MR. GLADSTONEHaving reference to the present state of Public Business, I beg to move that Government Orders of the Day have precedence on Tuesday and Wednesday, August 3 and 4.
§ MR. BERESFORD HOPEsaid, he apprehended that the Motion just made by his right hon. Friend would be a sore blow and heavy discouragement to the Bill which the learned Common Serjeant had been pushing with so much pertinacity during the Session—he meant the Bill for the abolition of sisters-in-law. He, therefore, begged to ask the hon. and learned Member whether, under present circumstances, he still desired to prosecute the Bill; or whether he would not give a holiday to those who were bound to come down, whether to support or to oppose the measure, by moving that the Order be discharged?
§ MR. T. CHAMBERSsaid, he was unable to join in the vivacious tone adopted by the hon. Member. On the contrary, he should be inclined to adopt a very different tone, remembering the enormous number of persons whose dearest interests were involved in the question which he had the honour of raising. He quite agreed that the Government, in the actual state of Public Business, could not have taken any other course than that which had just been adopted by his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and he also agreed that it was impossible to prosecute the Bill with any hope of success during the brief remainder of the Session. In the name, however, of the thousands interested in the provisions of the Bill, he begged to thank those hon. Members who had supported it in the face of opposition carried beyond its usual limits, in the use made of the forms of the House. The history of the present Session afforded every encouragement to the belief that in another year the Bill would be passed successfully. There were, first, the large majorities by which the Bill had been supported; then, the most able speech in its favour of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, and, still more, the support given to it by the Prime Minister himself; finally, there was the progress of public sentiment in its favour which had shown itself, and nowhere more remarkably than in Scotland. Regretting 1093 that, through the action of particular Members, the Bill had been defeated this Session, he should take the earliest possible opportunity of re-introducing the measure next Session.
§ Motion agreed to.