hon. Member would move for the rejection of the Bill at that stage, he should be most happy to vote with him. He trusted other hon. Members would, at least, protest with him against the introduction of the measure, and promise the noble Lord the same strenuous opposition which they had the pleasure of giving him last year.